what's a Watts

[Jay Negrin <jmnegrin@domain.elided>]

John -

You'll likely get a ton of answers to this one.  I'll chime in mainly
because I like the sound of my own voice : )

The role of a Watts link is to locate the axle and prevent movement from

left to right.  The control arms prevent forward and back movement.
What's left is (hopefully) the only thing the rear axle wants to do is
go up and down.

If the axles have any range of motion in a fore/aft direction they can
end up steering the car, from the back, though!!  You do NOT want this,
except in certain WELL controlled instances.  Ask Porsche and other
makes who allow  very minor amount of motion of the back wheels to
enhance control under specific conditions.

If the whole axle and third member shifted from left to right, relative
to the chassis, this too, would want to steer the car.  You want the
steering to be done by the "round handle in middle of dash board."
(that's be the steering wheel for those not fortunate enough to have
lived through the age of unusual Japanese translations from many years
ago.)

Sway bars, by the way, are effectively, part of the springing part of
the suspension.  Not a whole bunch to do with axle location, but I
imagine they could.

I'll let the experts expound on the plusses and minuses of tuning with
or without swaybars.

For now -

Jay Negrin
So Cal
76 Alfetta GT

This may be a duh... question, but exactly what does the Watts linkage
accomplish on the late model De Dion Alfas? If one looks at it, it would

appear that it does something similar to that an anti-sway bar would
do,  i.e., maintains the rear axle more or less parallel with the road
when
assymetrical cornering cornering loads are experienced.  The
semi-trailing arms locate the De Dion tube relative to the chassis and
neither  Alfa Milano/GTV6  have an anti-sway bar. The Lancia Flaminia
and Aurelia, which also used a De Dion rear suspension, but with
semi-elliptic springs, did not use an anti sway bar either. So ...
inquiring minds would like to know the real function of the Watts
linkage of the Alfa Milano. Incidently, the Caterham version of the
Lotus 7 use a De Dion, a Watts linkage AND an anti-sway bar. What
(Watts) going on here?
Regards,
John Cecil

--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided