HansB

I considered putting in a Quaife at the last rebuild. But, I do not know anybody that has done so, so I have no view on how that would work in practice. This would have been another first, and the cost of a set of LSD plates is high, but still less then half of the price of a Quaife.

The other thing to consider in tire choises is the under/oversteer characteristic of the car. A friend of mine drives 225/285 and complains about understeer. Duhh!

My setup is very neutral, but I could use some more stiffness F.

Geneqco

Hope you don't mind a couple more questions Hans...

Assuming R Spec tyres:

What sort of temp do you want your tyres to be at?

How close do you want front and rear tyres to be temperature wise?

Say the rears are consisently aound 12 degrees (F) hotter than the fronts, how much would you look to increase the rear sizing by?

HansB

I would want the tires 140 -160 F , not under 125
12 difference would not bother to change.
That is with slicks - Pirelli or Dunlop.

My friends at Dunlop also say that a temp differential of up to 20-25 F inside to outside should not worry me. With my settings they are less then 15 F different.

Note that I am no expert, and just an amateur though.

333pg333

Thought I'd just bring this one up again. Got me thinking about doing something similar but I'm not sure just how difficult it would be to get all the measurements and angles right? Wonder how Hans is. I heard he was dealing with an illness. I hope all is well. He was definitely one of the most open and sharing of his work.

thingo

Nice body kit as well.

ausgeflippt951

I want to do this. I don't see it being very difficult, especially since the heim joints are adjustable. Patrick, I say go for it!!

The real challenge would be designing the size/strength of the multi link control arm, so as to ensure that it continues to be the failure point (in the event of an accident), and not more critical components such as the mounting points themselves or the cross member.

Simple FEA will give this info though.

333pg333

I wondered if it was a possible concern by increasing the width of the Arms you are upsetting the geometry by laying over the struts if maintaining the top mounting position? Then I also wondered if you couldn't bring the lower joining point of the strut inboard to maintain stock or close to stock angle? But would this be possible or create other side effects? I need smarter men than me to design this. (There's no shortage of them!). The whole reason for entertaining this is that I want to go to a wider platform in the bodykit which will allow me to increase the wheel / tyre width but more importantly allow me to lower the car to whatever ride height we chose, rather than be dictated to by the body kit that I currently have. If we do this I'd rather a superior suspension unit than simply putting on spacers or going up to super wide wheels that will put a big strain on bearings etc.

So just thinking out loud....

Rod, I agree. Nice car of Hans'. I'm still looking around for the right kit too.

mikey_audiogeek

Thinking out loud as well...
Laying the strut over would at least allow keeping close to zero offset steering geometry, reducing tramlining. The increase in KPI can be compensated for somewhat by increasing castor to offset the camber loss on lock. The inside front wheel will adopt some funny angles (like an old Mercedes) but this should only be noticed in the pits!

333pg333

A few things occurred to me. Is this a rather large project for perhaps a small return? Plenty of guys run spacers to no real loss or are they leaving something on the table by doing so? The one person that I'd trust running modifications on his track car is Hans as he did a lot of testing and measuring of them. I also wondered if it wouldn't be easier just knocking up a wider version of what I have already (Racers Edge A Arms)? I'm guessing that Hans wanted the extra adjustability that his version gives. The additional 'lay-over' effect wouldn't be too radical. I'm thinking that you'd only need to come out about 1" either side. Having said that, I do get amazed at how much really small increments make such big differences in many automotive areas (think mm's for toe angles, or fractions of mm's for piston to wall clearances as examples) so I'm prepared to be educated.

333pg333

To continue...so here is the current top mount. As you can see the slot is asymmetric in that it allows you to increase neg by moving the top of the strut inwards. So I was thinking what if you spun the camber plate 180o so the slot was longer towards the outside of the body. Then you could put the top of the strut a lot further outwards from where the normal position of my struts are, which is furthest inwards. My guess is that we'd gain potentially a couple of inches in positive camber. Of course I'm not doing this to gain positive camber but it would allow us to increase the arms by a similar amount and retain the stock geometry angle as viewed from the front. ie, not increase the 'layover' effect which I believe is bad for Scrub radius. This could be done by making a wider arm or something like Hans has done with separate adjustable arms.

What do we think of this idea?

HansB

Hi Guys, looks like we could add a new chapter to thie suspension design.

I am currently a guest teacher at an automotive university of applied science. Just today we kicked of a project to do a (re) design of this suspension on a 924GTP le Mans which we are building.

We are going to simulate the complete suspension setup including springs and sway bars. We would be interestedt to know is anybidy has progressed this any futher.

HansB

333pg333

Hi Hans

Very nice to see you around these parts again! Yes, please keep us in the loop with what you discover. Don't think too many have ventured off the stock setup to be honest. There's less than a handful of people that have converted to non 944 suspension but probably only 2-3 that I can think of. Duke has a custom twin arm setup on his Time Attack car and Thingo has gone completely 'off the grid' with his build. Search both user names for more information on their cars. There's another Swedish 968 that converted to 996 rear suspension. Can't remember what he has on the front. He doesn't frequent these pages though.

Chris White

So how did it work out?