Ferrari GTO Rear Suspension

[martsky]

I am just muddling along with the Fujimi GTO kit.  Lots of nice fiddly bits and well shaped body.  The rear suspension has me confused, however.  The differential housing is strangely devoid of detail and appears a bit large.  It also has what looks like a Watts link intended to attach the bell crank to the rear of the housing and also mount the link rods to the two leaf springs.  I can find no reference photos of this device and also cannot see how it could possibly function.  The Watts links I have personally (in a past life) fabricated have either had the bell crank attached to the differential housing with the outer links attached to the chassis or the bell crank attached to the chassis and the outer links attached to the axle tubes.  Either way you can change the suspension roll center by moving the bell crank mount up or down.  Does anyone have experience with the configuration included with the kit?

As an aside, I hated solid rear axles so much that all my later cars were rear engined with independent A-arm suspensions.

[NOBLNG]

I would think the outer ends should be attached to the frame. The best pic I can find is of the 1:18 scale CMC model. It does not look like they are attached to the leaf springs.

[Ace-Garageguy]

A Watts-link setup would of course not function with the bellcrank on the diff housing and the link ends attached to the leaf springs.

In that case, the entire Watts assembly would simply move up and down with the axle, accomplishing nothing.

I have the kit, but it's 2000 miles away, so I can't check it at this time.

One unfortunate problem with model car tooling designers is that some of them really don't understand the function of what they're looking at, so odd problems like this crop up...though without looking at the kit myself, I can't make any kit-specific comments or recommendations.

[martsky]

The Fujimi part definitely attaches to pins on top of the rear leaf springs. Greg's photo is probably correct so the Fujimi ends just need to be shortened up a bit.

Thanks.