================ Average male Height, by birth decade. https://ourworldindata.org/data/food-agriculture/human-height/ That claims the average for guys born in 1980 is about 10 cm (~4 inches ) taller than those of us born in 1890 (and driving in the 20s, 30s and 40s. Looks like Americans were 173.5 cm in 1830 and started shrinking to a low of 169.2 in 1890. It took 100 years (until 1930) to return to 173.5 cm (5' 8.3 ").
Just after WWI when the Army still had height requirements for being an officer my granddad just made it @ 5'3"[funny story about that] General Eisenhower his contemporary was 5'10.5". From conversations with my granddad Eisenhower was considered to be a tall man by his peers. I asked my granddad once why he was so short and he said that he was average height and people from my generation were just tall.
Thanks to whichever of the mods moved this thread to the Off Topic Hot Rods & Customs forum, as it opens up more scope for further speculation. I had a stray thought yesterday about power steering. I generally dislike power steering (I hate that on-off cycling oversensitive power steering does in long sweeping curves) but there are certainly instances where it's useful. All power steering requires a small amount of rotational input to activate a valve or switch before the assist comes on. Systems are engineered to keep that rotation as small as possible, but it can't be eliminated entirely. Because the valve or switch has a fixed amount of travel, the input rotation to activate gets bigger the quicker the steering gets. It's pretty much imperceptible on excruciatingly slow, finger-light dad's-Oldsmobile steering, so for many years it wasn't an issue. But now that the advantages of power steering are being investigated for unbelievably quick, nicely-weighted steering it might become an issue. I suspect that it's handled by a combination of chasing last percentiles in the engineering of the valves/switches and convincing a new generation that that's how steering ought to feel. But how about driving older slow power steering through a quickener? Using a timing chain and sprocket set as a quickener would cut the input rotation to activate in half. And quicker ratios can certainly be done. It could solve power steering feel and packaging issues at the same time?
I've been walking around with steering on my brain for almost a week. It took a branch into rack-and-pinion setups, which aren't really germane here, before coming back to designed-in chain-drive quickeners. I have a thing for controls on the steering wheel hub, and a steering column driving a camshaft sprocket could easily have all kinds of things running down the middle of it. Only thing is, that would require the chain to run perpendicular to the column, and if the column is to be, say, 15° from the horizontal I was going around in circles thinking chain vs. my feet; chain vs. firewall; chain vs. back of engine — though of course this is all hypothetical and meant to be adaptable to all kinds of different builds. The chain really wants to be parallel with, and just behind, the firewall. Perhaps I just couldn't think of the right search terms, but I couldn't find anything online like an annular Hooke joint, i.e. a U-joint with a constant hole that runs straight through the middle. It's surely possible: all it needs is for the spider or cross to be formed as a ring, and one of the two yokes as a bigger ring that goes around it. But surely it can be engineered, and quite probably far more simply and easily than what I ended up 3D-modelling: The last one was like a ten-hour render, for some reason. I didn't go crazy like on my epicyclic-geared wheel-reinventing exercise of two years ago: just levers for throttle and spark, and space for a wire to the horn switch down the middle.
Why bother, just clock the rack so the pinion is horizontal , then use 2 x Toyota Hiace Van 90° steering boxes. to "Z" it up the firewall You can add a universal to the upper column for steering wheel angle. Already tested and approved by Toyota I would certainly trust this more than a funky chain drive steering
Why not? 1. No opportunity for controls down the middle of the steering column 2. No integral quickener 3. No opportunity to reinvent the wheel
And no roadworthy inspection drama In NZ , Aussie etc we need a modification cert and you'll get "burnt at the stake" if you tried using a chain steering. Even hotrod parts are frowned on , so by using OEM parts circumvents this path of rejection. You can absolutely use controls down the middle of the steering column ! just the steering column is a lot shorter
No such issues here (yet!) Inspections only at change of ownership, and pre-'94 cars are grandfathered as regards regs. Which generation Hi-Ace had that box? We skipped the 4th generation here, went straight from H60 (Kruiwa = wheelbarrow) to H200 (Quantum/Ses'fikile). What's the diameter of the input and output shafts? You're suggesting rifle-drilling a ±20mmØ hole down that and out through the cover plate?
