Wanted - front suspension arms for 240/260

[RLY240]

I'm looking for a pair of lower control arms and radius rods to suit S30. Hoping to modify for camber and castor and want to preserve my current ones as standard.

Any help appreciated.

Roger.

 

 

[bryan3976]

hey mate i have a set of lower control arms pm me for more info

[Whittie]

Hey Roger,

 

I hate to bring a downer on this, but there is very little you can do to standard suspension in terms of camber, and even less in terms of castor, without making modifications that weaken the components and can cause failure.

 

I learnt the hard way and was lucky not to have totalled my car when a TC rod snapped at 200kph on full brakes because I threaded it in an attempt to get castor adjustment.

 

Camber is a tab easier, you can re-drill the cross member and move the pivot point and you can also get a set of adjustable mounting bolts, but you still only get sort of 1.5 degrees neg camber.

 

If you're really interested in adjustability, your best bet is to go with rose-jointed suspension products. Techno Toy Tuning have a great range of products with rose joints that is all heavily over-engineered and fully adjustable to suit your needs. And for what it costs to get new aftermarket suspension from the US with the dollar at the moment, you'll only just be out of pocket compared to sourcing new original suspension bits, cleaning them up and replacing ball joints and then modifying them.

 

Ultimately it's up to you, but I would steer clear of altering original components as it can seriously effect the integrity of the components and at the end of the day, there is nothing more precious to anybody than themselves, don't put your life at risk.

[RLY240]

I learnt the hard way and was lucky not to have totalled my car when a TC rod snapped at 200kph on full brakes because I threaded it in an attempt to get castor adjustment.

 

Camber is a tab easier, you can re-drill the cross member and move the pivot point and you can also get a set of adjustable mounting bolts, but you still only get sort of 1.5 degrees neg camber.

 

Hi Whittie, thanks for the heads up, always happy to learn from someone else's mistakes!

I already run the eccentric bushes in the LCA as my class doesn't allow modified pick-up points but modified arms are fine.  I have a friend with motorsport arms from the 70's that I am planning on copying.

As for the TC rods, I thought they needed to be longer not shorter on the Zed for additional castor?

Those aftermarket front and rear arms are on the wish list along with CR gears, LSD, webbers, 8000rpm, alloy brakes should I stop now?

 

Cheers, Roger

[Whittie]

That's correct, you need to push the TC rods forward to get more castor. The issue with the way the rod is designed is that there is no way to do this without threading the rod and using nuts to change the pivot point on the rod and push the control arm forwards. This puts a threaded rod in bending and because threads are stress points, with continued bending up/down as the suspension moves you will snap the rod. This is what happened to me.

 

You then also run into the issue with binding the eccentric bushes on the control arm because you will be forcing the mounting point on the control arm to be unaligned with the cross member and thus push against the 'square' bush. That's really why you need rose joints, to allow free movement forwards and backwards of the control arm, even as it moves through its range of movement up and down the castor will change and there will be stresses binding up the eccentric bush.

 

If you need something to look original, Stuart Wilkins in sydney has a custom tc rod that is made of a much thicker steel rod that is safe to thread. It is the same dimensions as standard, just a thicker rod so it looks standard and also complies for the offroad rallies in South Africa, I'm sure you'd get away with it in your class. You still get stuck with the issue of binding the eccentric bush on the control arm and also you need to modify the control arm where the TC rod mounts so that it doesn't bind there either as you try and push the control arm forward.

 

 

As for the wishlist: it looks identical to mine!! 

 

 

Tom.

[RLY240]

Hi Tom, I also run a nylon/alloy ball and cup at the TC rod mount in place of the rubber / nolothane bushes as this takes some of the bending load off the rod.  This mount survived a crash a few years back that bent the TC rod to a neat 45 deg.

I'm not after large changes just trying to get a little more adjustment without breaking the bank.

Roger

 

[Whittie]

Looks like you're all over it then!

 

I just got worried that you might have integrity issues and didn't want to find out down the track that you'd had a crash due to modified bits, but I see that's not an issue any more.

 

I'll stop hijacking this thread now, I'm sure there are people in Adelaide who can help you find your bits and pieces!

[Ledge]

Hi Roger

Peter Hall will definetly have some and he is quiet

resonable on price aswell, I have got a few things of him before.

He will also have some good tips on how to get more camber etc.

Ive just changed  my arms to Arizona stuff but the front arms that where

on the car have rose joints so they will be no good to you if you need to keep

origonal looking.

 

Ps are you going to Mt Alma ?

Regards

Paul