Z - Link

[Norm Peterson]

Here’s an idea I’ve been toying with in my mind. What if you used the concept of the birdcage, but keep the leaf springs? The leaf springs would control the position of axle fwd/aft and sideways but the axle would be free to rotate. Then add a torque arm similar to a third gen camaro tied into a crossmember attached to the front subframe.
With this idea the springs would take all of the suspension forces and the torque arm would take the acceleration and braking forces. You wouldn’t have the problem of wheel hop caused by the axle trying to twist up the leave springs. You would not need a panhard bar or watts link to control sideways movement. You also wouldn’t have to move or modify the attach points of the suspension to the unibody structure.

I think that something quite similar has been done at least once. Buried somewhere I've got an article from Hot Rod magazine about John Callies' 303 powered import (something really little, 80" wb IIRC). It did involve some sort of moment decoupling of the leaves from the axle, and it worked well enough for him to trounce the "sports cars" of the day at a hillclimb. I don't remember all of the details, but might be able to drag up the article or at least a xerox copy of it.



Norm