• Spank
  • Utter Madman
  • Offline
  • From: Escondido, CA
  • Registered: 2009-06-10
  • Posts: 5,864

Re: Oh Merde, 3PM's next car

bshorey wrote:
Red Lemons Racing wrote:

Does the crazy air suspension work?   Nothing can go wrong with this....

It's a hydraulic suspension, not an air suspension.  Although at this point it might be an air suspension.

The headlights are tied in to the suspension and the steering, so they go up and down opposite the suspension, and turn where you're pointing.

This whole system will make that Rolls seem simple in comparison.  Can't wait to see it going around the track, with no body lean whatsoever.

Don't be tempted to put anything other than the green Citroen hydraulic fluid in the system, anything else will destroy it before the race is over.

bs

Hydropneumatic, (hydro pneumatique) if you want to get pedantic and Rolls paid to licensing to use it in their cars' designs. I'm sure 3PM is quite capable of dealing with it.

Many US cars have ATF fluid in the system, which is what my sChITROEN had in it when I got it 5 years ago (has it been that long?!) and it worked just fine. Longevity is questionable because of the detergents and abrasiveness of the fluid, but it's not a big deal for Lemons and sometimes use.

Each sphere has a bladder inside and half of the sphere is nitrogen charged (I believe) and the other half is the LHM (or ATF) fluid. the gas is compressible which is what gives the suspension, the other half is the fluid that increases and decreases to raise and lower the whole deal.

Absolutely positively do NOT every try to put your finger over a spewing leak as it can (on the high pressure side) blow a hole straight into you, or so I'm told.

I wonder how different the SM is to the DS in terms of the setup. I know a guy who rebuilds the spheres out here in CA. He even offered me a loaner "Rally" set for me to use back at Sears, but I just brought them as backup.

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  • From: Birdsboro, PA
  • Registered: 2009-10-26
  • Posts: 892

Re: Oh Merde, 3PM's next car

The SM and the DS are actually very very similar in their suspension and braking setups, actually sharing many parts, which is quite fortunate as parts availability and cost is nowhere near the nightmare it was for the Rolls.  Rolls used only some of Citroen's technology, and then made it more complicated than it needed to be, because Rolls Royce. 

This car does seem to have ATF in the system, which Citroen even says is fine for shorter term use if LFM is not available, we will probably try to switch back to LHM, and either are better than the custom made fluid that Rolls used (mix of Dot3 with 13% castor oil...fun when you go to the store and ask for a BIG BOTTLE of castor oil, they look at you funny).

We need to get it running first to see if the hydraulics even work, then we can dig into that system.  Getting it running is probably harder than it seems, given the number of crispy wires it has in a variety of important places.  Then we can also see if we need to invest the 40 hours of R&Ring the motor to fix the timing chains and exhaust valves, two common issues these have.  It will probably be a summer race next year that it will finally be track ready, with the number of other things we have going on, but we couldn't pass it up.

Yay French super cars!

Chris from 3 Pedal Mafia
  • From: Austin
  • Registered: 2010-09-13
  • Posts: 1,478

Re: Oh Merde, 3PM's next car

swindrum wrote:

Tres bien!

The S&M theme writes itself... Bring out the gimp!

Where's Max Mosley when you really need him?

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