Postby Hasbeen » 05 Mar 2008 23:50
I'm with you Beans, on the breather thing.
I had a half pint tall skinny tin as an oil catcher on the breather
of my F2 Brabham went into. The pipe went to the bottom, & the can
was filled with loosely packed course steel wool. I never saw
visible fumes comming out of it.
After 18 months of racing, with the thing opperating only above
6700 RPM, I pulled it off, & checked it, when preparing the car for
sale.
It had less than half an inch of oil in it.
Re-breathing crankcase fumes is probably a good idea for car owners,
who don't look after their engines. For those who do, its
unnecessary.
Strutbraces make a real difference, if you drive hard. Few people
realise the stress in ths suspension of their car, but I had a real
demonstration, back in the early 60s, when radial tyres
with "sticky" rubber appeared, followed by Dunlop green spot racing
tyres.
In production sports car racing we had a spate of broken stub axles
fortunately, often when not on the track. We were all suffering with
pad "knock off", but with disc brakes fairly new, we had no idea
what the problem was. One bloke marketed a restrictor for the brake
line, to stop it happening. All of us racing Morgans, & the MG boys
had the problem, plus some others.
I had the right hand front wheel bearings pack up, in practice for
an Oran Park meeting. We fitted new bearings, & I raced the car, but
driving home, [most sports drove to the races then] I could hear a
rumble from those same bearings. They had failed in 55 miles.
I could find nothing obvious wrong, so a mate took my stub axle to
work with him, at the BMC, [British Motor Corp], experexperimental
department. A few days later they called me in, & showed me that the
axle was bent 6 degrees DOWNWARD, & had a crack developing at the
root of the axle.
Yes DOWNARD, the cornering force, acting inwards, at the bottom of
the wheel, when cornering, bends it down.
A mate machined up a thicker stub axle, which was grafted onto the
Morgan front suspension, then found himself with lots of them to
do, as the word got around, & every one started finding theirs were
cracked.
Within a month, Morgan introduced a thicker stub axle, as did BMC,
& our brake pad knock off problem disappeared.
What I'm saying, in my usual long winded way is, the forces bending
things, when cornering are very large. The area where the crack
started in my stub, was 1 5/8 inches diameter.
If cornering forces can bend high quality steel that thick, just
what do you think it does to a bit of body metal?
Hasbeen
