History When were Triangulated 4 Kinks first used?

I've been searching for days and I give up. When were triangulated 4 link rear suspensions first used in hot rods and race cars? I'm thinking of using one in my '26 Chevy roadster build and I'd like to know the history. Thanks

 

Probably about 1980 when they were "widely" used in hot rods. Search the magazines, they will be the written truth. Chevy used them about 1962 or so, I think.

 

The High and Mighty 49 Plymouth drag car had one in 58. They copied it off the 51 - 53 Jaguar XK120 - C racing car.

Kurtis race cars used a torsion bar suspension that was sort of like a 4 link but not really.

 

They were mostly popularized by Pete & Jake, who introduced them as 'the Triangulated 4 bar', in an article in Street Rodder around 1980, as Alchemy said.
They had a 'how and why', actually a very sound design...if you can live with that 13/16" lower bar tacked onto the lower rail, visible to all who'll notice...
Funny, that and the 4-bar front with Mustang box are like visual magnets when I see a fenderless car.
(I even cast a su****ious eye to the full-fendered ones, for the same reason...STREET ROD!!!)

 

I knew there were 4 of them but didn't know they were triangulated. Or that they had their own bar called "The Triangulated 4 Bar".

 

Proofread, proofread, and then proofread. Nothing gets by these guys! Sorry, too many mashed fingers for intricate keyboard work.

80s you say? I'll have to find that '49 Plymouth. Thanks for the info even if it was not what I wanted to hear.

 

Here you go:

"They ended up putting coil springs from a Buick up front, and used a multilink suspension in back, designed by **** Burke from the steering and suspension group. Rear wheels were moved inwards, and the engine was tilted, to put as much weight onto the rear axle; that, coupled with the multilink suspension, provided straight launches."

http://www.allpar.com/racing/high-mighty.html

I have seen other articles on the net, one of them by the guy who designed the suspension describing how he copied it off the Jaguar. And how it launched so hard it pulled the front wheels off the ground which scared the **** out of NHRA tech at the time. So they had to adjust the rear suspension to be less effective at hooking up.

 

http://www.hotrod.com/featuredvehicles/113_0704_ram_rod/viewall.html



The Plymouth also featured what may have been the first adjustable four-bar rear suspension in a drag car. For inspiration, the ch***is committee drew from the Jaguar XJC, one of the last great live-axle sports racers. But with a twist: According to Ramcharger Bill Shope, the Ram Rod used a telescoping left upper link. The setup was intended to work as an offset three-link on acceleration, reverting to a conventional four-link under braking, when the slip-link bottomed out. With the lousy tires available, they had to maximize traction however they could. Since any uneven distribution of load between an axle pair will reduce the total grip of the pair, counteracting driveline torque was a top priority. And the rear suspension worked well-too well according to Shope: On its first full run under power, the car got up on two wheels and bicycled off the starting line. "The NHRA people had never seen a car do anything like that, and they made it clear they did not ever want to see it again," Shope says. So the boys ran a bolt through the slip joint, converting the rear suspension back into a standard four-link.
With the stock Plymouth suspension in the front, coil springs from an old torque-tube Buick (the softest they could find) were installed out back. "All the rear springs did was hold the body off the ground," Burke says. "The roll couple was all to the rear, none in the front. Anything to get the rear tires to grip the pavement." The crew continued to work with the four-link's wide range of adjustments until the grip was equal on both rear tires. "That's when we knew we had it perfect," Burke says. "With the car going forward dead level and two nice black streaks of equal length on the pavement. Not smoke, but about 6 feet of black rubber. That showed we were really biting into the pavement."

 

The first triangulated 4 link was used in the 58 chevy,although it looks like a 3 link. Its not a three link,if you look at the attachment points on the top link.It was only used in 58,in 59 it was changed to a 3 link, and this continued into the mid 60's when it was changed to a real triangular 4 link with 4 links.

I used the 58 suspension and X member in 1962 when I built the "new" frame /ch***is for what was to become the fibergl*** replica car in 1962 - 63.

 

Here is a better pic,taken from under the car,the way it looks today,50 yrs later.

 

do you have a thread on the build features on hamb? or info/pics.

seems way ahead of it's time, and would like to hear more.

 

It was way ahead of its time.The independent front suspension with power steering was pretty advanced too. Back then we didnt have digital cameras,we just took 35 mm and waited 3 weeks for it to come back!I am takeing it apart and rebuilding and improoveing the whole car this winter. The build thread is started over on "Rusty Bow Tie"., and thats where it will be. Here are some shots of the front.

 

Thank you guys. This is a big help. **** I remember that Plymouth but I didn't know about the suspension. I looks like 1958 4 link to me. Not triangulated but 4 link.
http://www.hotrod.com/featuredvehicles/113_0704_ram_rod/photo_10.html

Then early 60s use of '58 Chevy stock Triangulated 4 link in a rod. There must be more out there. I remember a guy in "62-"63 building a midget with a 4 cylinder drone motor and a triangulated 4 link that used 1/4 elliptics for the bottom link. Early Chevy springs I think.

