CAM-T Falcon Wagon?

Here are a couple pictures my friend Alec took of the car last night.

I forgot to post this earlier, but this is the Mustang Bill Wiswedel has been letting us take measurements off of. 

Those wheels look great! 

Jack Heideman said:

Wheels and tires came earlier than expected!

The car is using Bridgestone RE71Rs. I used to run these on an ES Miata and loved them!

We managed to get them mounted and fortunately they fit with a modified lower front fender bracket pulling the fender out a little more.

It was another Formula SAE test night and I was allowed another couple fun runs. Previously the car was running the course in the high 22 second range but thanks to the new wheels and tires the car is in the high 19 second range!

Fix that GRM banner you slacker!  

Love the wagon!  Are those front fender scallops stock?

wawazat said:

Is it just me or would the plaid in Rufledt's avatar pic above be a PERFECT interior fabric pattern in the wagon?

 

Car has a great vibe!  Love it.

It's a specific plaid, Scottish Anderson Tartan.  The real one is 7 colors.  I have 2 kilts in it, very good plaid.  Pretty sure you can get the fabric somewhere online.  

In reply to Joe Gearin :

I noticed that when I posted the picture and was wondering how long till someone mentioned it.

In reply to 4Msfam :

I believe they are.

Here's whats happened the past couple days,

Carl installed our Race Technologies data aqusition.

We did an alignment and corner weighed it. I'm a little over CAM-T minium weight...

Nick also painted the quarter panel yesterday and it looks great!

Jack

Question on the rear suspension- I see a panhard rod, and the leaf springs.  Is that it?  Or do you have some anti-axle wind thing in there, too?

The reason I ask is if it has a 3rd upper control arm on the passenger side of the diff?  Which will act as both an anti-axle wind device as well as an anti torque wedge device- keeping the right side of the axle planted during accelerations.  I've seen a number of article about this- from a web page that descibes it, and a corner carvers thread, and an article in Racecar Engineering.  On top of that, we talked with a Trans Am team in Puerto Rico, where one of their cars had that and the other was a 4 link, and they liked the 3 link better.

One other question- with the panhard bar- how do you deal with the extra bind when the axle moves laterally and the leaf springs try to prevent that?  Or is there enough play in the leaf springs to not worry about it?

Cool car.

4Msfam said:

Love the wagon!  Are those front fender scallops stock?

Yes.  Here's  a page from the 1967 Falcon brochure:

In reply to alfadriver :

The car just has a panhard bar and the leaf springs. I think I will be adding some other links further down the road.

I believe there is enough play in the leaf spring to keep the suspension from binding.

Today Nick put on the numbers!

Other than the numbers we just added a couple small interior pieces to the car and packed up for the drive to Grissom tomorrow!

In reply to alfadriver :

Regarding the bind on the panhard bar, we are a little concerned.  In addition to the hope the leaf springs have enough compliance, Jack also used a bonded rubber bushing on one end of the bar, which should give a healthy amount of compliance while still doing its job.  We'll be watching it closely this weekend as we're concerned its the weakest link (I've seen a lot of panhard bar issues on Spridgets, MGBs etc.--not much experience with these big cars, though).

I'm pretty sure Jack will be needing the anti-wind/torque wedge once he has more power.  Right now, not much of an issue...

I absolutely love this build, especially the suspension fabrication. Nice work it looks amazing.

Love the build and the car itself. Did you get center caps for the wheels? 

In reply to Vigo :

They did but I thought it looked better without them. 

In reply to Carl Heideman :

Don't be too sure that you don't need it- my Alfa has a nice issue of picking up the inside wheel on a right turn.  And I'm sure I have a lot less torque than Jack's car has.

Then again, you have a panhard rod that will help plant that tire, since it's pulling from under the axle CL. 

Anyway, just thought I'd bring up the 3 arm instead of the 4 arm.

In reply to alfadriver :

We appreciate the input! We are definately going to need to work on this later. The car will probably be getting a different axle at some point with some sort of limited slip. After the test and tune today even with our low power the car was spinning the inside wheel in tight turns. 

It was a good day at Grissom! We met some cool people, saw some cool cars, and the wagon is still working!

We started the test and tune with making some sway bar and panhard bar adjustments but unfortunately they didn't seem to show any noticeable results. Our first issue was when I left the key on in the car and of course the alternator inconsistently charges. So we had to boost it to start up. The second issue was after one sway bar adjustment we heard a noise from the rear end. We found that the brace to our panhard bar was helping. We also found out that it wasn't mounted to the body strong enough and was starting to tear out. 

So we built up a brace to help distribute the load.

After this we took a couple more test runs and found a panhard bar setting that helped tone down the awful under steer. It took about a second off of our times even with some fuel starving! 

We ended the day with a little wiring fix that hopefully will allow the car to charge for the rest of the weekend. 

How have I not seen this?? Love it!  In for updates!

Another fun day! We weren't fast but it was still a blast running the wagon! I ended up in 30th over all and my codriver was 34th of 40 cars. We met our goal of not last place!

So awesome!  I’m intrigued, I don’t have the foggiest idea of how the panhard helps tune the roll in the rear.  Did lowering the pickup on the chassis side help, or raising it?  Did you have to adjust the length of it as well?  Weird question, but does it react differently in left vs right turns?

4Msfam said:

So awesome!  I’m intrigued, I don’t have the foggiest idea of how the panhard helps tune the roll in the rear.  Did lowering the pickup on the chassis side help, or raising it?  Did you have to adjust the length of it as well?  Weird question, but does it react differently in left vs right turns?

It raises and lowers the roll center, lowering it makes the cornering have more torque to move the car, so it leans more.  But lowering it also acts as a counter torque on the axle, helping plant the inside tire- it's a nice balancing equation.

Jack Heideman said:

Another fun day! We weren't fast but it was still a blast running the wagon! I ended up in 30th over all and my codriver was 34th of 40 cars. We met our goal of not last place!

Awwww.... you missed the truck in this picture by half a car! 

This thing is awesome. Awesome to watch! 

What type of steel did you use to make the rear sway bar?