Went to Castle Combe last weekend to watch some good racing. Amongst the different classes were Formula Vee single seaters, all 1300 beetle powered and running beetle transaxles and axles. They were supprisingly quick little cars. Now, my thoughts were: What tinkering do they do to the suspension? I noticed that they have the standard front beam, but theres no sign of any dampers.
Have a look here:
http://www.veecentre.com/ Mate of mine races one and runs an engineering company that builds chassis for them. I will see if I can get some close up pictures if you want.
That would be great, maybe we could get some tips on handling mods.
They are midmounted with a 4 bar link and coilovers on the back. They usually only use the torsion leaves in only one of the beams because they are so light, not sure about the shocks though, I'm sure thet are there somewhere.. :D
I used to own an Austro Vee - early 1970's racer, nice little chassis - never a complete car during my ownership, suspension was pretty much standard torsion beam front end and swing arm rear. Front had dropped spindles to lower it.
Shame I never got it finished would have been fun, but with a Fug and a Charger and a range rover and a few bikes and things kicking about some had to go!!! Also as with any race car the building of it is the easy (and cheap) bit - running it is a differant matter. I did consider putting it on the road at one point - that'd have been mad!
cheers! AB
great thread!
About 3 years ago I went to brands hatch to study the formula vee cars in more detail, as I was keen to learn some tricks for my fug, heres what I concluded:
Rear: they are all swing axle gear boxes, with multi link rods on the outer hubs, most using Z-bar anti roll bars, which are an effective way of both stiffening the rear suspension and preventing roll, whereas a conventional roll bar only prevents roll.
Front: the steering racks were very short and the tie rods were very long, I interpret this as being an effort to reduce the bump steer to the least possible……..the steering rack to tie-rod angles were nearly exactly in-line……..no silly angles with the tie riods pointing upward (like mine were!)
Generally: The 1300 FVee engines produce about 100bhp........and the cars were doing about 52 second laps around the brands indy circuit……..compare that to a 1600 formula ford with an old 110 bhp kent engine and full wishbone suspension both front and rear, they also do 52 second laps around the brands hatch indy circuit……..which for me says that when set up correctly a torsion beam front, and swing axle rear end will handle quite ok…….on the back of all this, I decided to fit a bump steer kit to my front hubs, adjustable rear spring plates for optimum camber settings, adjustable dampers front and rear, and bigger castor/camber hubs on the front which allow optimum camber settings……..and it is now a different car to drive……..although my current problem appears to be there is too much stiction in the front suspension………so that’s next on the list
