Quote:
Originally Posted by Jamo
I'll be damn...hey Bruce, did you know that?
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Well this is the internet so it must be true......
Wally has some facts confused but he got most of the information from internet comments so that can be overlooked. The car was red at one time but never had a different windshield or roll bar. The rear fenders were widened by Shelby before I picked up the car because SC fenders were not wide enough for the tires I wanted to run in the 1960's. Suspension mods, I reinforced the lower A arms when the car was less than a year old because they were bending and we reformed a solid 3/4 " Cadillac sway bar for the front and fabricated a rear bar out of 4140 steel. The only other changes until the late 90's were custom wound springs from Hypercoil, reversed steering arms and modified camber blocks. In those days I was all about engines and more HP. Ford racing, compression is now 15 to 1 but you are correct you heard the 14 to 1 engine. All the big changes were done after I retired. I knew both Klaus Arning and Bob Negstad and we actually worked in the same building early in my career at Ford but we did not agree on suspension design at all.
I did (now that the statute of limitations as expired) make literally thousands of runs on the Ford main frame suspension design computer during Christmas holidays. The Ford computer did not approve of the Cobras suspension design at all. Camber gain, Ackerman, bump steer all were well outside of accepted design practice for even passenger cars not to mention a sports car.
I actually added a vertical member to the round tube that was forced inside the main frame tubes to give it additional bending strength which gave it the chassis much greater torsional strength. Yes, it was rosette welded in place
after welding the vertical member in the new tube.
I designed the new suspension when I retired with a great deal of adjustability so it could really be tuned. Although it was good and the car did well it was not until this year that it is showing how good it can be. I have a very talented young man (Scott Fraser) co-driving with me now and he is so good that minor suspension changes show up in time improvements. We have worked together and really improved the car. My driving is not good enough anymore to evaluate idea's but Scott is really good at evaluation so the car is at a new level now. We are on 200 TW street tires and the car is faster than it was 3 years ago on Hoosier A6's. We have tried literally hundreds of different suspension changes so it has not come easily but we are getting better every week. Last week we took 1 sweep of rebound out of the rear shocks and it compromised high speed braking which shows how close the car is now. We will try new tires this coming week which should be better because the current tires have hundreds of heat cycles on them.
Here is a video of Scott giving a friend a ride last Saturday, he is shifting from 2nd to third at about 105-106 MPH.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlQIIzFT5BQ[/ame]