vansaroukhanian wrote:
I'm sure many of you will have experience with a front suspension set up similar to what I'm using (2 A arms and a coilover shock), but my rear suspension seems to be out of convention with even a lot of mid-engine builds here.
Lower reverse A-Arm, Upper Lateral Link, outboard coilover, twin trailing links. Used on gt40, 917, 908, formula ford, etc.
That rear suspension design was fairly typical of formula cars of that era. Horizonjob's use of it on the Car 9 design was based on his Formula Ford experience. The Car 9 chassis is built around three strong bulkheads. The front bulkhead carrying most of the loading from the front suspension. The dash bulkhead fixing the front of the long rear trailing arms. And the rear bulkhead carrying the inverted-Y and lateral links you described. Everything in between is mostly just tubes and triangles.
The inverted-Y rear suspension works for front engine cars like my Car 9 build or mid-engine cars designs like you are doing. I used Wishbone and VSUSP for both front and rear suspension analysis. For analysis purposes, the rear suspension you described can be thought of as upper and lower A-arms with three pivot points each.
Keep up the good work!