Reid enlighten me, it seems you have completely reengineered the maverick. Forward steer, rear diff location, cv alignment, shock angles, mounting locations. Did canam miss the mark or are there trade offs to the changes you made?
Since this thread is somewhat of a race journal for the remainder of the 2014 season, and It appears to be gaining interest, I should give an outline on what I've changed over the stock design when building the Monster Mav, and the thought process behind it. I already covered earlier in the thread, the birth of the car, and the path that took it to get where it is today.
Major engineering and design changes were done to the chassis/suspension to maximize the cars performance and durability. Changes in the front suspension include :
STEERING
The first, and most notable change here is the conversion from a factory rear steer design, to a simple front steer layout. There were 3 basic reasons for the change. For starters, the stock rack would not hold up, and needed to be replaced anyway. That's race fab 101, and not even worthy of making up a reason for! I'm building a car for a professional racer, not a weekend Glamis fan, or an entry level racer. My driver will hit shit at speeds that you and I couldn't (at least not for long periods of time and without crashing!). Not just short bursts of courage like newbies and intermediate drivers can do, but full on speed, as fast as the terrain and car will allow, all of the time. With the extra weight and larger tires, the stock rack is one impact away from a radio distress call to the pits. Now, the real reasons
The 1st was to minimize bump steer throughout a broader range of wheel travel, while maintaining desirable ackerman steering characteristics. On rear steer designs, it is difficult to minimize the bump steer without sacrificing the ackerman geometry that I was shooting for (the inside tire turning sharper than the outside tire to compensate for the tighter radius the inside tires of the car follows in a turn, otherwise known as positive ackerman steering). This is mostly due to how far inboard the steering knuckle needs to be located on a rear steer car to achieve proper ackerman geometry.
The 2nd reason was so we can run smaller diameter, lighter tie rods. With front steer, the tie rods are normally loaded in
tension, as opposed to being loaded in compression, as a rear steer layout invokes. If you grab a straw from each end and push it together, it will resist the forces acting upon it, and shortly after, it will crumple. Now, try pulling it apart..... Enough said!
The 3rd, and most unavoidable reason (because technically, one could race with the stock rack, using larger tie rods, and actually most do.), is that I had plans for the real estate that lies directly behind the front axles. I needed to change the load carrying duties of the upper and lower control arms, and the new coil over location would conflict with the tie rods.
The Components: I used a basic, manual rack and pinion gear manufactured by RBP that was as narrow as I could find. I believe it has an 11" rack, thread to thread, and after threading in the steering clevises, it gave me a 13 1/2" tie rod pivot centerline. A bit more than I had hoped for, but as narrow as I could find with out going to one of those trick Howe type units. Wicked was the choice for the electric power steering gear (this was the first time I learned that they even made electric P/S units. That's how long I've been away from the industry before coming into this project!), and I later added dual Fox steering stabilizers after breaking the steering gear in the first race out. The tie rods are 1" x .095" 4130, with 5/8" x 5/8" FK JMX series rod ends (l.h. and r.h. threads for in place adjustments) at all pivots. Got to get a couple more hours in before bed time. I'll go into the control arms tomorrow.
Thanks for your inquiry. People who know me know that our car is an open book. My hope is that even experienced fabricators can pick up something from this journal, but more so to give the beginners some insight to the whole process of designing, building, and maintaining a purpose-built race car.
