T e Iter ational Journal of Motorsport Technology "Powered by Ferrari" The essentials of lubricating Marketing drives new A1 GP your engine explained chassis and engine package In,dep,endent thinker ario Andretti was Klaus Arning is not a name widely associated with racecar . going to kill h,imSelf. that's what they engineering yet without him Ford's motor racing programme in were saying. The _ handling of the the 1960s would have been a very different place indeed MHonker II Can-Am car (see lead pic above) was atrocious and Klaus Arning is not a name Coyotes. If Aming had had his Andretti, being Andretti. was that resonates with car and way, the or,iginal production trying to wring every last ounce on the right front coil shock was racing enthusiasts in the same Mustang would have come of speed out of a machine that considerably longer than the way ·as Zora Arkus-Duntov, equipped with an :independent was at best unpredictable. Paul others. 'The what? You mean the another foreign-born engineer rear suspension, too, Carroll Newman's name may have been rubber doughnut that prevents who worked in Detroit. but SheJby asked him to make his on the car but. in reality, it was a coil shock from bottoming what Arkus-Duntov did for the Mustang Gn50 handle like a a semHactory Ford team and out? Are you kidding?' Someone Corvette, Arning did for the racecar, Dan GLimey consulted Andretti was a Ford factory produced a razor blade ilnd duly Mustang I prototype, the Shelby with him regularly and AJ Foyt driver. It just wouldn't do if shortened the jounce bumper Mustang Gn50, the Ford GT40, - rarely given to compliments Andretti killed himself. to match the other three, then the 42} Cobra II, and' AJ Foyt's - called him 'brilliant'. Fellow Word reached Dearborn, AndreW did some further laps and the following morning a and returned to the pits smiling. neatly dressed man with a slight The Len Bailey-designed Honker German accent was seen in the II was still too much of a dog paddock at Laguna Seca, site to chall'enge the semi-factory of that weekend's Can-Am race. Chevrolet team (aka Team The rumour was tha't he was a McLaren), but at least it no longer suspension engineer from Ford, threatened to launch its driver named Klaus Arning. It di·dn't into the hedges every time he take the visitor 10hg to discover put the suspension under the the problem. ihe jounce bumper slightest load. the guy W'as extremely inventive. He W'as alW'ays thinking Arning and his homemade roaC!ster, with independent suspensioo 1111 round October 2008· www.ra.cecar-englneering.com NDSU3HT KLAUS ARNI'NG Ford engineer Chuck Ca,Tig said a mission, as there were not Borgward Auto Company, where of him: 'Some people [at Ford] enough aeroplanes. Instead, he he had apprenticed before the didn't like him because he was was sent to Leningrad, on the war. In 1950, he participated in U The patent on kind of a showman. But the guy Eastern Front, where his ankle a 'professional people exchange' ..Arning's four-link was extremely inventive, He was was shattered when the vehicle programme that took him to IRS has been referenced always thinking: he was riding in drove over a Detroit to work one year for by GM for the Corvette, landmine. He was among the last the Ford Motor Company. He by Porsche for the 928 and by Mercedes PROBLEM SOLVER to be evacuated. returned to Germany in 1951, Benz. To get around the Like so many creative people, After the war, he built the car and resumed work at Borgward. patent, each installed Klaus Arning was a dreamer. He he had been dreaming about for In 1953, while test driving a a tie rod, or fifth link, worked out ideas in his head first, so long, from scrap DKW-Lloyd second experimental car of his creating what is called then put them down on paper. and BMW parts. He shaped and own design, he crashed and was a five-link suspension, Before passing away in February fitted the various pieces together thrown through the windscreen, to achieve the same of 2000, he said in an interview: in his attic, then brought them the unfortunate event being toe-steer Arning's IRS 'When I designed my tirst little down to the street where he followed by nine months in achieved with four car bdck in Germany, with all the assembled them into a car. The traction in a nearby hospital. links. He also talked axles and all the suspension stuff small, lightweight two-seater By then he was married and an about this in the 1993 interview. 'They [GM, that I did for it I used engine had fully independent front and expectant father. 