Thinking about this some more. It always amazes me how people (I don't mean you, @Kerrynzl ) can dismiss a technical proposal without having as much a guess at a failure mode in their heads. Their attitude is almost as if it is blindingly obvious that the thing will explode in a mushroom cloud, or all the fasteners would suddenly vanish leaving a pile of chain link-plates in the car's footwell, or the individual components would feel so awkward in unfamiliar surroundings that they'd try to escape by any means necessary. They shake their heads in disbelief at others' failure to see it, even though they themselves aren't seeing anything much in particular. If you identify the failure mode and fix that, the failure mode is going to move on to something else, but always at a higher threshold than it was before. The question always boils down to, how high is high enough? So, how is chain-drive steering going to fail? The chain could break, if you are extremely strong and something extraneous is preventing the front wheels from steering. Both, not either. This is unlikely even for Olympic weightlifters and ordinary bicycle chain. Something could get caught in the chain and jam the steering. This could be a real danger, especially if the chain is on the engine side of the firewall. I've had enough cars with unidentifiable stray wires under the dash to know that this could be a real danger on the interior side too. Preventing that could be a matter of a simple but sensibly designed chain guard, nothing close to full enclosure. The chain could stretch and/or the sprockets could wear, causing the chain to jump teeth. This would at least cause the steering wheel to become misclocked; at worst it could cause sudden changes in steering angle at the worst possible moment. But how light would a chain have to be for that to happen? It is so easy to overdesign the chain so grossly that it wouldn't show any wear in a human lifetime of use that you'd have to try very hard not to. The sprockets could move out of alignment, allowing the chain to come off, resulting in total loss of steering. I suspect that this is the key issue: fix this and you will almost automatically have fixed all the others. The first thing a setup like this needs to do is to keep the sprockets in alignment under all conditions you're likely to see, and then some. The thing that makes the Steer Clear unit work isn't so much the environmental isolation as the rigid case keeping the sprockets where they ought to be. That includes maintaining the centre distance as designed. If I've missed any possible failure modes, please let us know. My above idea could be simplified by using a CV joint instead of a specially machined Hooke joint. Very many CV joints follow this pattern: Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing on which it's impossible to find a lot of hard information. Spline counts are common enough, but these are metric splines which don't have a standard ratio of spline count to shaft diameter. I was only able to find a handful of actual ID dimensions, enough to suggest that 28mm is a very common major diameter but little more. You'd have physically to measure dozens of CV joints individually. If it's 28mm I'd have to adjust my concentrics downwards, and the wheel hub controls might become a bit springy. Edit: I found a useful Australian site which turned up several possibilities, mostly VW, Toyota, and a few Mercedes-Benz, with a major diameter around 32mm, which would suit my original concentrics perfectly.
What are you controlling that needs to be hard wired? How do the OEM's do it? Surely Pontiac had this figured out in the 90's.
I've got a thing about no-code builds. I like to treat electricity as OEMs did pre-WWII, i.e. not necessarily there when you need it. I even spent a few weeks daydreaming about non-electric means of starting an engine.
A mate of mine has used a Steer Clear in his roadster with a Hemi driveline. Being located in Australia (with our tough vehicle mod laws) there were more reasons to fail the system than pass it. The steer clear was installed using a telescopic, collapsible steering column with break away mounts. The biggest question was 'what if the chain breaks?'. The chain breaking is as any major mechanical failure on crucial components. My understanding was the chain (that is internal) runs in a captive groove or channel, so if the chain did break you would still have usable steering to pull up to a stop. I would dare say that this system is 'safer' than typical one piece column and steering box set ups that we are used to in these old cars. Cheers Turns
I have 8" wheels on the rear of my F100, with a backspace of 3 3/4" They were custom made as most are 4" back space, they place the wheel and tire perfect They dont rub the fender inner lip or the bedside, those are the wheels in my avater The tires are 275/70/15 close to 30' tall I now have a much larger set of Cooper Cobras on it that do not rub, I will take a pic and post the size
The OP posted about wheels and tires, I was offering info on how I put larger tires on my truck without changing wheels Ricky
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