have you heard of this subframe

[70ptta]

i found this on a local site. do you think it is any good

custom made tube chassis designed to use modern aluminum Corvette C4 and C5 suspension, road racing geometry, tig welded, stress relieved, heat treated, made to order for any muscle car, or any car or truck, in 1020 round steel, not 1010 square tubing and mig welded like everyone else....the ultimate frame, your options include: custom coil over AFCO and QA1 shocks, 3 piece sway bars, rack and pinion steering, BAER or Wilwood or any custom brake system..... we use Mercedes Benz road racing engineering software to handle like a Ferrari or any exotic, not a hyped musclecar, save minimum 200+ pounds of weight of your front end, more if we do a full lenght frame....call for more info and specs....707-324-9120 or go to Round88.com

[68BNUT]

you got a link beside the one at the bottom? I couldnt find anything about a front subframe?

[MrQuick]

I have, I havent seen the frame in person but word has it he bought a frame from Due, built a jig and is using tube steel instead of square. He sells on ebay and I asked some questions I never got answers. He's in the Santa Rosa/Petaluma Ca area.

[70ptta]

the only link i found was that one at the bottom. let us know if he gets back to you.

[ryans67deuce]

Here's a 1st gen F-body frame he has for sale on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...&category=6763

There a certainly characteristics similar to Wayne's products. The motor mounts and brackets for the control arms are identical....

Ryan

[68BNUT]

Does anybody sell a subframe thats bare and you can use the suspension parts from your camaro on them?? Ive already got a pretty penny wrapped up in aftermarket suspensions stuff already??

[dennis68]

custom made tube chassis designed to use modern aluminum Corvette C4 and C5 suspension, road racing geometry,

we use Mercedes Benz road racing engineering software to handle like a Ferrari or any exotic, not a hyped musclecar

Really, road racing geometry huh? I would like to a see a print out of the "road racing geometry" they use.

"Handle like a Ferrari or any exotic, not a hyped musclecar"....I've seen some musclecars flat out spank the "exotics".

[daryn67]

These are the specs they gave me when i emailed them. Reply was very fast and they at least talk like they know their stuff.


Daryn





with the first generation C4 we get
Bump:
@1" .094 degrees
@2" .033 degrees
@3" .204 degrees

Camber gain
@1" -.672 degrees
@2" -1.571 degrees
@3" -2.729 degrees

with the second generation C4 we get

Bump:
@1" .018 degrees
@2" .074 degrees
@3" .178 degrees

Camber gain
@1" -1.096 degrees
@2" -2.288 degrees
@3" -3.596 degrees

[dennis68]

There are a WHOLE bunch of other MUCH more important numbers than camber gain in bump.

[zbugger]

Hey Dennis, care to email them yourself? I think it would be a good test if you asked them some questions.....

[dennis68]

email sent.

[dennis68]

I got a reply this morning. It is kind of what I expected, his numbers don't make any sense....maybe "fabricated" numbers. Here is the email I got.

I don't have too much time right now, too many things being done at once, it will take me a couple of days to get you more specs on one of our usual builds....I have a couple of the pages of the data for the '69 Firebird we're finishing right now...... has bump steer: @1" .095 degrees @2" .035 and at 3" .201 degrees..... scrub radius @1" -.069" @2" -.18" and at 3" -.33"

A couple things jump out right away; I had asked for things like FRCH, and RC migration numbers. Those are pretty important on a scratch built chassis, you would think he would know them off them top of his head. The bump steer results look strange; it toes in, then out, then in again...and that last inch of bump has a pretty good jump. I am also very curious how he came up with SR numbers like that; I never specified what wheel offset was to be used nor did he, acording to his numbers this subframe has better SR than a C6.

I would be very nervous about paying 3K for this subframe.

[Salt Racer]

Bumpsteer is expressed in toe angle. To convert it into inches...

Sine (angle) * tire diameter = toe change in inches per side.


And clearly he is mixing up scrub radius and side scrub.

I will let you be the judge.

I'll have to make a comment on one thing. Why does this guy even bother heat treating low-carbon steel?

[round88]

I build chassis' for people that want to go fast, or want great handling. There are many great chassis builders to choose from, the difference is in the philosophy. I tried the different chassis choices out there, and I found them lacking to my philosophy or taste.
I grew up in a place with no speed limits. We street road raced, no holds barred, no stopping for nothing, even hit 170 mph within city limits. Street road racing is like Rally Racing, abrupt changes, unforseen obstacles, always on a controlled slide....you need a car that is forgiving and flickable like a Go Kart, to be able to go very fast, and not bite it.....that's why an old Euro BMW I had, beats every other Exotic and super car on this mountain road that I use to test cars, by over 3 minutes.
The Corvettes, Vipers, Camaros, Mustangs....with twice or triple the power, twice the tire and brake size, get beaten...huge tires, brakes and power has nothing to do with going real fast, it's that flickable easy to correct and slide kind of handling, like an M3, that makes it faster, maybe not on a track, but so on an uneven winding mountain road...
That's the philosophy I build into my chassis. I only supply chassis to people I think will use them and enjoy them the right way. My software allows me to be very precise. If you don't agree with my philosophy, if you rather have the 'Vette or Viper on-rails type of handling, that gets nervous and psycho at the edge of traction, so it's all or nothing...my chassis' are not for you. If you want to go down a mountain road faster that you ever thought possible, with the car in a subdued ballet of motion, flicking smoothly between corners, then my chassis' are for you....the bump steer, scrub radius, roll centers, camber gains, etc, etc... are all a compromise, and my software optimizes every aspect of it, within the inherent design of the suspension parts chosen, like the C4 parts i like to use....if you think a minus hundreth of this or that, is what determines a better handling car and grip, by all means buy their chassis, I build huge Go Karts that put a smile on your face, not your nuts as your bow tie....sincerely....Round88.com

[round88]

we don't treat low carbon steel....we normalize or "hammer" the welds...heat treating is a word used for laymen that don't understand how you overcome the inherent weakness created by welding, and why they break there....welds become the consistency of cast iron inside, and you have to correct the grain structure to strengthen it......for those of you interested in how far we go with our stuff....

