About the Goodwood Hawk...

[Noxnabaker]

The Hawk that raced on Goodwood seems to me to have swaped the left & right spindles to gain caster, or what does this otherwise mean..?:
(if so I find it mighty interesting!)

"I built the Hawk! Regulations allow a family engine so as Chevys were put in the lark it’s ok. Only have a road spec crate engine of 360bhp. Std suspension with 1100lbs front springs and racing Leda dampers all round. Swapped front uprights left to right to get 4 1/2 deg of caster. Shortened steering arms to make steering quicker.
Twin traction diff and updated halfshafts. Non vented discs and iron sliding callipers. BW T10 gearbox. Wrapped fibreglass bumpers, main grill and corner grills.1380 kg. 2 years ago the head gasket failed but was finished the night before. It was the most Std car at Goodwood but they disqualified it and 8 other cars because it had roller rockers which came with the car and made no difference! I was told not to win the second race so I pretended it had clutch and brake problems."

Any thoughts about this..?

[Chris Pile]

Seems every racing series I know off has some kind of hanky panky going on in the background.

[creegster]

Those are fiberglass bumpers?

[skyway]

"...seems to me to have swaped the left & right spindles to gain caster..."

Years ago a friend did this on his old auto-cross car; a beat- to- pieces looking (but mechanically sound) '64 Commander 2dr sedan.

Basically you assemble the uppers as (except for having swapped the king pins) usual, and then pry like all heck to get the lower end of the pin into the lower trunnion.
That, plus moving the reach-rod attachment closer to the bellcrank, resulted in scary fast/twitchy steering.
Good on the course but really a handfull on wet streets.

Back then the main competitors in F-Stock (American non Vette) rear wheel drive V-8's) were late model Trans-Am's & Z-28's.
You've never seen anything as mad as a TA/Z-28 driver that just got beaten by a then 20 year old junker looking Studebaker!!

[Noxnabaker]

Aha, but what's a "trunnion"? (Usually this kinda stuff allways goes under "Tech Talk"...)
& I wonder what Allan or Mike thinks about it...

[skyway]

Probably used the wrong word, but I was attempting to describe the piece that the lower, threaded, end of the king pin fits into.

[junior]

"...seems to me to have swaped the left & right spindles to gain caster..."

...Basically you assemble the uppers as (except for having swapped the king pins) usual, and then pry like all heck to get the lower end of the pin into the lower trunnion.
That, plus moving the reach-rod attachment closer to the bellcrank, resulted in scary fast/twitchy steering.
Good on the course but really a handfull on wet streets...

I was always under the impression that increasing castor leads to increased steering effort (because when the wheels steer they are basically lifting the front wieght of the car) giving the advantage of way better straight line stability. For example, don't top fuel dragsters have a crazy amout of castor? I never knew that steering became faster because of it...there I go learning something new again! Interesting for sure. cheers, junior

[t walgamuth]

In my experience it does not make steering quicker if you have more castor, it does lean the wheel over to an advantage in cornering though.

[skyway]

I overlooked the "more" caster part of the initial post.
My auto-crossing friend swapped the pins looking to get a more upright (that is LESS caster) kingpin, resulting in precise but really twitchy steering.
...and yes, I believe both rail dragsters and extremely laid back chopper motorcycle forks have a lot of caster; good for straight line, but not much help on tight turns.

[Noxnabaker]

As some of you knows my other car is a Citroen AMI6, (I'm to lazy to go out & take a photo now so I just picked one from google) & the caster (in my world castor has to do with oil) is quite extreme on those, as on all 2cv models, but that's no problem because it's such a light car, on a heavier car I reckon parking would be quite a job thou...

[sgriggs]

If the kingpins are swapped left to right to gain more caster, wouldn't that cause the suspension to bind as it articulates? It might not be much of an issue on a racing car with greatly stiffened wheel rates because stiffer springs generally means reduced suspension travel, but on a street car with lower rate springs I would expect it to be a problem.

[Noxnabaker]

Ah, now we're getting somewhere..!

[Skip Lackie]

, & the caster (in my world castor has to do with oil)

Leave it to a Swede to correct us on English spelling.

[Noxnabaker]

Aha Skip, it's only my bad experiance from the shipping business & often to do with sludge oil, quite international & my UK & Australian friends also write it like that, all of us here on the forgotten east side of the Atlantic being wrong..?
All I meant that to me (& a few others I now guess) it's caster, but I've been wrong before & I'm used to it too.