So I found this picture of an Indy Roadster on Hemmings. And I was looking at the steering setup when I noticed the rear torsion bar setup. Look closely at the frame end of the torsion bar mounting point, and you see what appears to be both the normal trailing arm, and an adjuster. It appears that the adjuster is for the left side. Which begs the question, is the left side torsion bar a tube, that the right side bar is inside of? I'd like to see the left side to see if there's a similar adjuster attached to a smaller bar sticking thru the center of the larger bar. Anybody got any thoughts and or pictures?
I'm not sure what you're asking, but I do know that those cars, as well as modern day sprint cars have their own dedicated torsion tube in the ch***is for all 4 corners. See the double tubes on the front of this ch***is? One is for the front left, the other the right torsion bars.
The bars typically are as long as the ch***is is wide, mounted parallel, right next to each other. So the adjuster for the left side bar is on the right side, and the adjuster for the right side bar is on the left side. But that one looks odd, might just be the angle of the photo.
Motor Trend has 135 pictures of the restoration here https://www.motortrend.com/features/image-build-of-1962-bryant-special-indy-roadster
I'm probably wrong, but that picture makes it look like it's a sway bar, with both links attached to the same center torsion bar.
In looking at the pictures at the link posted above, I stand corrected, looks like the early Watson roadsters had one large tube in the ch***is front and rear for the torsion bars, but I'm clueless to how that worked. Perhaps it works like a VW, in that the torsion rods are fixed in the middle, so each side can articulate?
Looks like each bar only goes half way across and is in it's own tube which can be rotated, so that adjuster is for the right side and the left would have the same arrangement.
In the restoration pictures at least the rear looks like there are two torsion bars in the tube. They appear to be somewhat stacked with the right bar being a bit lower and a little forward of the left bar. The front may be set up the same but it is hard to tell from the pictures. Some old Indy cars ran a cross bar setup. That's where the bars are setup in an X pattern. With this setup, the end of each bar is at the same position on each side of the ch***is. That gives you and equal "spring base" on each side. Ch***is guys tried all kinds of thing to get an advantage. Dan Hay mentioned the parallel bar setup. This has the torsion bars running parallel to the frame and links at the end attaching them to the axle about where a cross spring would connect. There are adjusters coming out of the side of the car in that case.
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