Front Panhard Bar Question

Two thoughts on this... First, if you have your springs properly mounted and the shackles sitting at a the proper 45degree angle at rest, you really shouldn't need a panhard bar. Even with cross steer. That's just geometery. Where most run into problems is when the front spring hasn't been tuned to the car and the shackle angle falls bellow that 45 degrees... The axle can then "walk" side to side.

A kind of cool way to do a dead perch, (they don't smell that bad!) is to take a stanard Ford or aftermarket perch, turn a replacement bushing out of steel to replace one of the shackle bushings, ***emble the spring and shackles and weight the front end to ride height. Mark the perch with the steel bushing for angle, pull it apart and weld the perch, bushing, and stud side of the shackle together. Re***emble the whole deal with this on the drivers side and you are done... Stealth dead perch.

 

Fink (and the other fella),

I don't know that a panhard bar is necessary I am sure that if it were a necessary piece they would have come that way or at the very least been an option that could be ordered.

On some vehicles they make a marked improvement. It all depends I suppose on how the whole suspension works together as one unit and not one specific component. A suspension is the sum of its parts, the sum total being greater than the total of the parts themselves.

What I have noticed is that once you start moving things around you notice the need for different parts to keep everything operating in conjunction with each other. For instance I have a tendency to move my engines to a different place. A lot of the time unless I am building a canyon carver it involves moving the engine back and up. This really screws with my center of gravity and puts extra strain on my suspensions lateral strength. In this instance a panhard bar is a must.

On an vehicle where you lower the center of gravity either by lowering the entire vehicle or by lowering specific components like your engine for instance the value of a panhard bar is greatly diminished and may not have any value at all.

Think about some of the more traditional ways that we have seen a suspsnsion modified for performance, some of those tend to lateral travel when pushing it in a corner. A panhard bar is a must in this situation. Or if not a panhard the tunning fork that is the actual topic of this thread.


It ll depends on the specific setup of the vehicle overall.

 

To the original question, I ran a similar set up to Busby's for a while. Mine was on on the back side of the axle and used a bearing for the centering pin. Even with .100" clearance, there was never any clunking. I got rid of it for a dead perch after bending the slotted bracket for the third time hitting something, usually a steep driveway.

As for the Panhard Rod question - didn't Ford add a panhard rod once they went to cross steering?

 

Yes, the stock Fords I've seen with cross steer, also had a Panhard.


The trouble with a buggy spring and a Panhard or another way to control the axles sideways movement,
Is that the shackles of the buggy spring are already keeping the axle in place.
( eventhough there is some "give")

So you have to be carefull that the two systems are not fighting eachother.

That can cause the suspension to go into bind, or in the worst case scenario, bend or break things.

 

This has been discussed before... but hasn't everything.

Some useful comments here;

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81167

 

Actually, Ford didn't go to a panhard rod on the front when they went back to cross steering. Cross steering came back in '35 ,(remember all "T"s were cross steer) and Panhard rods (called "track bars" by Ford) didn't come in until '42. Not so coincidentally, the same year they lenghtened the shackles front and rear to drop ride height just a bit, thereby losing the prefered 45 degree shackle geometry that helped keep the front suspension located. Don't mean to drive this disscusion into the ground, but wanted to get the facts straight.

 

Thanks for the correction.

I wasnt sure if they made both changes at the same time, thats why I worded it like I did.

Ford must have been worried about the conflicting arcs as well, if he lengthened the shackles when he put the Panhards on...