Marcos Maniacs

Hi I am in South Africa. 

The Pic's are of the Wooden chassis 3L V6 Marcos which belongs to a 
friend of mine. I shot my mouth off when he said decent headers 
could not be fitted to his car. Bugger!!

Anyway here is what I ended up with. He is a technophobe and has 
just a vague idea of what the internet is (similarly a racing line)

He competes in local Historic class.

I am not sure of the geometry of any other Marcos, but there are 
some points which may need attention.

All the Ford axles in SA have offset pinions (+ - 40mm) yet the 
Marcos tunnel is central in the chassis. This car had the pinion 
centered and hence the axle offset by +- 40mm.

I cut up a standard axle and rebuilt it to centralise the pinion.

The other point of concern can be verified if you stand on top of 
the car in front of the windscreen and turn the steering wheel to 
full lock (or less). The Ackerman angles are completely screwy. I 
believe this to be the cause of the trunnion failures mentioned in 
various sources (amongst other prolems)

I have lengthened the steering arms +- 20mm and offset the tie-rod 
pickups +- 30mm inwards. Others may vary. The loads generated by the 
standard setup
on the trunnions must be enormous. This also sorted the heavy 
steering.

I have also corrected the angularity in the rear panhard etc.

Front subframe captive nuts were also crushing into timber.(really 
small load area) Easy to pick up with corner weights. Had to remove 
innner front fender wells to install doubler plates.

Very interesting and clever design chassis. A real fun challenge. 
Almost a pity it had to be spoilt by a steel subframe up front!!

Thanks for the build manuals etc.
Cheers for now.

JV