Does anyone know of a supplier for a chrome dead perch? I'd rather use one than a front panhard bar on a cross steering front end this time around.
dont do it! I had one on my 4 bar under my 32 and it handled like **** they are great for roundy round dirt cars,but it ****ed on the street.they call them a "deadman perch" for a reason
Deuce Factory was the one who made them. They were not made right anyway. They were too long out to the spring mount. It made the other shackle hang straight down and the car was off center. I have made a few of them and have plans I can email. You could make the top from stainless and polish. I have pic of one on my car and another on a build. They work better with reversed eye springs.
So-Cal has 'em now.GT2 line of parts do you really need a panhard bar? even with vega steering...no. (others will argue,but I've ridden and drove em with out)
I have done a few without any side effects. Never used a pre-made dead perch, I machined up a bushing and welded the shackle to the perch pin. This car gets the ever living piss pounded out of it. Look closely at the right side shackle.
I have a deuce factory s/s one on my 3 window with a mono leaf spring.drives and rides great.its in the 7th year and 14.000 miles.
A dead perch and a panhard effectively do the same thing, control sway! Yes, what we commonly call a "sway" bar is really an anti-roll bar and a panhard or other means of controlling body sway on it's compliant suspension is really an anti-sway bar.
From 1909-41 Ford mounted their transverse springs, front and rear, under tension which eliminated the need for a Panhard rod. They added front and rear Panhard bars from 1942-48 after changing the mounting of the springs to untensioned to achieve that "big car" ride with an archaic suspension. A properly built Ford style suspension with tension-mounted springs should not need a Panhard rod whther fore and aft or cross steering. The "secret" is so simple, just build the perches to the stock Ford dimensions for the spring you are using. Rule of thumb, measure spring eye-to-eye at rest, add 3" for shackles(1.5" per side), add 3/4" per side for tension, and make up your perches to that dimension eye-to-eye.
Guys when using a dead perch you need to have the spring main leaf which attaches to the perch shortened by 3/8". This works well and accommodates the set in the dead perch. Remember also that the dead perch should be installed on the p***engers side of your axle. Follow these simple rules and it should work nicely. Like previously stated a panhard rod should work better since it is longer and can me made to sit flat or level, however the dead perch is a good alternative.
Have you ever gone around a corner really fast in your hotrod. No, I mean really fast....I use them front and rear sometimes but this time just in the front because I know the rear is set up just as you suggest.
When I read stuff like this I have to wonder where you get this kind of information or theories. Is this is something you read or something someone told you through hearsay? By the way, "tension-mounted" springs as you say is called preload. No mystical suspension magic going on. Unless the spring shackles were dead level to the ground and collinear, they can sway. It's just with drag link steering that it's something that Ford didn't consider worthy of addressing. You can also get this body sway though compliant parallel leaf springs, it's just not common to address this.
Elpolako, I wonder if you know who pasadenahot rod is and what he has done? Intersting. He might have been doing this before your parents were born. I don't think he has to rely on heresay!!!
And, so are you going to agree that early Fords don't sway and would not benefit from some form of control as he is suggesting?
I have a Deuce Factory stainless steel dead perch that I never used. Its the non swivel design. If you're interested, I'll part with it. Dave
i thought they(panhards) controlled side to side movement, not roll. a sway bar and panhard are 2 diff things.....
since this thread is going along nicely , i'll add my 2 cents.....dead perches **** and i would never use one again
Yes, side to side movement is sway, not on the suspension rotation axis. You understand it correctly A "sway" bar is just incorrectly termed. Like a 5 window Model A coupe...
For what it's worth, I've been building my HotRods with the 'dead-perch' since I started back in 1972. I've built all of mine on the drivers-side spring end. My Coupe drives great, and has since the beginning.....25 years ago.
