Front end bounce

[Project Dirt Pile]

Ok what I have is 14 inch bias tires, with a suicide front end with no weight on the tires if that any diffence to the question to ask....Ok when going down the road behaps 55 ish on the hwy my front end will start bouncing for a few feet then stop for a few feet and then again. I counted off from center of wheel to center of motor is 4 ft. I thinking that the reason it is bouncing is b/c the front has no weight on it to keep it down. Any help is always appreciated.

 

[Sam_Fear]

Even if you had a 92" WB, 50% of the motor weight is on the front. I'd say alignment problem. Even if it was too light in the front, sounds like an alignment problem. Like the front wheels are fighting each other to a point, break loose, bounce a few times to recover, and the do it again.

 

[deerchooper]

are the tires ballanced?

i thought i heard that the bias are sometimes a little egg shape, or maybe your tubes are fat on one side.

 

[cornfield customs]

are you running shocks on the front? straight axles will get bouncing due to the waves in the road. good shocks will help with this, also get your wheels balances with the drum or hub on and that will help. i would not worry about it being the weight. my buddies car does the same thing at between 50 and 60 mph and then it smooths out. i think he needs better shocks on the front and his wheels have never been balanced

 

[cornfield customs]

no suspension or no shocks? i would start with shocks and have the wheels balanced i would put money on it fixing the issue.

on another note, are you worried about your steering binding with the rack mounted to the axle like that? i think if it were me i would re think that part of it as well

 

[Charley Davidson]

No suspension as in "strut like" Rigid?[S

 

[Project Dirt Pile]

Well rereading the first post your saying that a wheel aliment would correct this as the other post has mentioned I should have them aligned with the hubs on the wheels correct?

 

[cornfield customs]

have them balanced with the hubs, an alignment will help with tire wear, squealing while drive and some steering. not wheel bounce

 

[cornfield customs]

i am very confused. you have leaf springs, that means you have suspension. you should never weld to a spring, in takes the temper out and will fail. i think you are getting some of your terms confused as well. if you are running a full rigid front end, dont! plain and simple it will beat you to death, damage the car itself. and the car will fail while driving and hurt or kill you or other

 

[cornfield customs]

i get that, that is called 1/4 elliptical springs.. that would be suspension. but as i said before dont drive it as a rigid if that is what you have. if you have springs that means there is some sort of suspension. if it is a solid bar it is solid mount

 

[donsrods]

Man, I am more confused than ever. [S As mentioned, if you have springs extending out, you have suspension that will move up and down. If it is mounted rigid, so the springs do not bounce up and down, you have bigger issues than we can fix here. Every car on the road needs suspension that allows the front and rear ends to travel over bumps.

Shoot us some good pictures of what you have. I can't make head nor tails out of what you have.

Don

 

[Sam_Fear]

It looks to be 1/4 elliptical springs. No shocks. Rack mounted to axle.

 

[donsrods]

That's what I kinda see, but he keeps insisting he has NO suspension. Maybe the term suspension is what is throwing him off.

Don

 

[Blue Eyed Devil]

So you have springs but no suspension. (?) There is some sort of welding involved (?), and you have a rack mounted to a straight axle. The axle centerline is FOUR FEET from the engine, and did you say "torque arm" in there somewhere?? Throw in high speed wobbles and a total lack of automotive terminology and this is a recipe for disaster.

God bless you guys for being nice, because sometimes it's HARD. This is just flat out poor design with absolutely no reference to proper engineering or safety.

Hopefully this gets remedied before someone is hurt or killed.

And people wonder why they want to ban hot rods...

 

[bob w]

You need to find a local guy that has built hot rods to look at your setup. Trying to analyze your suspension with the information provided is not possible.

 

[donsrods]

I've bitten my tongue a little on this one. I'm going to hold my comments until we get some good pictures of what he really has here. Right now we are just guessing because he is not speaking the same language as us terminology-wise. I think he does have some sort of suspension, but he just doesn't know it.

Don

 

[zzrodder]

First thing we need is better pics.
Secondly, what you have is not a suicide front end, that would be a single cross leaf on a high center mount.
Third, I see suspension as the others have pointed out. You've got a pair of quarter elliptic springs on the lower side with the two red bars being the upper links that keep the axle from tipping back and forth.
What I do not see are shocks which is most likely the cause of the bouncing - there is nothing to control the rebound.
There is nothing wrong with having the rack mounted to the axle but the steering shaft needs to have some sort of splined slip joint to prevent binding as the axle moves up and down or it will break a steering part for sure.

 

[donsrods]

X2.

Don

 

[RAT FINK]

You have no shocks to stabalize the ride...you also have alot of faith in those leaf halves for wishbones...this looks like a REAL SUICIDE front end...appearently life has little value!