The least original part of the car in terms of the basic idea. The rear pod pivots off the main chassis on a flexible glass-fibre cantilever (T-bar). This provides a small amount of spring tension in the straight up-and-down direction, and all of the tension in the right and left roll directions. The roll-direction tension is adjustable by moving the T-bar mounting points on the rear pod. 90% of the in-line springing is provided by an aluminium damper and coil-over shock spring. This is straight off the Schumacher SST cars. The pod is braced to the main chassis with two ball-cup links to prevent power-on twisting and T-bar damage upon impact.
The pod itself is made from two decks of 2.9mm carbon plate from Fibre-Lyte. This is really great quality material but it is not cheap. Also if you ever want to cut or drill carbon fibre, be very carefull as the dust is extremely nasty stuff. I had a near-tool vacuum running whenever I was cutting, drilling or milling any of this material. The pod sides are 1/4" aluminium plate, milled out for lightness. The right plate acts as a motor mount and accomodates for all sizes of gear ratio from 13-95 to 39-60, at least. |
