De Dion in action

sowen said:
This morning I fitted my video camera underneath the back of my P6 pointed at the de dion tube and went or a short drive to see whats going on down there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axrmf7InblY
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I would say that you have too much time on your hands :D but that is just so cool 8)

I never think about what's going on under there, I might have to have a play myself but knowing my luck I would lose the camera somewhere along the way

Richard
 
Wot ! no speed bumps and no surprised look on the face of a random pedestrian run over as they go under the wheels :LOL:

I must say that's quiet informative, a thought that crossed my mind was that if these sort of tools were more common place back when Rover designed the suspension components what changes may they have made.

Graeme
 
quattro said:
I would say that you have too much time on your hands :D but that is just so cool 8)

I never think about what's going on under there, I might have to have a play myself but knowing my luck I would lose the camera somewhere along the way

Richard
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Being between jobs does have it's advantages sometimes!

The camera is a generic dashcam, small and light, held in place with simple flat strip of steel bolted to the diff mount rubber flange. It didn't move even when I hit some potholes on the side of the road.

ghce said:
Wot ! no speed bumps and no surprised look on the face of a random pedestrian run over as they go under the wheels :LOL:

I must say that's quiet informative, a thought that crossed my mind was that if these sort of tools were more common place back when Rover designed the suspension components what changes may they have made.

Graeme
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I only have those small humps in the centre of the road locally, but did aim directly at them. There's a couple of rough lanes near me which my P6 grounds out on which I did think about going down, and anyway, the front valance is almost low enough to be classed as a plow :wink:

I doubt they would have changed much, the whole setup seems pretty well engineered to me. I really can't think of anything I want to do to the suspension geometry, just some extra reinforcing on the mounting points and that's it.

I'm planning on a second video at some point from the infront of the axle to give a more panoramic view of what's going on down there, as there is a little movement under acceleration I've seen in my video which I need to investigate.

It would also be good to have a comparison of a completely standard P6 axle to see how much flex or movement there is on the differential drive assembly.
 
That's great Simon :)

I can recall many year ago following another P6B along a rough dirt road which was very rough indeed. Speed was only 10 or 15 kph so you I could see the de dion working away as the other Rover negotiated the road. As the wheels moved independently with the body rocking and rolling, the de dion tube remained horizontal, keeping the wheels perpendicular with the road surface.

Ron.
 
Thanks for posting Simon. I was a little surprised at the amount of vertical movement of the tube. Probably shouldn't be given how far back it is from the front suspension arm. There seemed to be plenty of twisting of the elbow in the tube (again maybe no surprise if one wheel hits a bit of a pothole). However, I was looking to see if there was any obvious sliding of the elbow in the tube. Hard to make this out but, given that the horizontal angle between tube and diff kept changing, I guess there must be?

Did you do any hard cornering during the test? What would be really good is some audio commentary or captions on the video, like "cornering hard left/right now". Only if you really do have some spare time on your hands :D
 
SydneyRoverP6B said:
That's great Simon :)

I can recall many year ago following another P6B along a rough dirt road which was very rough indeed. Speed was only 10 or 15 kph so you I could see the de dion working away as the other Rover negotiated the road. As the wheels moved independently with the body rocking and rolling, the de dion tube remained horizontal, keeping the wheels perpendicular with the road surface.

Ron.
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The only time I've seen someone else drive mine was at it's MOT, and over the gentle slope from the road, over the carpark and into the garage I could the the rear wheels doing their 'thing', it just fascinated me, something I could watch over and over! I did think about putting the camera underneath the bumper to get a similar view of the tube working, but couldn't quite get enough moving stuff in shot, I'll have another look later on :wink:

JVY said:
Thanks for posting Simon. I was a little surprised at the amount of vertical movement of the tube. Probably shouldn't be given how far back it is from the front suspension arm. There seemed to be plenty of twisting of the elbow in the tube (again maybe no surprise if one wheel hits a bit of a pothole). However, I was looking to see if there was any obvious sliding of the elbow in the tube. Hard to make this out but, given that the horizontal angle between tube and diff kept changing, I guess there must be?

Did you do any hard cornering during the test? What would be really good is some audio commentary or captions on the video, like "cornering hard left/right now". Only if you really do have some spare time on your hands :D
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When you look at the geometry of the upper and lower arms side on, the tube should stay relatively close to the vertical movement of the wheels, there's a lot of vertical height above the tube for the long suspension to travel into. It's very difficult to get a clear view of the suspension to show the tube expanding and contracting, though my driveshafts are close to horizontal so there is going to be little movement there.

Most of the driving was 10-20mph, with a couple of blasts upto 30mph, around some sharp corners and uneven road surfaces, with a couple of small speed humps and I did drive one side over a roundabout. A fully standard softly sprung P6 should give lots more movement with additional bodyroll!

I did however do this on Thursday, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEebBeBQAXM.

It's on the same camera, but in the end I had to edit it through Windows Movie Maker to trim off the boring beginning and end bits, and in the process lost most of the quality and it changed the screen ratio. That would be a far better lane with a pair of camera's sync'd, one filming the entire suspension, and the other inside filming for an inset second view to demonstrate what's going on outside. I have a couple of camera's, and some new video editing software which I haven't got the hang of yet, and the file format seems a bit unstable when I tried to edit it first time round.
 
Hi, it's all a matter of perception. It's not the axle going up and down, it's the body.
Because the camera is fixed to the body it just appears that way. Try fixing the
camera to the elbow or trailing arm.

Still fascinating though.

Colin
 
colnerov said:
Hi, it's all a matter of perception. It's not the axle going up and down, it's the body.
Because the camera is fixed to the body it just appears that way. Try fixing the
camera to the elbow or trailing arm.

Still fascinating though.

Colin
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I have thought about attaching the camera to the end of the elbow pointed at the tube, to get an indication of how much twist there is in the tube as the two videos I've already done don't show much movement. The problem is secure mounting of the camera, and how well it would cope with the increased vibration by being almost directly attached to the wheels. Worth a go at some point at least I think.
 
Love watching this kind of footage. Thanks for posting Simon.

I've often thought how useful it would be to fault find by being able to look underneath whilst the car is moving.

Dave
 
:D Especially liked the last clip. Apart from being able to see what both elbows were doing, favourite bit was the church bells you could hear when you turned the engine off :D .
 
Dave3066 said:
Love watching this kind of footage. Thanks for posting Simon.

I've often thought how useful it would be to fault find by being able to look underneath whilst the car is moving.

Dave
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That was exactly what I had planned with all the work I've done, all I knew was I haven't seen any evidence of stuff moving, but that doesn't mean it isn't moving. I now know there is movement, and I've got an idea of where the movement is, and one more video from the front will confirm exactly what is flexing, and if it's of any concern or not.

JVY said:
:D Especially liked the last clip. Apart from being able to see what both elbows were doing, favourite bit was the church bells you could hear when you turned the engine off :D .
Click to expand...

Yes, I didn't realise but there was a wedding going on, I tried to keep the noise down, but it's a bit hard with no silencing!
 
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