Will the sprite spin out?

[madasr]

Hi

I have a Bugeye sprite with a Mazda RX2 rear axle. The rear track is approximately 340mm wider than the front track. How will this affect the handling of the car?

Looking forward to your responses.

[Ray Bell]

I predict massive understeer and a dreadful lack of feel. It's definitely against conventional wisdom, but there's more...

How is it mounted in there? With the spring and shock pickups so far in from the wheels, it's going to have massive axle control problems.

[madasr]

Ray,

It is mounted using the standard mounting points ( 4 training arms and a panhard rod) plus 2 Coil Over Spting/shock units at about 45 degrees to the horizontal.

[THR]

try reading this link:


http://tentenths.com/forum/showthread.php&threadid=5856


its something similar anyway.

well for some reason it wont work. perhaps a kind person would sort it!

[R]

I'm not sure why it doesn't work, I tried to copy and paste the link from the original topic, and it didn't work for me either.

Anyway, if you go to page two of this forum and scroll down, the topic THR tried linking to is called "Wheel offsets".

[Ray Bell]

I don't understand... I though Sprites had a more conventional rear axle location... and are you saying those springs are in addition to or instead of the standard springs?

Don't get caught up in the trap of ever-increasing spring rates... never could work.

Yes, radical wheel inset will help, but why didn't you find a narrower diff housing, isn't the RX3 axle shorter for instance?

[madasr]

The Standard Bugeye rear axle used the quarter elliptic rear spring as a lower control arm and the swing arm damper as the upper control arm. With no lateral location I was putting holes in the inside side wall of the rear tyre as the body moved sidways when we went around corners.

The car also has a 2.5 litre engine in it now (orginally 948cc) and was braking axles verry frequently.

With the current setup a preliminary test run (on very old tyres, 10" x 13dia slicks) appeared to show that the car had ots of oversteer. But I'm not sure if that was caused by the old rubber, the old driver or the new rear end.

Current coil over shock units are from an old Jag and I think they also need to be replaced as there is lots of body roll on cornering(approx 3" the guards rubbed on the top of the rear tyres)

[Ray Bell]

What engine?

This sounds like a real mess... and what about the RX3 housing?

Couldn't you get a J-van axle?

[madasr]

The engine is a 2.5 litre holden red motor.

What is a J-van axle?

Does the RX3 housing have the mounting points for the trailing arms at the same width as the RX2?

Yes, it is a mess.