Funny I just signed up on Rusty Bowties yesterday. Is that a new site?

 

The site is only about a year old. I think it was started by a guy from here.I joined up during the first week it was up.

 

Any more pre '65 4 link pictures out there? Triangulated preferred. Drags, Salt/Dry Lakes, Circle Track, Indy, Street,.........

 

Jaguar C Type - aerodynamicist Macolm Sayer's finest hour. *** on wheels personified....

 

Looks like three bar to me...

 

And if you want the full visceral C Type experience....

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNfGnxCC5Fg


And meanwhile, back to scheduled programming here is a technical description of the C Type rear suspension taken from the web:
Jaguar C-Type Suspension


The ch***is essentially ended just behind the ****pit, with the rear axle hung off the back on trailing links. These links were attached at their forward ends to the springing medium, which was a single transverse torsion bar, fixed in the center so it acted like two separate bars.

The advantages of this design were lighter weight, more positive location of the axle, and elimination of the inter-leaf friction that cons***uted an unpredictable damping force with the road going 120's conventional semi-elliptics. Instead of the lever-type shocks at the back of the street car, the compe***ion model used telescopics.
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td><center>
©2007 Jaguar Cars and Wieck Media Services, Inc.
The Jaguar C-Type's suspension was designed
to save weight and provide sharp handling.
</center></td></tr></tbody></table>One other interesting innovation appeared at the rear. To help prevent wheelspin in this era when limited-slip differentials were rare, Jaguar designed a torque link that mounted atop the right side of the axle, leading forward.

Normally, in a conventional beam axle, the pinion gear has a tendency to "climb up" the ring gear. This creates a lifting moment that reduces the weight on the right-rear wheel, allowing it to spin just when engine output is highest. That's why powerful cars with this type of rear suspension and no limited-slip often leave just one black streak of rubber when scorching away.

Jaguar's novel link was placed and angled in such a way as to counteract this lifting force and press the right-side wheel back down onto the road. Of course, it also located the axle in a rotational sense, thus reducing any tendency to tramp or judder on acceleration.
On the original design, this link was A-shaped and had the additional duty of locating the axle laterally against cornering forces. At 51 inches, rear track was wider by an inch compared to the street car.

 

Man the roads are so tiny now wonder they can't stay one the right side. What a beautiful car. I love the early efforts by our forerodders to give their American rods that European race car look and had no idea of the lasting impact their own style would have world wide.

 

Sorry but the High and Mighty was Not a TRIANGULATED 4 link - It was a parallel 4 link - big difference

 

Excuse me I thought I mentioned that. I'm just trying to make some build decisions. I figured this was the place to to get real historical hot rod information.

 

I found this thread because I was about to start a thread asking the same thing. No real consensus, though: neither the Jaguar C-type nor the '58 Chevy is a true triangulated 4-link. Rather, both are variations on the upper A-bracket and lower links.

I find it hard to believe that nobody thought of this simple and fairly obvious solution before someone at GM in the mid-'60s did. Really? Didn't anyone stumble upon it earlier?

Did nobody use coils on a solid axle between Brush in 1906 and Buick in 1938 — anywhere in the world? Did nobody see that it'd work just as well with transverse leaf springs?

 

My plan is not nearly as sophisticated as any of those factory setups and it will definitely not use coils. It may end up a parallel 4 link but the bottom links will be 1/4 elliptic leaf springs.
Here are some interesting drawings showing spring attachment and a couple of parallel setups that obviously predate '58. There is nothing triangulated though. A Miller race car double 1/4 elliptic would work. The photo of the Ford setup gave me an Idea of how to build the top links while using leafs for the bottom. The whole traverse part would be gone and my frame will have the stock '26 Chevy pickup. I need to do a drawing.

 

I know GM used a triangulated 4 link on the 1968 A bodies. I don't know if the earlier years used the same.

 

Interesting details shown in the drawings. The prevailing design instinct seemed to be for elastic structures rather than for linkages. There are a few hinges, but it seems that an effort was made to avoid articulation in multiple degrees of freedom — this despite spherical joints being common enough in steering, not to mention the two major ones under every Model T, at the back of the wishbone and the front of the torque tube. Might that account for nobody inventing the triangulated 4-link, by accident or otherwise, in 1925?

 

I would like to see what is in the rest of the book those pages came from. I found a link but have not been successful yet.

 

Just use the search feature, there was a thread a couple months ago asking the same question, it was answered with pics and everything that showed it to be late 50's very early 60's.....

.

 

This thread started in 2013. Maybe if I had caught the "kinks" mistake more people would have found it. Anyway I think I have a plan now. Some day it may show up on my build thread.

 

This one: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/rear-4-link-setups.1249984/#post-14304107 ?

 

Some what OT...In the early 2000s I put a 62 Chevy 3 link in my 56 Chevy, I always wondered if I was the only one to do this. I´m glad I´m not. By the way, the 56 drives and handles perfectly with the 62 rear .