I don't want to be the dead perch police but this question and part reference seems to be continually brought up and its like the Hatfield/Mcoy feud. As I have stated before this is a dumb-*** idea for a street driven car. Does it work to locate the front end? Yes. Is it a good idea, not really. Although a bunch of you guys swear by the application its really for a left turn car. Those of you that have used this successfully are usually using this application with virtually a flat style spring and are living with more of a harsh ride than you should. The excuse mainly is that its an I-beam hot rod and they all ride like that. With little flex in the spring or reverse bending the movement of the shackles is minimal so the vehicle seems to track in a straight direction but produces a harsher ride than necessary, the shackle only flexes on one side so there is enough movement to prevent a total spring bind and it seems to function. Pasadena is correct about the triangulated tensioning of the spring not requiring a panard rod for locating the axle. A correctly spanned spring will self center under normal bump or load without off tracking. Where problems occur is when you have the spring length longer than the required and the shackles start to relate to a 90* angle to the hanger. This combined with parallel radius rods or 4 bar alignment to allow the ch***is to somewhat wallow, as the springs function, with the locating control being the cross steer drag link. If this movement is so severe this is what you feel in the steering and are mistakenly relating this to bump steer. Now back to this POS dead perch. The main draw back to this application in a street driven car is that it effectively reduces the spring action of the car to almost 1/2. Ill try and scan a drawing of what is happening to the suspension when you are using a dead perch and how the spring is operating. I'm not saying that it doesnt work for locating , I'm saying that this part reduces the effectiveness of the spring producing a harsher ride than necessary and reverting back to a standard twin shackle setup will greatly improve your ride. Now some people have said a parallel leaf set up is like a dead perch with a fixed spring end but they fail to address that this is a longitudinal mounted spring (wheel base) vs a transverse spring (sideways) and the motions are different. So the argument doesn't correspond. Remember that a transverse spring is like a sideways quarter elliptical, two movable ends on a fixed point.. In any case when you install a dead spring perch you deaden the spring of your car by creating a solid link from the dead perch shackle to the ubolt of the spring stack. This forms almost a solid connection because it removes any ability for the spring to flex between these points. It's bolted solid at the axle, it's bolted solid at the ubolt, this side of the spring can only flex when the pressure us so severe that the spring bends backwards. Now you believers say but the spring does flex, well it does, but the flex of the spring is now displaced thru the entire spring and pivots on the movable shackle side. This movement causes the entire frame to offset on the axle track the distance that the spring is deflected. So if you had a properly arched spring to aide the ride you would notice that you would be feeling a twitch in the steering of a cross steer car or just a droop of the ch***is to the movable side on a parallel steer car as the frame offsets maybe as much as 1/2"+ to the movable shackle side. Now you guys with the almost flat spring will not experience this much phenomena because of the limited flex of the spring but have to make up for the harsh ride by a lower tire pressure. In any case if you are building a new car and want a decent ride don't use a dead perch, its just as it says "dead perch" and a dead fish stinks.
Wallow = Sway<sway same="" thing..=""> The suspension will sway or wallow with the shackles in any position other than dead on horizontal. Is it enough to get worked up over? Up to you to decide. This picture is of a typical set up. The shackles are at 45 degrees to the spring more or less and I can move the spring without changing the arc of the spring, in fact on my drawing here the spring and axle are fixed lengths. If you look closely at the pin I put in the middle of the spring you can see it is pretty much on center with the vertical Y-axis mark (ignore the angled axis, I needed that one for my setup) If you look closely you can see the pin is offset of the Y-axis. The spring is arched and under tension, unlike my example here. Under body roll we have a weight transfer to contend with that will change the virtual length of the spring for the longer on the compressive side and shorten the spring on the extensive side. Will the suspension "self center"? Sure it will to a point, but it can also wallow. Dead perches can work, optimal, of course not.</sway>
OK i have some dumb questions.I have a Pete and Jakes Parallel 4-bar on the front end of my coupe and have limited space to run a pan-hard bar so what are my options to get the front-end from moving side to side without using a pan-hard bar.What exactly is a dead perch would this work for my setup?
Yo Elpolocko, Wallow is not sway. Sway is another term for body roll, wallow is a term that can be applied when the axle track center line has the ability to randomly offset the ch***is center line as the vehicle reacts to suspension compression and extension movements.
After all this... the only place I've ever seen dead perches "at work" is in oval track racing, ie left turns only. A Panhard bar seems so much simpler, leaves the spring to work, and doesn't add all that much weight, eh? Gary
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