Rear Axle items

["George Schweikle" <schweikg@domain.elided>]

Dana, Scott, Alan & Eric, and any Digesti who is interested,

Comments regarding topics from the last few days:

Dana, Your method of removing the rear trailing arms / axle is more efficient
than mine; at least for changing shocks. I tried it yesterday. Thanks for the
hint.

I installed Jack Beck's polyurethane bushings in the front (only) of my Spider
trailing arms several years ago, on Jack's recommendation. I just replaced
these with arms that Jack modifies to accept a larger diameter and more
available spring size (in different rates), and these also had poly bushings
at the front only. Who am I to argue with Jack and his Orion Engineering?. He
must have tried about every suspension variation possible in his race cars.

My recently revised spring rates came from a suspension program purchased
several years ago from Dennis Pedersen. This includes component dimensions in
it's formulas to include any mechanical advantages, and provides overall
frequency for front and rear suspension . Admittedly, I was conservative in
the 800# front rates. Jack Beck (again) said he uses 1200# or 1300# rates on
his race cars. My use is autocross only, and I didn't have any oversteer
during the single event run to date. The handling is certainly biased toward
understeer by the 1.25 in. Orion Engineering tubular front sway bar, and I
have the option of reducing rear bar strength by changing back to the normal
Shankle rear bar arm link mounting points, or even changing to a weaker bar.

Eric, I thought the benefit of a panhard bar and front/rear only upper link
was to lower the rear roll center and reduce the tendancy for a 105 chassis to
corner on it's outside front tire. I use a shimmed LSD, and didn't have any
problem with inside wheel spin, even before changing to the Orion panhard bar
setup. my original 105-series autocross car was a 1971 spider, and that thing
would very easily spin an inside rear tire until I replaced the open
differential with a stock 1972 axle with a 22% locking differential. That
cured the problem.

There. That finishes my chores for the evening. We're off to Milwaukee in
early June, and the Solo 2 site there allows considerable 3rd gear action. Can
a 64 year old geezer in a ''76 CSP Spider beat the dreaded 1800 lb. Honda
CRX's? I'll report if anyone is interested.

George Schweikle
Lexington, KY
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