How flexible do you think a stock, trailing arm is Options

[ChrisFoley]

Specifically I am looking for rotational stiffness (ie. twist) of the trailing arm due to the tire contact patch resisting sideways sliding of the car. I'm only interested in forces greater than 1G during cornering.
I already know what happens but go ahead and take a guess. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
I'll post pictures of my test fixture shortly.

[andys]

Chris,

This is exactly the kind of testing required to provide a benchmark by which to compare against. My custom trailing arms took so much effort fabricate that by the time I was finished, I was frankly too burned out to continue on with making a test fixture. I'm glad you're doing it!!

Unless you intend on making the stock trailing arm your "standard", you'll otherwise need to qualify your fixture. If you don't, then your data will be flawed (unfortunately). You'll need to first determine how much the test fixture deflects under load. Don't get me wrong, cause it's always seemingly easy to blow holes in someone elses work, but that's not my intention. Continue on, and do share your results; I remain very interested in your work. Are you going to test to fail?

I think if you examine the stock trailing arm design, I think you'll find it quite good (from a design standpoint). The design of course, was dictated by production requirements, but it is still very good. The area I never liked, was the pivot shaft and how it ties into the chassis mounts. Think about the camber and toe adjustment. You must deflect the inner ear in order to move it around. I've seen where some try to re-inforce the inner ear, only to have it crack. In my opinion, the inner ear is just crying for a spherical joint or conformal structure of some kind......sorry, guess I'm getting a little OT.

Andys