I don't want to mess up a good engine so I thought I best ask for advice on determining oil level.
My buggy uses the chassis and running gear from a Suzuki SJ413 / Samurai, which is a solid axle based car. But I've fitted the engine from a Suzuki Vitara / Sidekick. It's same engine family so it...
I've noticed two of my cars use bigger diameter tube in front exhaust sections. Eg my Vitara had a big down tube from manifold to chassis, slightly lower diameter cat section, and then lower diameter again for the silencer and tail sections.
Is there any reason for this? If I'm building an...
I'm going to use Mobil 1 and Suzuki Sidekick / Vitara as an example. This is an old 1990's car. When I used to look up the recommended engine oil on the Mobil 1 website it would come up with semi synthetic 10W40 and fully synthetic 0W40 options (the site no longer recommends any oil for my car...
I've had to make some modifications to an engine to fit into a custom buggy. One of the modifications is a custom oil pickup to fit the new sump. This is basically a tube with a mesh that sucks oil from the bottom of the engine and then distributes it to all the bearings.
Plumbing copper and...
I'm building a 4x4 buggy. I've "mocked up" the front suspension using cheap thin tube for now just to check it all cycles correctly and parts aren't colliding with each other. The buggy uses a ladder chassis and solid beam axles from a donor car. I've gone for long travel 3-link suspension at...
I need to adjust the preload on new axle kingpin bearings. I've seen a lot of eBay and Amazon listings selling generic foil under the title "shim" and it's a lot cheaper than purpose made shim stock. How risky is it to use this stuff? I've bought brass foil and was going to use that but am a...
I'm trying to figure out what to do with this worn out bearing from the bottom of my 1989 Suzuki Jeep steering column. The column has a ball raced bearing at the steering wheel end. But at the bottom end the inner shaft runs in a soft "rubber" bush. 40k miles on the clock and it's totally worn...
The Milliken textbook gives the formula for braking force as follows:
I've tried to find what Ax is but can't :/ Does anyone know?
This is used in the context of deriving anti-squat from first principles. I need to understand it from first principles so I can figure out how to adapt...
I've come to wanting to check how steady my ackerman is through bump and steer. My static ackerman is around 30%. This is about as good as I can get as my steering rack is quite far forward of my outer tie rods. But for off road race use low ackerman seems to be favoured. I've been using Lotus...
I spent ages asking questions, reading and learning how to design independent suspension geometry (thanks again to Greg Locock from this forum who helped a lot), I started with the front and modelled it all in Solidworks and suspension analysis software. Then I just duplicated the same for the...
I've been working on my suspension geometry. I've come to setting my ackerman but something started going weird. To get Lotus Suspension Analyser to show 100% ackerman I had to move my out rod ends really far. So I did a 2D sketch in Solidworks and it confirmed that Lotus is well out.
Below are...
Do some or all cars have the engine and gearbox at an incline of a few degrees? If so then why? Is it purely to get the engine and gearbox into better positions to fit in the car or is there more to it?
I've only worked on two cars in my life but both seem to have them inclined. I'm now...
I've only just started playing with bump steer so please excuse my basic knowledge. I'm designing my suspension geometry almost from scratch and I've got my suspension geometry in Solidworks and Lotus Suspension Analyser (nice and simple software). Minimising bump steer is one of my objectives...
I've been reading through about suspension geometry, and advantages/disadvantages of big/small scrub, castor, kingpin angle, anti's etc. I've got Kingpin and anti-squat/dive sorted, but with tyre scrub what would be considered a lot of tyre scrub? Little is probably zero scrub. Same goes for...
Someone mentioned to me that they use software to help design their suspension and steering geometry. Can anyone recommend software? Whats the most common software used? I like to use what's most popular because it just keeps me compatible with what others are doing and easier to get support etc.
Hi. I'm an amateur working on my first race car. It's an Ultra4 series car, which is off road, fast stretches similar to rally, but then with some serious off road bits, like traversing boulders.
I'm now working on gearing to help select a suitable gearbox and final drive ratio.
I've been...
Hello!
Got these from the Milliken book.
What is "% front braking"
And what is Ax
Also what are outboard brakes? I assume they are regular brakes at the wheels, but then what are inboard brakes? Would that be a transmission brake? Ie one of those brakes that acts on the prop shaft? My old...
What do people think happens to a cars anti-squat percentage when the car is on an upwards incline, i.e. climbing a hill?
I'm designing the anti-squat for a 4x4 which needs to be optimised when it's climbing up hill. Ie I want 100% anti-squat when I'm on a 20 degree incline and not on a flat...
