Changing a bunch of the previous owner's "stuff"

Questions, just for me to learn.
I'm utilizing a 68 c10 chassis with factory trailing arms, but this truck also had a panhard bar to center the axle. Without the panhard, the rear end moves around quite a but by hand. Won't you still need a panhard bar or watts link or something?

Now mine are rubber bushing mounted, so that might make a difference.


Those welds are pretty scary. Must have been good bones to make you want to pick it up with the knowledge of having to go through it piece by piece.
Was it running and driving when you got it?

I had a chance to talk to PO of my 46 and he explained to me how he had to rebuild the front suspension when he got it. I held my tongue and did not state "you did all this that I'm having to fix". The front had coil over motorcycle shocks that were frozen and the back had one inch of travel before the shocks bottomed thus the shock mount torn from the frame. All better now! We'll talk about wiring some other time. I hate PO stuff.

Don

animal said:

The bars are at an angle, but the mounts are aligned with each other. The Heim joints should allow up and down movment just fine, while keeping the rear end housing centered. I'm not at home, won't be for aa week or so, but I believe the front and rear mounts are at least 18" offset (over a span of 29-30") I think the triangulation will be enough. There isn't much room to do anything else.

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Regardless of the mounts being aligned with each other, I think the only reason you won't get binding is because of the heim joints? I'm not trying to criticize your setup, just trying to learn and understand. The triangulation looks like plenty to me, I'm just puzzled by angled mounts when your suspension movement is primarily up and down.

EDIT: While I am an engineer I'm not a mechanical engineer and don't have 100% understanding of the forces at play in certain situations. I asked my Mechanical Engineer co-worker. He said that while the heim joints will get rid of any twisting, since the axis of your mount is roughly 45° from the direction of the force, you will get much higher forces on the mounts (up to 40% more) than if they were not angled, since there will be higher side forces acting on those mounts to try and keep it from moving. You may or may not see the impact of the higher forces, I just thought you might want to know what I learned about it.

I'm no engineer....far from it. With the traction bars as well as the trailing arms, I really don't see where I'll be experiencing huge lateral forces, but I guess we'll see. I copied this design from a drag car, so maybe it's not optimum for the street. As I said, we'll see. If something needs changed, I'll change it.....but I feel much more confident in this setup than what was on the car when I got it.

Dirtyrat posted this link on Willowbilly3's thread about triangulated suspension........It looks a lot like my setup on paper.

http://www.how-to-build-hotrods.com/triangulated-4-link.html

animal said:

I'm no engineer....far from it. With the traction bars as well as the trailing arms, I really don't see where I'll be experiencing huge lateral forces, but I guess we'll see. I copied this design from a drag car, so maybe it's not optimum for the street. As I said, we'll see. If something needs changed, I'll change it.....but I feel much more confident in this setup than what was on the car when I got it.

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I'm sure it will work fine, I just wouldn't want to break a mount of the housing on the road because they're angled. Let us know how your road test goes!

If you take corners like me, you'll have a good amount of lateral force. Since you have 6 mounting points on the axle, would it bind when the axle twists - like when one tire is higher than the other ??? [S

That's almost set up like a 60-70's GM mid size car that had coils in the rear.

Bamamav said:

That's almost set up like a 60-70's GM mid size car that had coils in the rear.

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The only ones I can think of had 2 parallel arms on the bottom and 2 triangulated arms up top. Maybe I'm thinking of full size or remembering wrong, is that what you mean?

Animal, I'm not a card carrying engineer either, but I'm still an engineer. I've made a lot of stuff in my life and a good percentage of it worked. So, don't sell yourself short. Your triangulation looks like it will work. What I think the guys are worried about is the vertical movement at the front joint on the inside of the frame. If your rear-end moves up and down eight inches and you have a thirty inch bar that heim joint will have to move slightly more than a quarter of an inch, and it will handle that all day. Enjoy your test drive.
Now, my whiney previous owner story. I knew the PO had torched out the centres of the wheels to get them over the hubs, when I bought the car, but I kinda liked the rally wheels. On the way home I kept finding caliper bolts rolling around on the trailer deck, a sign that they weren't in very tight. It turns out that if you put the bolts in right and screw them in, the calipers scrunch up into the wheels and they won't turn. So the calipers are in there loose, there are no pads at all, and the wheels are too small, making the tires no good either. I went to the back end today to start measuring clearances for different tires and the way he got the back wheels to turn is he left the drums off completely and the shoes are worn out. My optimism took a blow today.
Thanks for having this thread and letting me abuse it.

05snopro440 said:

The only ones I can think of had 2 parallel arms on the bottom and 2 triangulated arms up top. Maybe I'm thinking of full size or remembering wrong, is that what you mean?

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Yep, that's it.

I'm still on the road, won't be able to do anything until at least Saturday afternoon. We need to get the brakes bled and install/adjust the kickdown cable before I go very far, so it may be a week or two before I get it all ready for a test flight.

its looks like they took the gum off the bedpost at the Hoilday Inn Express I stayed at last night to hold the parts together.......

Your bars look good, like truck arms...what is holding your pinion angle though?


weld on........[ (a lot better than the PO...

Ricks Garage said:

what is holding your pinion angle though?

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There are ladder bars once he gets them welded back on, see the pic in I think was post 6