Both systems are designed to reduce camber change when cornering.

What are the pros and cons of each? Your experience/opinions, please.........

 

There is a thread that TwinTurbo discussed this very subject a few days ago. He is correct in that you do want camber gain in cornering situations. Drag racing you want no change. Search the past week's threads.

 

dig around we just hashed this again with my splined half shaft thread a few days ago...

Summarizing

The answer is that it depends on the geometery in both cases...

A 6 link without regard to geometry just takes the compression and tension load off the half shaft and allows it to carry only rotational load.

As we see you spline the half shaft or take the clip off and grind down the stub axles.

off the top of my head you can get the geometry to move the length of the half shaft in the worst case about 700thou and in the best case about 200thou.

the trade off is camber change as a function of suspension displacement...

TT points out that you can go after Toe as well by floating the pivot points of the trailing arms and controlling toe with "c4 style" toe control rods behind the diff.

IIRC

Experience none YET.

Opinion...a 6 link is a good comprimise for me.

 

Check out the article they did at the Corvette Fever website. They say with the six link the stock skid pad (around .81) went to around .91 with the six link and claims with good tires will reach 1g set up properly . Yes we can go all out with a perfectly set up a race car like TT but I'll settle for a driver with my battery and storage boxes in place.

 

Here is the thread I started a few days ago. TT has some great input here.
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show....php?t=1575633

 

All,
Thanks for your comments. Actually the previous thread is what prompted my question. I understand that we do want some camber change in cornering and that we don't want camber change in drag racing.
I also understand that both the 6 link and the Smart Strut claim to reduce camber change.
So, the question is, "If I have a Smart Strut installed, is there any advantage to adding a 6 link in terms of performance or adjustability?"

Your additional comments, please.

 

With a 6 link you can quickly fine tune toe changes by just adjusting the upper and lower strut rods equally. No messing with the shims in front of the trailing arm.
I also feel the 6 link with NO camber change keeps my wide back tires plated on the road.
I have had a 6 link forever and feel for me it made things easier. I do run coilovers on the back and feel the 6 link stablizes the twist in the trailing arms better. I can also pull a yoke in minutes now that there is no clip to be removed.
A smart strut still used the drive shaft as a suspension member. If the yoke wear at all your back to a sloppy suspension.
A six link you routinely inspect the rod ends and replace if required to keep everything tight.

 

the 6 link does not reduce the camber curve per say, it depends on the lower bracket and placement of the upper rod. IF you design it for camber change it will do so. Going to parallel rods will take out the camber change but it's not what the 6 link is about although some people set theirs up like that.

With the 6 link you can't fine tune toe changes, you can quickly adjust initial toe. However you can adjust it at the penalty of moving the stub axle out.

 

This is not something that you have to cut the battery boxes for, if you use a toe control link and floating front mount you can set that all up behind the diff so no cutting involved either. Or you can run a dual lower strut for toe control (by adjustment of rear rod in regard to front rod)
The cutting was necessary for the dual a arms.

 

I thought one of the reasons to limit body roll in C3s was to reduce rear toe change.........

So if my springs and anti roll bars are set up properly, I won't have body roll so I won't have much potential toe change to deal with.

Am I understanding this properly?

 

they reduce suspension travel to mask the toe problem.

As for body roll, you will never get it all out, you'll have to start lwoering the Cg of the car, raising the roll center and so on to get the car to roll a whole lot less although springs and bars do help (and dampers for quick transitions) All cars roll, it's the result of weight displacement during cornering. A car that rolls puts part of this weight transfer into the suspension and it's absorbed that way and the outer tire is planted into the road and the inner on is lifted, if you have a real stiff car it can even come off the ground (something commonly seen in mcpherson/chapman strut equipped fwd sedans) The rioll center acts as the leverage point for the weight displacement acting from the Cg (much like a pole vaulter) so you have to alter these 2 to do something about it without using thicker bars (think of lowering the Cg and raising the roll center as shortening the pole vaulter and raising thehole where he stocks the pole, it'll be much harder for him to lift up)
The downside to reducing body roll is that there's much less weight transfer being absorbed by the suspension, it's put into the tires so you will need wider tires or tires w/ more grip to overcome this, otherwise the car will have a seriously reduced slip angle.

 

Cutting the boxes was in reference to your set-up. Thats my setup in the avatar, behind the boxes.

 

is it a parallel rod 6 link?

The 6 link, how it's set up being the user's choice is nice because it removes the halfshaft from the suspension geometry, however if you are retaining the stock camber the only benefit is that, it does not offer a handling improvement over a stock system w/ a tight c clip/stub axle arrangement. That beig set, just lowering the lower strut to level with the halfshaft will give the same result as the parallel 6 link, if you have the pivots points near where they would be for no stib axle movement/float. You will still have some camber cha nge due to unequal suspension members but it's greatly reduced. If that's what you want, by all means go for it. Absolute 0 camber change would only be realized by using parallel and equal length links.

 

Here's the dual lower strut thing I was thinking about where you set toe by adjusting the rear strut longer than the front one. You can add an upper rod to make it a sort of 6 link system, no problem



However, with the suspension moving up and down there's a slight issue as the suspension moves the rear rod has to angle at a different angle because the whole bearing block angles, the front mount slides just fine but the toe does change a little. I think the setup with the toe rod behind the rear suspension, level w/ the halfshaft and pivoting in relation to the u joints would be a better solution, although a little bit more difficult to set up. Still, the best would be to remove the trailing arm and replace it with a set of forward rods like the C4. This eliminates the pesky front trailing arm mount that is the reason for all the trouble in the 1st place.

 

Yes my strut rods are parallel, I have the VBP bracket on the bottom of the diff and I fabricated the supports for the upper trailing arm and diff.

 

certainly looks good, those are speedwaymotors sleeves??? do you have a larger pic?

 

EXACTLY. You just need to know what you want to do with the car

 

I'm at work and don't have any pics here. I'll have some tonight when I'm at home. Actually, just a sec. They're from Bicknell racing, there's a circle track shop around here. I figure if they can run them and bang it up and not break them then they should be good for the back of this car. Cost $320 CND for rods and heim joints.

 

With a 6 link, do I need a rear bar? Or a smaller rear bar?

Seems like the upper strut would be in compression or tension limiting roll making the bar unnecesary......

 

the 6 link is for geometry only, the sway bars remain the same.