The front suspension is relatively simple compared to the rear suspension. Naturally, it's virtually as pimpy as it can be. The lower wishbones are rosejointed but they're proving tricky to source. Normal Fury rosejointed wishbones are readily available. However, rather than use a Sherpa drag link as the bottom joint on the upright, I'm using yet another bleedin' rosejoint. I bought some adaptors which go into the bottom of the upright and have a partially threaded section which a 1/2" rosejoint goes over - at the moment I don't think I'm supposed to say where I got these from...
Because the thread on the rosejoint is different (5/8" UNF rather than M18x1.0) I need some specially made
lower wishbones. And at the moment, things are progressing rather slowly on that front...
But not to worry, because there's still lots to do on the upper wishbones or rocker arms. Newer Fury kits have
tubular rocker arms like in the picture on the right. They are slightly lighter than the older style pressed sheet
rocker arms but much stronger. Strong enough, in fact, to mean that if you have an off, instead of the rocker arm
collapsing, the suspension mounts rip off the chassis - probably damaging it in the process. So I prefer the older
style rocker arms.
That said, there's an awful lot of unnecessary metal in the older style rocker arms - the flat surfaces don't really
do anything as the strength is in the curved edges. I've seen quite a few of the RGB racers with drilled rocker
arms, so armed with a hole saw and my new drill (the old one died drilling 40mm holes in 10mm thick ali) I set
to work.
Plenty of time later, and much swarf production and lubricating fluid usage, I ended up with something full of holes. The holes range in size from 64mm to 19mm. The net weight loss is only about 250g per side, which isn't much for so much work, but every little helps.
The tape over the ends is to protect the needle bearings and mounts. The standard Fury bushes for the rocker arm consist of nylon top-hat bushes running around a long bolt. I've gone for the uprated needle bearing kit, which consists of two nylon bearing mounts and 2 sets of needle bearings. A grease nipple is inserted into the central tube of the rocker arm so that the needle bearings can be lubricated. I'm impressed with the quality of the kit - it's gone together extremely easily and seems to work very well so far.
Of course it would have been easier to fit them after all the work to the rocker arms, but I didn't think of that
at the time...
And now for a gratuitous picture of my new lathe, a dinky little Unimat 4. It's absolutely tiny, but for making up little spacers and brackets it's ideal. The ARB on the front suspension is going to be cockpit adjustable by rotating the blade and blade housing. I'm going to do this by way of a worm and pinion gear from HPC gears. The shaft of the worm gear needed to turned down to fit inside the inner tube in the ARB - since it's made of phosphor bronze, this was a nice easy task for the lathe.
And here is the gear in
situ. You can see the outer ARB tube in place. The inner ARB tube is inside this with ali collars on both ends
and the bronze gear in one end. In the background you can just about see the other half of the ARB system - this
is the fixed arm on the LHS rocker.
The wishbones I got from Fishers years and years ago, which were especially
made for me so that 5/8" UNF rosejoints would fit in the end, are too short. Well, in order to get sufficient
negative camber you have to wind the rosejoints out rather a long way, with the result that there's quite a lot
of thread showing. Given the propensity of your average rosejoint to bend, that means the wishbone's too short
in my book.
So, while I made up some wishbones for the FuryRacer, I made up another pair for the Furybird. They fit the Furybird perfectly,
but Furies being Furies, they're too short for the FuryRacer...
Still, they look rather good on the Furybird, though I say it myself.
| Having sorted out the problems with my dampers by buying some ProTechs,
one thing that concerned me was that the extra bump travel on the ProTechs would result in the bits I'd welded
to the top rocker arms as part of the cockpit-adjustable ARB hitting the damper/spring combination. However, as you can see, it doesn't quite do so (and won't even when there's a spring on there). More by luck than judgment though. |
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The front dampers are now in place. That just leaves the springs, and finishing off the ARB. |
Things to do: Finish off the ARB, put the springs on the dampers, adjust