Need help designing the World's fastest street car

Anybody have any ideas how to turn two Corvette rack&pinions with just one steering wheel?





Here is a rough sketch of how I envisioned using two Volvo 164 front suspensions with bell cranks bolted onto the worm steering box and idler arms, but I thought that two rack & pinions would be better. I guess that I would need some kind of geared spliter with different ratios to each rack to keep the ackerman angles correct? How did those Tyrell P34's do it? (edit; I think that I have the bell crank lengths backward)

 

May I ask why you are using a dual steering set up in front?  

The plan is to have four 17x8 rims w/ 225/45 tires in front in tandem to go with the four 17x9 rims w/ 245/45 tires on a dually rear end in back hanging on a home-built steel 9" center section mated to early Toronado spindles and cv joints with fabricated control arms and coil-over shocks, thus winding up with about (14") contact patches at the front corners and (16") contact patches at the rear corners so that I can handle the power from the front located big block engine and corner like a formula 1 car with street tires.

If I go with a rack & pinion steering, I would use either Corvette, or Late Model stock car front suspensions, but I would like to fab-up a custom one with aluminum spindles with 0 deg. steering axis inclination, Camero bolt on hubs, and equal length, parallel control arms and control body sway by loading either the coil-over springs or anti-sway bars with some kind of hydraulic ram during cornering.

I have also been trying to somehow mount the upper control arms on a pivot and instead of resisting body lean, tie the three suspensions upper control arms together and let the body roll automatically move the control arms side to side and thus tilt the spindles and keep them perpendicual to the ground.

I still need to finish drawing the inner fender wells and find a virtual wind tunnel to find out the coefficient of drag so that I can figure out how much HP I need to go 250 MPH and to find out if it will stick-like-glue or flip-over backwards.

By the way, does that Ron Stielow still work at this mag? I would sure like to ask him a few questions.  

My main question is if you are trying to get into the real high speeds, isn't all the unsprung weight from the tire going to hurt that?  

Well, I suppose, since when I put these tires and wheels on my Volvo 1800 30 years ago, It lost 10 to 15 MPH. I will just have to make up for it with more HP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKn-LTNa4rc

 

I think that the reason the Volvo slowed down so much is mostly because of wind and rolling resistance. Anyway, Here is the low-buck 9" Ford center section I thought that I could build by my self out of plate steel and Strange(I ment Moser) housing ends (and short stub axles) with a 1/2" adapter to mate it to the Eldorado CV joints. The only way that I can figure  out how to get the rear duelly wheels (cheep) is to take a couple of 17x9" Crager Soft-8 steel wheels, cut out the centers and have new ones welded in with +8.625" offset on the inner wheels and -2.625" offset on the outer ones to center the combo over the Eldorado hub bearings. So, your right, it will be a porker at unsprung weight





 

Here is a D&M steering quickener that I found at Stock Car Magazine which might serve as a pattern for a duel output steering shaft. I will have to run down to Tractor Supply and see what I can come up with for parts. I wonder what the ratio difference would be between the first and second axles? I've been reading up on Ackerman theory, but I'm not too good at math, the first wheelbase is 90" and the second one is 117"

 

I am just about the worst at math, that's a pretty neat Volvo you got their.  

Thanks for the kind word Ekimball, I am guessing that I invented the fast & the furious 30 years ago when I was 22 years old and built that thing after my 68 Firebird got punted into a parked 64 Mustang convertable by a drunk pick-up. My dad had a 6 cylinder Volvo sedan and I would open up the hoods and after many hours and beers, I figured out that the 6 cylinder engine would almost fit into the 1800's engine bay with out too much work (hah). I eventually installed the complete drive-train along with the transmission tunnel from the sedan. Too bad with only 138 HP, every kid in their Honda and mother in her minivan can kick my ass.

I have seen pictures of two other 1800's with V8 motors, but I am thinking that I will leave the 6 banger in and just turbo charge it, get 3.73 rear gears instead of 3.31's, have the hubs, axles, and rotors re-rewelded and re-redrilled to a 5x4.5 bolt pattern to fix the .05" out of round wheel lugs. But since I just found out that they no longer make BFGoodrich TA tires anymore, bolt on 5x4.25 to 5x4.75 adapters and put on 17x9.5 and 17x11 corvette wheels and tires.

For a really good laugh, here is the dune buggy I built with my left over parts after taking a welding class, It only had two axles and the 4-banger engine sat between the seats, but I am going to practice on the 8 wheeled concept by cutting off the rear clip and mounting a Eldorado or Seville front wheel drive front clip & drive-train in back and see how it looks. I was thinking of Pike's Peak, but I heard they are paving the road and since I designed and welded it together, I think that it should only be a static display.
 

Here are two pictures I found of the Tyrrell p34's front suspension. The steering wheel was connected to the front suspension spindles with a front steer R&P. There is also a second steering arm mounted at the rear of the spindle which connects through a bell crank to the back spindles front steer steering arm.



 

My dad used to tell me a story about his friend in High School who had a Volvo like that, but he put a huge V8 in front with a Huge blower so it had no hood. The whole front end dragged because the suspension was shot and couldn't handle the weight of the motor. I think he said it lasted about 2 months before the car was destroyed!  

VolvoHeretic:
Here are two pictures I found of the Tyrrell p34's front suspension. The steering wheel was connected to the front suspension spindles with a front steer R&P. There is also a second steering arm mounted at the rear of the spindle which connects through a bell crank to the back spindles front steer steering arm.





interesting set up, have you ever seen Darryl Starbird's Trik Truck? He has a dual front wheel set up although it wasn't built for performance in mind, and I'm not sure how he has it set up.  

I found a picture of Starbirds Trik Truck from our Siter site Custom Classic Trucks.

 

I hadn't seen that Starbird car before and I thought that I had seen just about them all. Here is the Panther I saw back in the 70's that got me started. It had an Eldorado 500ci drivetrain in back, but also had more tire contact patch in front with the four 13" tires than with the Lamborghini Contach Pirelli 15" tires in back, which must have been a handling nightmare with all that weight hanging out back.

I also just found this Covini six wheeled car which must be about the same problem.

My car will essentially be a NASCAR tube frame with opening, vault-pinned, swinging door bars with the motor sitting over the second front axle were engines belong.



 

Maybe I'm making this harder then it needs to be. Maybe, just by having the steering knuckle angled so that the arm passes through the ball joint plane and converges at the center of the rear axle, the ackerman will take care of itself between the two front axles.

I would have fab up new steering arms, but everybody seems to cut the arms off of the C5 spindles anyway in order to lower the rack.

Anyway, on to a new subject: I don't have any brand preference, but if I were to use GM's ZZ572/620 big block as an example, what, if any 6 speed manual trans would be able to handle the power?