----- Original Message -----
From: "michael cook" <mlcooknj@msn.com>
To: "Rocky Entriken" <rocky@tri.net>; "Henry Frye" <henry@henryfrye.com>;
<EPaul21988@aol.com>
Cc: <fot@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: How to build a spit racer??
> Yes, the Mark 3 has the same swing axle set-up. The "swing-spring" didn't
come
> in until the Mark IV.
>
> Cable set-up sounds neat. Got pictures?
sorry, no, but Jerry Barr asked the same question earlier and I sent him the
following reply:
v v v v v
I'm sorry, but I have no photos ( nor a scanner).
But it's pretty simple.
Find a couple of pulleys. My brother did the one on my race car. I later did
another on my street Spitfire.
For the Street spit, I found two small pulleys with guards. I knocked out
the hub and ran my 1/4" bolt through it. The shoulder of the shouldered bolt
became the new hub. You might find pulleys where you don't need to knock out
the hubs.
The bolts holding the top shock mount are pretty big. You drill into the
head and tap it for the 1/4-inch bolts (grade 8, fairly long). I had a
machine shop do that to be sure it was done right. I put the smaller bolt in
with a jam nut to lock it into the larger bolt, leaving just enough of the
smaller bolt sticking out to carry the pulley without binding it.
The pulley actually does not turn much, just enough to allow the cable to
move back and forth.
Get a length of cable -- hard to say how long but maybe double the width of
the car for openers. And four cable clamps. Not sure of the cable size in
cable-size terminology, but the one on mine is just a shade under 0.2 of an
inch thick.
The cable goes through the two pulleys and down to the lower shock mounts.
Put them inboard of the shocks (install with the lower end of the shock off
its mount), then wrap it back up and secure with two cable clamps spaced a
couple inches apart. On mine the free end(s) reach almost back up to the
pulley.
To set the cable, put the car on jackstands or blocks under the wheel hubs
(in a safe manner so it does not slip off). Then put some weight in the
trunk (someone sitting in the trunk works). You want to compress the
suspension. For a competition car, push it down as far as you possibly can.
For a street car, leave a little more slack because it really makes for a
harder ride (obviously, it's adjustable, depending on how much slack you
give it). Clamp up one cable, then on the other side pull the cable as tight
as you can and clamp the other end.
Final trick -- make a little loop from scrap metal or something that mounts
off the backside of the top of the differential. Run the cable through it.
It just keeps the cable from jumping up on top of the diff under slack. No
matter how tight you pulled that sucker, when you are driving, it goes
slack. Cornering it goes tight. Essentially the body of the car rotates back
and forth over a fulcrum that is the differential while the axles remain
basically straight and do not tuck under.
I've found, since, that I can remove the cable by jacking the car under the
suspension, weighting the trunk, removing the lower end of the shock, and
sliding the loop of the cable off the shock mount.
--Rocky
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