Re: Mike's 53 Clipper

Posted by Tobs On 2020/2/1 18:12:59

Thanks for the link. I was thinking about adding a rear bar, but increasing the front bar would also be interesting. Ross and a few others have installed an Addco 916 (I think) on the rear.
The Addco bar seems to be the same thickness as the front bar. Ideally I think I would like to have the rear a little smaller than the front.
I did some measurements of the suspension, looking into the roll centers of the front and rear axles, and those packard engineers knew pretty well what they were doing.
The rear roll center is 11 inches above the ground, and the front roll center is about 1 to 1.5 inches above the ground. (I made some pretty rough measurements.)

I am still studying suspension theory, but those numbers are pretty good for handling given a solid rear axle with leaf springs and a fairly high center of gravity. You usually want to have the rear roll center higher than the front....