Hickman and Chassis

[trw99]

At the time the Elan was designed Chapman was using doughnuts in his race cars.

Tim

[Mazzini]

Well its good he chose to use donuts over Cvs due to problems on the Mini Cvs as the donuts never had any catastrophic failures did they

cheers
Rohan

[alan.barker]

First cooper S was 1071 70bhp first to win the Monte Carlo Rally
1275 76bhp
970 ???bhp
Sorry went off track
Alan

[Andy8421]

At the time the Elan was designed Chapman was using doughnuts in his race cars.

Tim

https://static.goodwood.com/lgrrc/2014/09/am1t9844_14092014.jpg?width=940

[s28ven]

Now that is interesting. Vince's clip states that they chose doughnuts not because - as others have asserted - CV joints were not available at the time, but because of cost.

So who actually designed the chassis might be a matter of opinion. Didn't Chapman start out designing bridges? Basic stuff for him I would have thought. £10 each! How much did they charge for a replacement chassis back then?

Rotoflex are clever and a neat solution but probably not intended for Elan power and performance.
I don't think CVs were available in the early 60s? Nasty old Hookes were of course, which could have been used as a top link and eliminated the need for a full strut.

In 1974 they were charging £115 for a chassis.

D985B38F-7504-486B-B42E-CCA1C64F7B0A.jpeg (74.26 KiB) Viewed 393 times