'My dad was Mercedes Benz and parts that were tossed off, like rear suspensions, characteristics already in the hospital waiting for PorscheJ circumvented an engine belt stamp and die. I that would appear 15 years later me when I was born: his first son, the patent by doing went to the scrapheap, got them in his designs for the Mustang I Mike, says with a slight chuckle. what anybody could out and that's how I made all my prototype. He was one of the few In 1954, Arning packed up his have done all along pivots. All these designs I family and emigrated to - steer the wheel axle make in my head', sitting the United States, where to get your toe-steer in Sunday school or Suspension was he applied for a job with independent of what wherever, being grilled his pass1icn all of the Detroit auto it does going fore and aft. That was the clever by the preacher.' In the makers. Each made him part of the invention. It 1960s, he was Ford's problem people to own a car in post-war an offer. '1 should have taken the doesn't need steering solver on all matters relating Germany, and probably the only job with General Motors because arms, it does it anyway.' to suspension. In short, he was student attending University they had more money for more Ford's suspension guru. in Bremen to own one. As fate half-baked projects: he said later. Arning was born in Bremen, would have it the car was Instead, he joined Ford and was Germany, in 1921. Before the stolen and involved in a police placed in Advanced Suspension war, he put money down on an chase that was covered live by and Chassis, where he moved up NSU 50cc motorcycle, fabricating Frankfurt radio. It did not end Quickly to become department a mechanism to convert it from well for Arning's hand-crafted supervisor. It was where he hand to foot shift, but never took car though, which was destroyed wanted to be. Suspension was his delivery. The Nazi government when the car thief crashed it. passion, the stuff of his dreams, intervened and ordered the wheels moving through jounce factory to re-tool for wartime PEOPLE EXCHANGE and rebound, body roll affecting production. He subsequently Ih 1949, Arning graduated with a camber, toe-in becoming toe-out, trained as a Luftwaffe fighter degree in mechanical engineering causing roll oversteer under pilot but never actually flew and went to work for the some conditions, rOll understeer under other conditions - so many angles, so many forces acting on them, so many possibilities. INDEPENDENT REAR SUSPENSION In 1958, it came to him - a four­ link independent rear suspension that acted consistently under all conditions, where you could tailor steer characteristics for handling that related to toe-in and toe-out wheel movements. This is how he described his suspension several years later, in a 1983 interview with Jerry Heasley of Mustang Monthly magazine: 'In the four-link IRS [independent rear suspension], the ~teer action is built in. Looking at it from the rear view, it was like any other double-wishbone sus pens ion; Arning's team was responsible for re-working the suspension on Ford's GT40, prior to the cars' period of however, the lower pivot of the domination in European endurance racing lower arm at the wheel hub is w-ww.r3cecar-engineering.co • October Z008 not parallel to the ground, but Indy Car was changed over from inclined forward/upward. This symmetrical to asymmetrical very inclination of the hinge axis suspension, bunW steer became produces a steer effect that is a problem. In 1964 and 1965, more pronounced as you incline as tyres grew wider, the the axis further away from a problem became more acute. parallel. In pictures that have 8y 1966, with tyres wider still been published of a Mustang and asymmetrical suspension I. GT40 and 427 Cobra rear commonplace, Ford stepped in. suspension, as well as of the Word went out to all Ford racers experimental IRS for a potential - bring your car to Dearborn. First production Mustang, you will find up was AJ Foyt, who was having this lower pivot axis (hinge elxis) his worst season ever, driving inclined as such and not pelrallel a Lotus 38. 'I remember when to the ground, as it was in the we got in Foyt's Lotus: says Bob then-current grand prix-type R.iley, who was with Kar Kraft at rear suspensions. This inclination the time, 'the bump steer was produces, by the very nature of terrible. We could get rid of it in the geometry, a steer effect that front but on the independent counters the inherent wrong rear cars, we didn't exactly know steer effect associated with anti­ An example of Arning's four-link IRS with built-in steer action how to get rid of it: The solution squat features, so for once we was to add positive camber to were able to have two features As newly promoted manager Englishman, Eric Broadly.