Summary

00:00 - Is there some math/correct way to set up adjustable watts link solid rear? Yeah so what Jesse's asking there is about a watt's linkage which is a style of axle location that you get with a solid rear axle, as in a beam axle, something you get in maybe an old school car, something like an AE86 or something like that.
00:17 From factory, a lot of those cars have something what's called a panhard rod which is essentially just a constant rod, one single rod that goes from one position on the live axle up to some point on the chassis and that's what's giving the lateral location of that whole rear axle.
00:33 Now the downside of a panhard rod is that you always get, the axle only really goes through one direction, because it's all going through an arc, it means that for bump the axle will go to one side and for droop the axle will tend to move to the other side of the car.
00:48 A watts linkage gets rid of some of that by keeping the axle in the centreline.
00:52 Now when you've asked about the right way to set up a watts link there, so assuming it's been designed properly in the first place, the two probably biggest metrics there when it comes to a watts linkage is that you want both watts linkages, both arms to be equal length and you also want that angle to be equal as well.
01:09 The idea behind that is as the axle goes up and down, as long as the angles and length are the same and they're rotating on that centre portion of the diff or alternatively on the chassis depending on the setup, then that axle's going to stay in the centreline of the car so obviously you want to centre this thing in the centre of the car to start with but then after that it's just a case of having all of your linkages set at the right angles and lengths and then that's really all there is to it for getting a watts linkage to be set up properly.
01:35 Obviously, if you were doing things like roll centre changes and stuff, there's more stuff you can change there but just from the baseline of getting the watts linkage set up properly, that's all you need to do to start with.
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