Hi,

Well... My chassis is going well. I have almost completed it. I wonder... Has anyone made the top wishbones with spherical bearings?

no, however since you sign yourself "racer" I just want to check you are not going for the 750mc formula. Spherical bearings are not permitted. . ..

No... I'm too far... I live in Athens - Greece.

Anybody??????????

The vast majority of builders on this site are building thier cars for use on the road, and spherical bearings are unsuitable. Instead, use polyurethane bushes

John

[Edited on 2/12/02 by interestedparty]

Westfield do use spherical bearings for the outer joints on some cars. The car I am building uses them for all joints but this car is more for track use than for the road.

Spherical bearings can be used on the street but they wear out faster than poly bushes and can be noisy at times.

Thanks to everybody.

Racer,

Tiger Avon has sperical bearings on inner pivots of lower rear wishbones.

I intend modifying my w/bones to take spherical bearings (for the simple reason it will allow a slight amount of adjustment - ie toe in / out / straight)

ATB

Simon

The terminology is definately confusing. For example Aurora sell both rod ends and spherical bearings. They are exactly the same except one has a threaded shank and the other doesn't. These aren't greased, generally having a PTFE lining.

From a design point of view rod ends aren't really a good idea (especially for the lower wishbone joints that are the most heavily loaded). While the axial loadings look really good they don't like bending forces and generally fail where the thread stops on the shank. I have seen numerous failures of rod ends on race cars and the results aren't pretty usually. A better solution is to use spherical bearings pushed into a housing and held there by staking the edge of the bearing out against a 45 degree inner taper (A lot easier to draw than describe).

Thanks again.

The concept is to have adjustable caster. I believe that is very difficult to make and weld 4 wishbones, having the same angle for both sides...

The approach I am using is to go with fixed lower A arms with spherical bearings. The top arms will use rod ends two on the inboard to fine tune caster and an outer one to adjust camber. I will build most of the caster in with the geometry of the arms and then just fine tune with the rod ends.

ProjectLMP

Have you built it??? Can you give me the type and dimension of the rod ends you used???

Hello,

I've gotten spherical bearings with tread inside it, so they are much stronger than normal bearings.

I use it on the front and rear wishbones.

Daniel te Lindert

Racer, I haven't built it yet but I plan on using PRXM-T (Performance Racing Series) Rod ends and OWB-TG Spherical bearings. You can get a catalogue from http://www.aurorabearing.com

Just for you info NHBB are probably the best make of bearings but they are a lot more expensive that Aurora.