Thread: Landie with Citroen suspension

Not sure I'd like the inboard brakes idea, if you snap a CV you loose all braking on that wheel and if you don't notice until you're traveling at speed you could spin the car off the road.

Otherwise its a cool toy, I had a Series III converted to Range Rover suspension and running gear with a 3.5 V8 that I converted to a twin turbo with modified waste gates to get 15psi and that was so much fun at the traffic lights playing with boy racers, the looks on their faces as they were left standing were priceless. Obviously I'm much more grown up and mature and wouldn't do such things these days

Originally Posted by rc42

Not sure I'd like the inboard brakes idea, if you snap a CV you loose all braking on that wheel and if you don't notice until you're traveling at speed you could spin the car off the road.
......

D Series Citroens were produced for almost twenty years without this being raised as a concern. With the CV joint being a double Cardan joint, I suspect failure to drive without a spectacular and noisy disintegration is rather unlikely, so I don't think "don't notice" is likely.

In about 1970, there was a TV ad in France for the D Series, that featured a car driving over a spike to blow a front tyre, and then doing a crash stop in a straight line - hands off. This was made possible because the steering axis (king pin, actually two ball joints) is in the same plane as the centreline of the tyre. It is vertical except for the caster angle. This in turn is possible because the CV joint is inside the wheel bearings, and the brakes, being inboard, do not constrain the design. Also worth noting that the single arm wishbones allow an exceptionally tight turn angle, giving the D Series a very good turning circle despite being longer wheelbase than almost any other normal car (but very susceptible to damage on the side panels as the rear takes a shortcut!).

John

John, not as a 4wd with a turbo V6 though.

Originally Posted by loanrangie

John, not as a 4wd with a turbo V6 though.

These components were used in the SM, with a factory top speed of 220kph. In 1987, according to Wikipedia, a turbocharged SM set a speed record for its class of 327kph. Braking loads at these sort of speeds would apply loads to the CV joints equal to anything that would be encountered with the four wheel drive. Braking effort is concentrated on the front wheels, where four wheel drive is shared between front and rear, both being limited by tyre adhesion - and shock loads due to braking suddenly would be equally great as shock loads due to rock hopping.

No, I don't think that failure of CV joints would be a credible weakness.

John

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I'm a little surprised, although I'm not familiar with the BX, as I ran Ds for years - they have a hydraulic accumulator that gives you many brake applications after the 5cm red "Stop" light on the dash comes on.

John

So John,, just how many exactly do you get?
and did it all end happily?