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swing axle impressions

my previous off road experience with a swing axle based car was with one that only had front breaks. no rear breaks means no stopping power on dirt, i never felt safe going really fast, so i never could get a real good impression of how it would handle at speed on dirt.

with my ‘61, i’ve installed a pre ‘66 bus brake master cylinder and front wheel cylinders at each wheel, this brake setup works well. it’s not rear bias, it’s neutral bias and very powerful. with this stopping power i’ve been able to feel comfortable going fast on dirt, and i mean fast. i’ve driven it hard and fast on the logging roads and i’ve never gotten it to spin out of control, i’ve recovered every tail slide easily. it really handles quite well. i’ve gotten it up to 65 mph on some of the straight sections of logging roads. even though my 61 is lifted, the torsion bars have sagged to the point that the tires are almost level. if the spring plates were in the lower stops i don’t think it would handle as good as it does because the tires would be much more tweaked.

ground clearence is only slightly less than that of an irs car. thus far i’ve been able to go on every trail that my 69 has been on. the swing axle really does ok. it’s simple, durable, light weight and with a 65 or older bug, you get the king pin front end which is far more durable than the ball joint front end.

now, it does handle nicely, but, there are some interesting driving characteristics. the suspension geometry changes depending where the wheel is. the toe setting changes with suspension travel. it’s kind of hard to explain, so i’ll just describe my observations. when i corner hard the body rolls in the opposite direction of the turn. the force on the suspension makes the out side tire tuck in closer to the body (compressed suspension). this geometry change makes the rear end turn even sharper. i believe that when the suspension compresses, the wheel has more toe-in and has the inclination to turn sharper.

when you hit a bump with a rear tire, the toe changes again. i find that when a rear tire hits a bump the rear end will first jerk one way and then the other as the toe changes with the changing wheel travel. this is what’s reffered to as twitchiness. this condition gets more extreme the faster you go, at slow speeds you won't even notice it. irs cars are less twitchy about bumps and cornering, and thus a bit more stable to drive at higher speeds.

i find that a swing axle is more challenging to drive fast off road than an irs car. i like a chalenge, i like the added excitement. some might say that it’s unpredictable, but i would say that it’s predictably unpredictable. you kown it’s going to do funky things if you hit some big bumps going fast, you know it’s going to be funky during hard cornering. my advice is to drive slow at first and then go faster and faster, testing the cars handling, learning how it handles at higher and higher speeds (make sure your brakes can handle high speeds on dirt roads first). you may find that the car will go faster than rear biased drum brakes will stop it.

so, is a swing axle really a burden? i don’t think so, i enjoy driving mine - on the trails, on the sand and on the logging roads - fast.

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