Wheelspan

6 WHEELERS / WHEELSPANS UP TO 18’ 0”

A Job-Rated version of the 1-ton P300 with lower 6,000 lbs. GVW and the same 104 in. and 126 in. wheelspans.

Engines and gearbox acted as cross-members for a massive frame that carried the Silver Bullet’s 6,000lb on a wheelbase of 185 inches. This huge wheelspan was found disadvantageous after the Sunbeam crew decanted their Bullet at Daytona Beach in March 1930 with the aim of reaching 250mph, the car’s 300-mph design speed being held in reserve.

We’re already pushing the envelope of acceptability with a longer fork, the wheelspan and the sloping top tube.

In the 1920s the firm had produced just two models of car: a large Straight Eight, designed to compete with Rolls-Royce (which it signally failed to do); and, from 1925, the Trojan, a solid-wheeled ‘utility car’ with a wheelspan that exactly matched that of most of Britain tramlines, triggering a number of horrific accidents and unintended diversions.

The rhomboidal design of the Mk I, with the tracks running around the outside of the hull, meant that it had an equivalent “wheelspan” to a wheeled vehicle with 60-foot (18 m) wide wheels!

Longer wheelspan and wider axles increase the overall stability and decrease agility through difficult, narrow trial gates. […] Slight bending of the chassis, for example a few millimeters in the center of a 48-stud long wheelspan, is acceptable; […]