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What is the 2B
[Or, dietary tips for Sierras]

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New for 2003
[Suspension Mods]

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New for 2003

At the time of writing there is nothing to say because the email containing 2hrs worth of hilarious and informative new information has been intercepted by the CIA, passed to MI5 and is currently being used to compile a new Government dossier on Iraq's suspension modifications of mass deconstruction.

More to follow soon, once we get the file back....

Newer for 2003... 13/4/03

Well, here we are again with the same old excuses and a few new ones! I haven't done a lot so far on the 2B due to lack of time and money, and a frighteningly large number of new jobs!

However, there has been some progress on 1403. The rear semi trailing arms on a 2B run further up than they were designed to so they put a lot of positive camber angle on the rear wheels. An enterprising club member solved this problem by making up some shims which sandwich between the brake back plate and the arm. They are very easy to fit and being about 3 mm thick at the top and 1 mm at the bottom they put the wheel approximately upright again. Hopefully this will improve the grip at the back a little, it certainly makes the car look a bit more sensible! This member is not making them any more, but they would be quite easy to make.

The big news this year was to be the revamped front end. It hasn't happened yet but I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and reading up on suspension design. The options were-

1) A kit of bits designed to convert the 2B to double wishbones- this has proved to be unavailable in any practical sense although one company did in theory offer it, in much the same way that governments offer to improve countries before they are elected and fail to do so after.

2) Using a kit that was being mooted by RHE- it never materialised in the way that 'X' production car fails to deliver the drive of your life or whatever the manufacturer spent £20 billion on adverts promising you it would.

3) Transplanting the complete set up off a Locost- better but Cortina uprights are getting thin on the ground in the way that analogies on this page are getting hard to think of. Also the brakes are less good than what is already there.

4) A bastardised Locost set up with Sierra uprights, Locost wishbones and various bits of old Fords providing ball joints and steering- this is what has been decided upon.

The first thing to do was draw out, full size, the Locost suspension mounts. If these are all kept the same then Ron Champions geometry will do as well. Now the Locost has its mounts on various chassis members at all angles, so I have re drawn them all mounted on flat plains keeping the original positions relative to each other.

The 2B is wider than the Locost so it will all fit inside the space available. I intend to put the lower wishbone mounts at the level of the lower 2B chassis tube so the lower wishbone stays parallel with the ground. The upper mounts were to go the Locost design distance above them, but then came the decision to use Sierra hubs. This is due to availability, cost and better brakes.

Once converted to take a Transit ball joint with an insert in the strut clamp, the Sierra hub will need a different top wishbone location to give the correct castor/camber angles. This position has yet to be ascertained. The mounts themselves will attach to square section chassis members running fore and aft at the required heights and widths. These will themselves come from 1 and 1/2" square sections welded across the chassis in front of the engine, before rejoining the chassis at the front. Excess 2B chassis can then be cut away when it is all fully braced. This should retain original ride height, original Locost suspension geometry but hopefully not original front suspension performance.

The Locost is designed to use a Ford Escort steering rack which is a happy co incidence as the 2B does as well. The mounting for this may need to move a little when the suspension is completed.

Coil over shocks will provide the bounce but I want to break with the Seven tradition of mounting them outboard. Leaning the shocks in at the required angle means the spring has to work harder than needed against the weight of the car and bumps fed into it. It is at its most efficient when the load is applied to it directly from above, so if we start at say 80' from vertical, and progressively approach 90' as the suspension compresses, we can achieve a rising rate, with soft initial travel getting stiffer. We can't do this with an outboard spring because there isn't room, so it has to go inboard, leaning slightly outwards.

There is obviously a need for a way of getting the load from the wishbones to the spring, and I will be using a push rod from the outer end of the lower wishbone to a linkage somewhere inboard of the mounting of the top one! This will get drawn when I have a set of hubs to measure and draw!

If you are interested in suspension design, have a read of 'Competition car suspension' by Allan Staniforth. It has a lot of technical info but described in an easy to understand manner. If you don't know your Ackerman angles from your roll centre, and face it, even most of us who think we do have got it wrong, then this book will enlighten you. Just don't look at the equations to determine roll bar strength until you really need to.

I will update this as work progresses.

Update on the latest Update....

I have finally, well, possibly (maybe...), decided that all this may not happen. What I really want to do is build a car from scratch (Thats a 'tch' not a 'p' at the end by the way). I can't keep the seven and have room for a new car, so some time this summer I will be selling it on. If you are interested, email me. The new car is proposed to be a mid engined RWD V6 with full width bodywork rather in the KAMALA style. There will hopefully be a new website on it some time in the future (Hopefully not including trips to Mansfield...).

This will probably be the last update of this site, thanks for taking the time to read it. Now go and build something before the government won't let you any more.

Go on

Go.

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