I submit Terry Sturgeon’s racing 1965 e-type
Fantasy Junction: brokers of special interest and collector cars as a topic of discussion.
The description is ripe with so much information.
I would love to some race results and against which cars was it competitive.
Cool car with a lot of great details.
Rear suspension is pretty trick with the standard radius arms removed, and heim-jointed arms turned inboard to reduce rear-steer.
Bottom of the suspension cage also appears to be tied to the body to minimize movement of the cage.
Heim joints on the outer ends of the lower arms allow for rear toe adjustment.
I see no evidence of boosted brakes, so it would be interesting to know what that master cylinder was, and how it’s motion ratio was adapted.
I run un-boosted brakes, and modified the pedal/actuating lever ratio by having the short lever (engine compartment side) machined to reduce the width to fit the clevis and moved the pivot hole up to give a 6:1 mechanical ratio (stock is about 4.5 as I recall). Combined with a 7/8" diameter MC (Datsun) pedal feel, effort, and modulation seems pretty good to me. Have Wilwood 4 piston front calipers btw. Note MC needs raised to maintain alignment with the actuating rod. Easy to do all this on a 3.8 or early 4.2 car with the pedal box like this on the subject racing car.
In the lower photo you can just see the original pivot hole below the clevis.
Steve GREAT info
If my master or booster goes
I’m going down the same road
You eliminate ALOT of junk.
Did you ever try a 1 inch m/c?
Gtjoey
Ps isn’t the willwood m:c clutch so much nicer
I did mine a year ago!
Joey
I’ve tried 3 MCs: started with 1", but higher effort combined with low pedal travel and feel led me to try a 13/16". This gave much reduced effort, but pedal travel was a bit long for my taste, so I ended up at 7/8", which for me was ‘goldilocks’.
Interesting quote: "The rear suspension has been modified to be a semi trailing arm suspension, from the fully trailing arm set up from the factory. This is a standard E Type racing mod. I suspect that it doesn’t make a lot of difference to the cars handling. "
I wonder which “stock Jaguar transmission” is used…KE or EJ?
I would think that it would make the handling more predictable. Probably too harsh for a street car being solidly mounted.
Agree. I think the best solution I’ve seen for this for a street car would be what Evolution E-types are doing, where they have a “web” that stabilizes the cage with compliant mounts out at the original radius arm mount location.
This design should reduce the tendency for the cage to pivot about the vertical axis, while keeping the suspension fully isolated from the body.
David the only track it was run on, that I recall the results from, was Portland and that was in 2007. The car lapped in the low 1:28’s and that put it in the top 20% of the grid. I recall the fastest cars there at the time were the 427 c.i. Corvettes and they were running in the 1:24’s/1:25’s. I was competitive with Mustangs, Camero’s, Tigers etc. To be faster I needed to lighten the car, which meant alum bonnet, lighter wheels, etc. The car weighed around 2250 pounds but that was too heavy. The first 10 pounds you take off costs a buck a pound, the last 10 is many many times more.
As always, in order to make a small fortune in racing you need to start with a large fortune.
It appears that the car you brought racing represented the marque quite well and you had fun doing it.
That’s the bottom line.
Glad to see the discussions that followed with the JL post.
Dave
Terry, Were you using the “close ratio” EJ gearbox or the later KE?
Hi Eric It was an EJ box.
Thanks,Terry (great car).
If I understand the Evolution system correctly, it should make the motion more predictable / repeatable by removing the interaction of the long radius arms. It still has the wheels connected by rigid parts in the horizontal plane, though, so the entire assembly can move laterally or steer in response to a cornering, drive or braking load?
I think the lower links in Terry’s system are effectively a wide “H” form, like a Lotus Excel and others of that era, wheel motion should be independent except as allowed by the upper subframe mounts. I wonder if this system could be more suitable for a road car with some carefully chosen compliance bushes at the end of the new arms. That would be a chance to match the motion to the upper subframe mounts, might give a gain in handling as well as refinement.
