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Study Material for Suspension Design

stick70

stick70

Big dreams, medium skills
Joined
Sep 1, 2006
Location
North Carolina
I want to fabricate a new front crossmember including suspension for my 122 to fit the (unique) needs that I have for it. Can anyone recommend some study material that I can get into to familiarize myself on suspension design and geometry?

My goals here are to make the car handle well within the travel limitations that I have, as well as make the subframe more compact for the engine and suspension package I'm running.

Currently I'm travel limited, and this means I can't get the car as high as I really want to for an ideal ride height in the front. I've modified the front pickup points some to enable me to do what I can so far, but it's still not ideal. That and the subframe really does not jive well with the 960 oil pan in the car, and that makes engine removal an absolute bear. A couple of other positives of this will be rack and pinion steering, and hopefully more neutral handling. The car handles fine for what it is, but not as well as it can when set up correctly. Also if I can get a new front end under it I can make the car lay rocker when aired out.

The rear is a triangulated 4 link and is reasonable as-is, but I may be able to tune the bar angles when I deep dive into the theory of all this at the same time.

To be clear, I'm not looking to modify a kit or use a majority of suspension components from another car. I'm looking to design and fabricate a front setup specific to my needs. I'll select some components (rack, spindle, etc) based on what fits best, but the pickup points etc will be set by me.

Any help is appreciated.
 
You'll also want some sort of suspension dynamics program to help plot all the important bits (especially bump-steer and toe change in roll), or you can do it in CAD if you have something at your disposal. Though in my experience, CAD can be a bit cumbersome to use.
 
I have Catia at my disposal but yeah I understand some sort of simulation program would be useful, just not sure if it's as achievable as study currently.
 
There used to be a few suspension programs that were in the $400-600 range, and they were all excel based with a decent user interface. They run through a set amount of bump and roll and give you curves based on that.

Pretty good value for money IMO.

Catia is way more than capable at doing it as well, it's just going to take a lot of time to get a model to behave how you want and get the results that are needed.
 
Ive done it in CAD, it can be painful to extract the info versus something that's a bit more simple and gives you curves.
 
I would also look into the information that Ron Sutton puts out into the pro-touring world since there are a bunch of suspension similarities between an Amazon and older GM vehicles.
 
Although not the stock Amazon suspension, have you watched Canucks trials and tribulations with front suspension work on his car? He had some serious engineer help with the latest round. Might be worth talking to him.


Jordan
 
I'll see if I can find an old copy of wingeo, and I'll call Drew. I forgot we talked about this (long weekend), but Drew can also give recommendations on material and where to buy it.
 
I haven't heard anyone say wingeo in over a decade. I probably have it on an older computer if I can get it to turn on.
 
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