Rear Suspension Guru's

Hi!

Tonight I was perusing the most evil auction site known to mankind, I think most of you call it Ebay, and I came upon an auction for "a race car ch***is" that is reported to be a "NASCAR ch***is", albeit not a "recent ch***is".

However, it's the pics of the rearend that interested me so. I see the panhard bar, with a rather goofy arm-to-axle attachment as well as what looks to be a torque arm setup centered over where the drive shaft would be. However, with the upper-most arm isn't there a lot a side-to-side slop with the wide attachment over the rear pumpkin? But, that's only a 2 link setup, correct? What locates the axle horizontally? What keeps the rearend from moving front-to-back?

I also don't see any coils to suspend the rearend. I can ***ume that they are long gone, but I also don't see any provisions to mount coil springs, etc. to the rear.

Of course, while I am nothing near a professional welder, it appears that the rear frame sections looked to be cobbled together from spare whatever... but that may be because of the subpar quality of the pic and my complete and total ignorance.

 

That is a *******ized 3 link.

 

Looks like an old SLM (Super Latemodel) ch***is. There are trailing arms on the bottom of the rear end that connect to mounts on top or on the outside of the ch***is. Thery're the two silver tubes barely visible near the tires. They can be adjusted to induce some rear steer, (moving the RR slightly forward.) The bar on top of the rear end can be adjusted for and aft to change pinion angle and increase or decrease forward bite.

The panhard bar (track bar as NASCAR gurus call it) is the horizontal bar in back and can be moved vertically on the frame side to induce or remove some body roll in the rear of the car, it also keeps the rearend from moving laterally in conjunction with the trailing arms. Since there's no spring pockets with jack bolts in the ch***is for coil springs, it most likely had coilovers. There are some that mount to the rearend with bolt on mounts. The coilovers and mounts probably wound up on something else.

 

Most "nascar" ch***is I have seen use 67-72 chevy pickup trailing arms with panhard bars for rear axle control because they give a desired amount of controllable oversteer. I have seen roadrace cars with 3 links and wattslinks.

 

I can't remember who, but there is a little hot rod co. out there that makes a GM trailing arm rigs (ala NASCAR) for hot rod frames. If you are really interested, hit the web - unless they folded. Gary