[alfa] torsion bar blues, help please? (long)

[RonHorowitz <RonHorowitz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>
Subject: Re: >Subject: [alfa] torsion bar blues, help please? (long)

>if i might make a suggestion:
>
>is the focus on right high with a driver, or a driver and front seat
>passenger?

Perhaps as a sub-heading under step 3: ballast the car, I should have
mentioned that you have to decide _how_ you want to ballast the car.

For a track car, you pretty much always want driver weight only (excepting
perhaps rallies where you carry a nagravator or whatever) For a street car,
one reasonably compromise is to ballast the driver's weight (or have the
driver sit in the car) and ballast _half_ of the passenger's weight. That
way, the car isn't too far from being spot on with or without a passenger.

If ground clearance is a concern, you may want to ballast the car for the
worst case, i.e., maximum passenger load plus maximum cargo load. Since the
car is being lowered, I assume it's being used as a sports car rather than
for the family travel trailer. If you'll be pulling a trailer, you may want
to ballast for maximum tongue weight, or you _could_ fit helium balloons
and an airplane wing, but I digress.

I also have to say that the dearth of spring options for the 116 is
problematic. While mounting the bars on centers to machine material off
_might_ be possible, you certainly don't want to have to try putting any
more material on. Similarly, once you've increased the diameter of the bar
to the root of the splines, you've gotten as big as the "text book answer"
tells you to go. Bars being sold with bar diameters as great as the spline
major diameter don't seem to be failing, but changing to a higher modulous
material would arguably be a "better", though more expensive, approach.

Add tha all to the fact that setting the ride height on the Alfa torsion
bar cars is a pain in the ass. It's just not the sort of thing you want to
have to do between run groups at the local autocross. To be frank, once
you've worked on a car with coil overs, setting the ride height any other
way just doesn't make sense. One of my "projects for a rainy day" is
setting up one of my Alfettas with coil overs, but don't hold yer
breath....

RON
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