LocostUSA.com

Just happen to come across this ..and thought it would be perfect for transporting a locost
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=en ... K4pjVY&NR=
Kiwi Dave

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I USE TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND ..BUT MY BRAINS KEPT FALLING OUT

So exactly how does that work?

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mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

The part that is tilted up in the 2nd picture is a big lever that the wheels are connected to. The end of the lever is attached to the frame of the trailer maybe a foot or so further down. It's pretty clever.

On a side note, Aluminum good. I hurt my back 30 years ago moving my race car trailer and 2 weeks ago I hurt the same muscles again and have hardly been able to walk for two weeks now. I wish I hadn't made that mistake then

I'll bet that car will open your eyes up!

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
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Thanks Horizenjob for answering that ..yep it just pivots a bit further back on the trailer deck,.. electric winch would be the go....not only would that car open your eyes it would slightly push them back into your head as well ..Gee sorry to hear about your back hope you heal up fast ..what kinda trailer do you have ?,,i found that some of those solid jockey wheels are just a pain to move i always replace mine with the biggest pneumatic tyre i can find..makes moving them so much easier...or one of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/TRAILER-MOVER-P ... 0804539520

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I USE TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND ..BUT MY BRAINS KEPT FALLING OUT

Using only stub axles on the ends of long arms, wouldn't the wheel assemblies be extremely weak torsionally? It seems like the first good bump while towing would permanently twist the arms and give you -4 degrees of camber whether you wanted it or not. What am I missing?

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Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
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Man that better have a patent on it or I will be in the office tomorrow designing one .....

It annoys the crap out of me when I see something so simple and I didn't think of it!!!

Damn "Patent Pending"!!

I was playing with this concept and a few others on paper a few years ago. Kinda cool to see it in photos. As for camber, the axle stub's beam is constrained about 13 inches away at the pivot which probably takes ~6/7ths of the load. From the axle to the pivot and a bit further forward, the pivot arm is reinforced by, what looks to be an additional ~6" box beam making that section a total of ~ 10 inches tall. With the right ratio of the lever-box length and a light enough car, one might be able to just reach and pull it down, no winch would be required to flatten the assembly. I'd also chamfer the two leading corners of the "box" to make walking around the trailer a bit safer and to increase the trailer's jack-knife angle before crunching the side in on the tow vehicle. The problem with this design for me was the lack of springs. I was working on incorporating individual rubber torsion axles and the capability of adding electric brakes. It never was more than a few sketches though.

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Chuck.

“Any suspension will work if you don’t let it.” - Colin Chapman

Visit my ongoing MGB Rustoration log: over HERE

Or my Wankel powered Locost log : over HERE

And don't forget my Cushman Truckster resto Locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=17766

Cars have springs, you tie the car down by the wheels only and let the car's suspension absorb the energy.

Well........ I can tell you a scared the bejesus out of a guy once when my (empty) non sprung 1/2 trailer took a bounce and went twisted on the tow ball at back country highway speeds
I'm willing to bet he had to stop and clean his pants because it managed to lift the offside wheel about shoulder height and he was oncoming traffic. ..
I know he left black marks on the road

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"There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one.
For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ..." Randall Garrett

Everyway I envisioned it working I could see it flexing in the middle and later having issues. When I watched the video I was somewhat mollified, but I am still concerned about the flex in the middle.

I see that the very long lever arm would take a lot of the strain off at the attachment point, but that would still concern me.

No springs are a NO WAY JOSE! deal. It doesn't matter if the car has springs, the trailer will still skip all over the road, loaded & unloaded.

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mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

How about locking pins in double shear where the black circles are and a bump stop (repeated on the unseen spar)?
Tightening the cable to put the stops well into compression then inserting the pins and relaxing the cable would load the pins/stops and spread the stress across three points.

edit>>>>> it helps when I add the pic I'm referring to (ignore the blue circle):BH:

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"There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one.
For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ..." Randall Garrett

I've got to assume that they are rubber torsion axles, which are awesome.

Regarding the torsional flex of the arms, I can see that being mostly eliminated if there was a reinforced plate on the underside of the arms to the front of the wheels that then could be bolted to the bed. If a cross beam was located at that point under the bed then this would tie the two sides together, preventing the tendency to camber out under load.

I think this is a great design and works as a solution for those of us with a small garage - the trailer could just be a ramp the car is parked on - no need to get separate ramps out etc. when going for a drive.

My mind has figured out a tandem axle configuration. Might be time to buy some lego technic to try out a scale model....

Back when I was racing FF I had trouble getting my car onto its trailer because of ground clearance, then one week-end the Formula Atlantic guys were at the track too and I saw that they had "plate" transport wheels for their cars...they were large diameter round alloy plates that they could roll the cars around on, lots of ground clearance for ramps and they significantly narrowed the cars making for easier access in their enclosed trailers. I was impressed so I made a set of "wheels" for my FF out of 3 layers of 1/2" plywood laminated together. It worked great, easy to load on the trailer and no side clearance issues either. I did place some safety blocks under the suspension once loaded to protect against a wood wheel breaking while towing. It was a cheaper solution than fixing or exchanging the trailer....well, plywood was cheap back then, cheaper than it is now anyways.

Bill

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Bill H
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

I've also seen the technique you describe in use. One limitation you can run into while using it with full fendered cars is clearance for suspension movement during transport. On a locost it would probably depend on how tightly the tires are packaged to the fenders.

The design pictured above does get me thinking. While I've worked with other tilting trailers before, I don't recall ever seeing one that does it in quite this way. I'm definitely going to have to do a bit more thinking when it comes time to build a trailer for my toy, I'm a big fan of 4 wheeled trailers for even moderate sized loads (especially when it comes to trailer tire failures at speed), and with even a light car's weight as the load, I would consider brakes to be essential for my long term trailer.

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.. in the world

Hi guys ..suspension wise i would say it probably has duratorque suspension either with or without brakes

Kiwi Dave

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I USE TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND ..BUT MY BRAINS KEPT FALLING OUT