Broken Panhard bar

[Norm Peterson]

Actually, the S197 coupes are fairly rigid torsionally - around 15,500 ft*lb/degree or about 35% stiffer than a late SN95 coupe. That's also more than double the S197 convertible stiffness, and well over four times that of an SN95 convertible.

I don't have any Fox numbers, but I'm sure they're less than the SN95's. Going back a bit further, the Maverick was under 3300 ft*lb/degree, which was probably representative of most similar size cars of that era.

Greatly improved chassis stiffness was probably the best side effect of crash performance requirements.


Norm

 

[ChewyR]

Is the panhard brace really even needed? For normal street duty?

 

[Norm Peterson]

Absolutely yes.

Without it, there is going to be way more bending of the passenger side bracket. This will greatly increase fatigue effects at its attachment to the basic car structure. Kind of like bending a paper clip a few times until it breaks, except that in this car situation it'll most likely take a lot more than two or three design-basis stress cycles or a few hundred cycles to maybe a third of design basis stress before a crack starts to develop. I used to do fatigue analysis in a day job, but I don't have enough information about this specific situation to speak in more than very general terms.


Norm