Different Front Suspension Idea

[doubter123]

I was thinking and I thought up a different front suspension design where instead of shocks there are springs attached to levers that are pushed up by the A Arms.

Has anyone tried this and in the very poor paint picture the springs are the diagonal lines from the frame to the lever pushed up by the a-arms travel.

So will this idea work I'm just seeing if there alternatives to shocks which can be expensive or hard to come by and the types of springs I'm thinking of are quite stiff such as these

 

[Doc Sprocket]

Cantilevered suspension. a tried, tested, and true concept. Used in multiple applications and highly tuneable.

 

[Shadow9]

In this application, the springs are stretched rather than compressed, in order to absorb the wheel travel. Does stretching instead of compressing a spring pose a greater breakage hazard?

This setup has 3 pivot points per wheel, not counting the spring itself. A simpler design with only 1 pivot point would look like a modern f1 car with inboard suspension where the parallelograms in your design are replaced with triangles and the springs are mounted well above the steering assembly. On f1 cars, they still use upper and lower a arms to maintain the same camber, but on a kart it may be possible to design a simpler inboard spring setup. I believe the challenge would be avoiding binding between the relatively rigid steering assembly and the suspension assembly needing more travel. At a minimum, the inboard spring design with triangular structures in place of a arms could work well in the rear where steering is a nonissue.

 

[doubter123]

yes the springs are stretched and while this seems more complicated I feel that it would be pretty simple to build and I'm just thinking of staying with this I think I can picture what you are talking about but I'm not sure if I get it.

 

[Doc Sprocket]

I'm sorry, I did not study your design closely enough. It is not what I thought it was.
I have two "complaints" about your concept. 1) No damping. Could get kinda bouncy, may actually make control harder. 2) Trying to engineer downtravel (droop) may prove quite difficult.

That said, there is a lot of possibility for fine tuning the spring rate, and it is pretty straightforward. Certainly, it will be more comfortable than no springs at all. I say build it! Very unique, if nothing else!

 

[doubter123]

Yeah I was worrying about the dampening but if it proves too extreme I will simply switch to regular atv shocks but for now this will be cheaper and pretty unique and who doesn't like something unique