Trying to Grow Legs

One of the most important pieces to the puzzle is the suspension and road wheels. Everything is riding on them, literally. Early on I made the decision to use as many parts "off the shelf" as possible. The trick is to know what is usable/economical and what is not. My plan is to use a 20" cart wheel as the base for the road wheels. My intention was to fashion a hub cap to go over them to give them a solid appearance. In reality, I am going to need to fill in the spokes (at least partially) to stiffen up the rubber thread in addition to the "hub cap". Hindsight is that I would have less time and money involved in making them from scratch then modifying an existing wheel. One other thing that was disappointing is the size. Officially listed as a 20" wheel; however, it actually is 18.5" in diameter.

Of course the wheels are only as good as the suspension they are attached to. Luckily for me, the Hetzer's suspension is very straight forward and no frills. The road wheel swing arms are in pairs facing away from each other. On top of the road wheel swing arm, directly above the road wheel spindle, rests one end of an elliptical leaf spring. The spring is anchored to the hull in between the road wheel swing arms and can pivot.

While this setup is not nearly as clean cut as a torsion bar; it is something that I am able to fabricate without having to get assistance from a machine shop. I basically took the original design and scaled it down and modified it with over the counter parts.

An interesting aspect of my design is the spring resting on the swing arm past the road wheel spindle. This will add mechanical advantage to the spring thereby "stiffening" it. This allowed my to use a smaller less expensive spring.