I saw this company advertising in hayburner for a bolt on kit for a split screen. Just exchanged a few emails with the chap and they have e-arly bay and late bay kits in development too. Bolt on R&P steering set and Custom R&P conversions! - De website van rustys! Looks like it uses a T25 bevel box and Porsche rack - might be one to watch?
Good job he's experimenting with the splitty drivers first then he should have ironed out all the kinks by the time he builds one for us..
? €1,650 so about 1,400 quid in proper money it’ll be even cheaper once the pound rises on a wave of post-brexit euphoria
IIRC litesteer is about a grand and red9 wishbones is more than 2k so I don’t think that this is too far adrift
At that price, you can easily have a machine shop mill out the worn bushing on a stock RHD steering box cover plate and press in a new one. Or even an idiot with a Dremel and 3 hours of desperation, and a steel backed PTFE bushing chopped in half to shorten it so it fits in the cover plate. Still seems to be working on my bus. The PTFE gives a tiny bit of flex, so the box is pretty tolerant of adjustment on the screw.
i think it runs on a bearing inside the front beam so fully supported, it wouldn’t actually work without support
I don’t think you look at the value of the pound very often. Unless you're just trying to wind me up. The Red9 double wishbone is overpriced but at least you get a rack, coil-over dampers, wishbones, and a crossmember thrown in.
I noticed the other day that there is another US supplier that's creating a bolt on wishbone kit for a T2 New A Arm Front Suspension – Bay Window Bus ’68-’79 (4-6 WEEKS OUT!) – Vintage V-Dubs (vintagev-dubs.com) Now this one definitely IS expensive It looks really nice but its like, more than twice the money of a Red9 wishbone setup.
Whilst I'm all for new replacement parts such as Red9 etc. Have they been through the appropriate design models and fatigue testing under road simulated conditions to prove the concept works safely?
...but coincidentally put his company up for sale not so long afterwards IIRC. Perhaps you made him think about something he'd been turning a blind eye to when selling just a few. He probably made onefor himself , then one for his mate and... oops. There is possibly a get out clause when they sell it that says it's not for use on public roads. Arse covered - risk transferred to purchaser. Perhaps I'm being cynical but I've seen this on other items.
Sounds like he knew he may have issues on his hands. Years back we got involved with a guy making parachute chords which would supposedly withstand 20 tonnes (200kN) at breaking point, they didn't despite him making various weaves of the chord and the most he could achieve was 9.9 tonnes (99kN). His answer was to ignore the test results and carry on regardless....
Yes each chord! Each chord had lots of weaves to make the one up and when in use it may have had multiple chords on various anchor points (like you would a vehicle when dropped from a Hercules) and his solution, add more.
I think we all probably know the answer to that.. I guess it comes down to the risk that these new kits carry in terms of lack of formal type approval style fatigue testing vs the risk of driving a vehicle where the suspension and steering components are 40-50 years old. One thing you can definitely say though is that back in the day those German folks built these things tough
