Snail-boy, Nuremberg was where they had the war crimes trials after WWII; the Nurburgring is a race track! On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 3:03 AM, Andrew Grebneff <goose1047@gmail.com>wrote: > > The rear swing axle designs of the beetle, bay > > and splittie all offered problems for the inexperienced or ignorant > driver > > Bays were not swingaxle, used the basic Split suspendion and had an > added semitrailing arm. A Split with an added front swaybar, or a > later Split, handled very competently, with none of the rear-jacking > and gross (but not unsafe) oversteerr of the swaybarless 50s examples. > Those 50s vand would hovever handle very well with a decent load in > the back > if the tprsionbars were adjusted to bring the rear-wheel camber > unloaded to zero. > > > The high > > center of gravity in the bay and design exaggerated the roll under rear > tire > > The Bay was a more than competent handler, even on basic radials, and > I had real fun on twisty backroads, hitting 130kmh-plus on the short > straights and slowing only minimally for corners. It was a sporty > vehicle and the center of balance was not high. At 140kmh there was > slight looseness in the steering, but nothing serious. > > > The splitty couldn't go fast enough in stock form to be rollover > > prone, so safety was achieved through moderate performance. > > With a 1600 added to the split-case trans, my 57 Split panelvan could > hit an easy 130kmh and was stable. Adjusting the rear camber helped > reduce the spectacular antics on hard cornering, and as I say, a load > kept the body cornering flat and she could, like a Bay, whix through > the twisties. > > > As noted by Martin (Poppie?) Jagersand, the T3 or vanagon is actually a > very > > safe design for a forward control vehicle as demonstrated in the > technical > > paper on the safety design of the Vanagon in the files I have alluded to > > previously on Alistair's site. > > The T3 is supposed to handle extremely well. > My only experience with this was in the 4 months I had my Caravelle GL > before its 5-speed failed. What I found was pig-understeer, certiainly > not what I'd read about! Tossing the iron V6 and fitting the Porsche > six hopefully will cure this unpleasant trait, and the Whiteline > swaybars front & rear with Konis snd low-profile 18" tires should make > it a winner... wish I could take it out arounf the Nuremburgring... > -- > Andrew Grebneff > Dunedin, New Zealand > Fossil preparator > Mollusc, Toyota & VW van nut > > <goose1047@gmail.com> >
-- Jake 1984 Vanagon GL 1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie" Crescent Beach, BC www.crescentbeachguitar.com http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27 |
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