[TitoJones]

heat treating is a word used for laymen that don't understand how you overcome the inherent weakness created by welding, and why they break there....

I'll stop you right there, and let you know that there are a 'few' engineers on this board, including suspension designing ones. I *think* you just took a crack at one of the smartest guys on the board with this comment.

Not a real bright start to becoming a member here.

I only supply chassis to people I think will use them and enjoy them the right way.

I've always found Ebay to be a real great tool for finding 'honest' and 'good hearted' people too. It's all in the screen name- A guy with DrivesFasterThanYou as his Ebay name will surely 'use and enjoy' this subframe more than say a guy with a sign in name like KnowsHowSuspensionWorks ever could.
:bsjerk:

Tyler

[Salt Racer]

we don't treat low carbon steel....we normalize or "hammer" the welds...heat treating is a word used for laymen that don't understand how you overcome the inherent weakness created by welding....

Annealing or Normalizing is valid. Even this "layman" can understand that. This is what I was refering to.

Taken directly from your E-bay page...

...1020 DOM steel, tig welded, stress relieved and heat treated....

Every suspension engineer has different way (or "philosophy" if you prefer) of designing things, but I've never seen anyone who intentionally builds in non-linear bumpsteer curve especially when he claims his chassis is "predictable". Even this layman knows how to fix it in sleep.

But whatever. Talk is cheap. Have your R&D mule tested by the third party. If it consistently pulls better lap times than exotic cars w/o cheating (no slicks, no gutted interior, identical power/weight ratio, etc), then I'll believe what you say.

BTW, street racing is for idiots who don't have guts to run on real race tracks.

I am done in this thread, but I fully expect him to back up his claims with actual tech for others' sake.

A cyber layman

[Mean 69]

Clearly, this guy has developed his own intellectual property in terms of the precise software package. I mean, the ones out there use the classical equations to determine things like roll center, swing arm lengths, etc, based upon the literature (Milliken, Adam's, Van Valkenberg, Olley, Staniforth and so many others, I have all of these and have never found a disagreement). So I think clearly that we are dealing with one of the true and rare genuises of the earth, much like Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc. These guys were so smart, that the mathematics to describe solutions to their problems didn't exist, so they invented their own (well, at least in the form of Newton who developed the Calculus, Einstein had a lot of help in developing the math for Quantum Mechanics). Anyway, I think you get my point. Super duper stuff inside there, clearly.

Flicking a full sized car around like a go kart is a bit of a wish, my friend. There is a very important distinction between the two, one, the kart has tires that ARE the suspension, two the car has SUSPENSION that is the suspension (okay that sounded a bit funny). Of course, you could likely just remove all of the suspension gear in a car, but darn, the last time I looked there was this silly limiting factor to ultimate traction, beyond the suspension, called TIRES. A kart tire can create a couple g's of grip, easily. A car tire cannot. A typical GT1 car can probably sustain in the 1.7-ish range, depending upon the tire compound. Are you running Hoosier slicks on the car? I doubt it. Hey, we could just put Michael Schumacher's tires on the car! Yeah, that's it, but darn, there's that suspension thing all over again. F1 cars barely have any, because they rely on the tires, and buttloads of aero downforce. Gosh, they're kind of expensive too, you basically can't get a set unless you own an F1 team, and then they don't even let you keep them after they've worn! Shoot, now what?

Clearly though, none of this applies to your obvious genious. It would appear that you have discovered a way to cheat physical laws, all within your computer program. That is really just too cool. But darn, having obtained my degree in Physics, well, call me just a litte skeptical. See, one of the things I learned is that FACTS tell the story, and FACTS can almost always, in a physical problem, be described as EQUATIONS and DATA. If you'd like to share some of this information with us, if your design can be described in such terms, well, that'd be great, we'd love to hear what you have to say. Otherwise, I think you should stick to E-bay, and sell parts to people you have cornered through etherial claims that can't be backed up.

Lastly, and please forgive me if English is a second language, but can you please make an attempt to write properly, punctuation, etc? Besides being hard to read, well, writing as you did previously doesn't instill a lot of confidence in your products, frankly.

Kind Regards,
Mark

[MuscleRodz]

My only comment is if this was Corner Carvers, he would already be banned.

Mike

[Piet]

I build chassis' for people that want to go fast, or want great handling. There are many great chassis builders to choose from, the difference is in the philosophy. I tried the different chassis choices out there, and I found them lacking to my philosophy or taste.

Huh???? Are you the guy selling the frames on eBay?

I grew up in a place with no speed limits. We street road raced, no holds barred, no stopping for nothing, even hit 170 mph within city limits. Street road racing is like Rally Racing, abrupt changes, unforseen obstacles

Street Racing is for idiots! Those unforseen obstacles might be my kids going to the playground!

That's the philosophy I build into my chassis..... My software allows me to be very precise.....the bump steer, scrub radius, roll centers, camber gains, etc, etc... are all a compromise, and my software optimizes every aspect of it

Those are some big claims!

if you think a minus hundreth of this or that, is what determines a better handling car and grip, by all means buy their chassis,

I thought you said "My software allows me to be very precise"

Now, I don't wan't to get off on the wrong foot when this is your first post... but you seemed to have swaggered in and made some big claims, no numbers, no proof. Care to tells us a bit about yourself? What's your background?