rustyfender

So at autoX the other day there was a cruze and while it was driving very slowly cause it was their first time i noticed something. the cruze has a transverse bar on the rear axle. for those that dotn know a transverse bar ancors the rear axle in the left right direction apreventing it from shifting sideways during hard cornering.

that got me thinking "i wonder if that would be of benefit to my cobalt in autoX. I'm hoping Powel will drop in and give his opinion. at the next autoX i will also be taking under body video to see how much the rear axle shifts left and right.

What is peoples thoughts on this. i attached a photo of a cruze rear end for info purposes

yellowsupercharged06

iTrader: (3)

isnt that what the rear sway bar does ? And our rear axle is different then the cruze as well which i think also prevents the rear wheel slop.

rustyfender

no sway bar prevents the axle from flexing inside of itself leading to body roll. this stops the entire setup from shifting left and right which usually leads to it not staying pointed straight ahead in the corner.

Viperoni

There could be a benefit to this in terms of stiffness and keeping the rear axle located for sure, just don't know how it'd affect the CG and all of that other fancy stuff.

Grave

iTrader: (7)

There isn't much side to side movement. I do get a little bit of bouncing in the rear going around tight slow corners now that I've switched to r-comps, but I think that's more to do with the soft trailing beam bushings than the beam itself flexing.

rustyfender

hmm interesting. there is definatly side to side movement there. you can see the trailing arms on the beam flexing sideways.

DAKINS124

Thats a Watt's link, or "Z-Link" as GM calls it. I believe this was one of the improvements on the Delta II chassis. Not all of the Cruzes have it, but it was available.



Watt's linkage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I also wondered if this was adaptable to the Delta I chassis, but I'm not sure how much of a benefit it would be.

tuned08ss

interesting

Viperoni

To be honest this wouldn't be very hard to fab up, I don't remember what the underside of the car looks like exactly, but mounting the "center pivot point" of the watts link would be the hardest part.

rustyfender

Ya that's what i'm thinking. im gonna look into getting one from a cruze and start workin on this.

Omiotek

iTrader: (2)

You would be better starting from scratch

Also Powell's bushings help with the side to side transfer big time. I have never had a need for a watts link

Viperoni

I agree, I wouldn't waste my time pulling one off of the Cruze and trying to make it work with the CSS/IRL.

Because I don't know too much about the specifics of the actual design, I would get all of the measurements, especially the center pivot point setup, but connecting the arms to the wheels should be the easy part...

Slowbalt2000

iTrader: (1)

Crazy watching the beam and swaybar flex like that!

So what are you going to use for pivot points? Im assuming this would need some type of bushing too.

rustyfender

well I'm probabbly gonna have to either bold a pivot point on or weld one. (I'm assuming your talking about the pivot on the axle. the rest is just a question of mounting the cruze z bar assembly to the chassy