Down the road I’m going to build a 28 model A woodie. I want to keep the floor flat so using a model A transverse spring is out of the question and I have a brookville boxed ch***is already. I have a car with coil overs and it rides nice but it would be kool to do something different. If anyone has used these and have pictures I would appreciate it.
Rite on! So will you run a pan hard bar? I have quarter elliptical on the front of my T modified without a bar.
A perfectly good idea. I've even seen modified stock car oval racers that used them back in the 1960s. Your other space saving option would be torsion bars.
I've done several. PM me with your e-mail for a few pictures of my version. Made my first 1/4 elliptic ch***is in 1984 under the rear of Henry bodied deuce highboy, the car is still going with close to 200K on the clock. My last was a couple years ago under Dale Grau's Green Hornet 32 lakester.
I was going to run these on the back of my 40, but decided that I needed to try and get it done, so stuck to the transverse spring . Would have been nice.
Yep. I pulled the body up so you can see it better. quarter elliptical springs, ladder bars and Panhard bar. very comfortable riding car.
@Primered Forever model A has 1/4 springs in the back. Mine will as well but right now it’s a pile of parts
The above picture is how I did my first 1/4 elliptic rear in 1984 only I put the spring on top and the bar on the bottom. It was a deuce highboy roadster that is still on the road up in WA and has around 200K on the clock.
Short springs (which all 1/4 elip are) are stiff and hard to tune as any little addition or removal of a thin leaf will have a big impact. I would utilize a fairly flat spring and copy a model AA truck though obviously with a spring more suitable for a car. The spring can go under the frame rather than beside it and it would probably be most convenient to make it the lower link for the axle rather than the upper. As a bonus you can tune the ride height with the shackle.
Im not being critical, but thought if bars are on top and bottom it had to have shackles at 45 degrees or am i missing something?
Wether the spring is on the top or bottom of the rear end makes no difference as long as the bars can also articulate in line with the spring like a straight 4 bar or triangulated 4 bar. I did one where I split a 2 inch front spring that I mounted under the axle and used 1 inch bars on the top which I triangulated to the spring which made a simple triangulated 4 bar only the bottom bars were the springs. Didn't need shackles. Worked & rode excellent.
@willymakeit In my case it doesn't matter a whole lot. The 4 bar is locating and holding the rearend in place, the springs are only the weight. If the springs were doing both jobs, locating and holding the weight then it would be a concern. As you can see the front spring/bolt pivot point is pretty close to the front lower bar pivot point. When I've had it together and added weight to the frame down into ride height the shackle sits just forward of center and when moved up and down the shackle doesn't have a whole lot of travel in its movement. It's all an educated and experience guess. I've done a lot of suspensions and work but this was my first quarter elliptical springs... ...
lostone: I know what I said above about using the springs as not only the suspension for the car but as 2 of the locating bars. I built this ch***is under a steel deuce highboy roadster in about 1985. This ch***is had the spring and bars running parallel, I built the triangulated ch***is later. The following year 1986 my wife and I loaded the roadster trunk and took off for the 86 LARS with about 100 miles on the car. Drove it 4000 miles on the trip with only a leaky fuel pump for problems. I had contact from the current owner who is I think in WA/OR and I he said nearing or p***ed 200K miles with no suspension problems. Maybe I just got lucky?
No @krylon32 ! Got nothing against what you did !! Seen it done before and when done properly (like yours) it seems to work just fine. I was just answering his questions on my set-up with a triangulated 4 bar. ...
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