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For convenience and minor weight savings I'm wondering if there is any real penalty to having the lower trailing arms at a shallow angle rather than strait to the rear as seems to be standard?
Seems it might marginally help with limiting sideways movement, which is really the upper links job, but would it also cause any sort of binding or other issues?
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I think I can mock it up in CAD and see how much the arc wants to pull it inward.
If the arm tries to pull it inward, it won't work at all because the axle can't move up for bumps, both sides would try to pull it inward. So it is fine to have the lower arms at an angle in top view, but the pivots at the front of the arm need to be mounted at an angle on the arm so the pivots are perpendicular to the car centerline. If you grabbed the trailing arm and rotated it in a full circle, that circle must line up with the car centerline.
So if you were using a bushing, you need to weld the trailing arm on to the bushing at an angle and the bolt of the bushing needs to be perpendicular to the car centerline.
Are you going to use a Panhard rod or use the upper link to keep the axle centered? You want the pivot of the centering link as low as possible. You can make one of the lower trailing arms into a wishbone so it does the centering. That was done on some of the Super 7s.