New long travel sand car

[choppekx]

Here are some pics of a sand car afriend of mine is building. The guy has worked building cars for numerous years and has gone out on his own. This is only a sand car and the guy he is building it for is not into the boxed arms, and the "off-road look." Look for it at glamis and Gordon's next season.

[choppekx]

another pic

[choppekx]

last pic for now.

[tedmales]

that has got to be one of the coolest cars i have seen. who builds it? i have heard that there was a guy in yuma who built off road cars at paradigm who now builds off road and sand cars. is this the same guy. look good

[ACID_RAIN28]

HMMM where have I seen that car design before???

[tedmales]

where? it seems to me that most sand cars all about look the same. maybe a tube here or there, but how much different can they be?

[desertracer]

Is that and Ls1 or northstar back there?

[ntsqd]

Looks like an LS1 to me.

I notice most sand cars use a parallelogram front control arm lay-out. This one does look that way. I guess a camber curve isn't needed in the sand. Sure seems to me like you could make that outside tire bite better in a turn if the camber wasn't dictated by chassis roll. Then again, they've built a lot more sand cars than I have.

[tedmales]

Thom, you probably have forgotten more about suspension design than i will ever know, but don't most cars want to achieve camber gain through body roll. i thought thats what makes uneven a arms the best choice . if a suspension gets + camber as it compresses, does that help it track better. i do not think it matters much in a sand rail that has smooth tires anyway, but for most everything else it does.

[drtdevil93]

you want negative camber in the upper portion of travel. on the lower portion, some like a little +, and some like a little -, different theories.

you are right though, on a sand car camber is not hugely important. id say bumpsteer and caster curve are most important.

erik

[ntsqd]

That's exactly it, you want camber gain in compression. With a parallelogram layout like the above you get a camber loss (top of the tire tilted out) with compression. So with chassis roll the angle of the tire's contact with the ground gets worse, not better.

With smoothie, camber curve wouldn't matter. With the newer 'Razorback' fronts that most seem to be going to, having a decent camber curve would be a real bonus.

I think Erik's right about castor and bump. They'd be just as important as they are to a dez machine.

[Junior]

Thom, I checked out that car this morning. The upper and lower arms are in fact different lengths. Very nice work. The engine is a LS-1.