Sydneykid

You don't need 2 AFM's, you could use one and parrallel up the output. Which the ECU does internally anyway. Cheers Gary

Hose clamp = non standard pump Cheers Gary

Not quite, they are designed to be adjusted in tandem, ie; for camber, hence the inner pivot points on upper control arm are parrallel to the inner guards. When aiming for more caster the outer pivot point on the upper control arm needs to be moved rearwards, so the inner pivot points are no longer parrallel to the inner guards. The solution is for the bushes and/or eccentric crush tubes to be offset to compensate. I tested the offset eccentric crush tubes first because they are easily machined up. But the geometry is such that the bushes themselves have to accommodate the misalignment. Those were machined out of a slug of polyurethane, which is OK for testing, but not cost effective for selling. For production volumes you would needot have them moulded in the usual fashion, that's where the lack of potential volume would be a killer. Cheers Gary

The problem is guys buy the aftermarket arms in the blind belief that they are better in every way, when the truth is they aren't. They take the arms out of the packet, there are no warnings or instructions so they go ahead and whack them on the car. After taking the standard arms off and chucking them in the bin without even looking at them, let alone measuring them. They then jump straight into adjusting the upper control arms to adjust the camber. When they get the camber they want most jump in the car and drive off. They don't know that they have just screwed up the toe quite a bit and added pile of bump steer. All they know is the car handles like shyte, has no rear traction, changes line after every bump and is very nervous in the rear under brakes. So they take it along to the nearest tyre shop, they do wheel alignments, so they can fix it. The average tyre shop guy only knows about toe, so he adjusts it. Bingo you now have a car with a bucket load of bump steer. The owner then either lives with it in the false belief that its supposed to be like that or he tries to fix it himself, which 99% of the time results in even worse geometry. It's around about then that he jumps on the forum and asks for a good suspension workshop, take a look at the number of posts on that subject. The guy then brings this messed up pile of geometry to me or someone like me and I have to fix it. If it happens to be a model of car that I know the standard control arm lengths then I simply take the arms out of the car and adjust them to the standard length. Why do I have to take them out of the car, well 99% of the time the guy or the tyre shop flunky has wound the adjuster all the one way and they are not centralised. So I have to take them out of the car to put the adjuster in a useable position. When I present the guy with the bill the first question he asks is why did charge him for taking the arms out of the car when they are on car adjustable? The next question he asks is why am I charging him more than the arms cost to buy to do a simple wheel alignment, simple my ass. That's why I take it upon myself to try and educate the guys before they go out and buy something for $200 that can cost them $1000 by the time it's right. I warn them about maintenance and cracking and short life spans. The stuff that the sellers don't want to know about and sure as hell won't tell them. So, do the instructions that you supply with your control arms, 1. Tell the installer to measure the standard control arm lengths and adjust the aftermarketr control arms to the same length before fitting them to the car 2. Give a lifing for the spherical joints, with an inspection schedule 3. Provide a maintenance schedule for the spherical joints with a suitable lubricant supplied or at the vey least recommended 4. Come with instructions on how to install and adjust the arms 5. Have detailed instructions on how to adjust the arms in tandem to achieve the desired camber and toe whilst minimising bump steer 6. Display a warning that fitting aftermarket control arms to a road registered car is not legal in all states of Australia and doesn't comply with the ADR's If they do then they will be the first that I have ever seen. Cheers Gary

For about 6 months now I have been trying some eccentric crush tubes in the inner pivot points of an R33/34 front upper control arm. It's based on a design that I have used in double wishbone Hondas for many years. Moves the top outer pivot point rearwards enough to get 6 to 7 degrees caster without excessive drive shaft angles. I don't know that it will ever go into mass production as there probably isn't enough demand for it. It's R32's that have the real issue with their narrow spaced upper control arm inner pivots. That's why they chew through bushes and spherical bearings in a rapid fashion. No easy solution there, that's why Nissan changed the design in the R33/34's. Cheers Gary

350 lbs/inch (6.3 kg/mm) Nope, the formula is complex and requires some knowledge to use correctly. Plus it took many years to perfect, so no one is going to give away that sort of intellectual property. Cheers Gary

Let me start of with this, I haven't knocked any product, go back and read what I posted and show me where I said anything bad about the products themselves. Some of them actually look OK, well enough engineered using some quality parts. The product itself might well be OK and not fail, what I have simply pointed out is the maintenance issues with any spherical bearing and more importantly the alignment difficulty involved in using infinitely adjustable suspension arms. I have lost count of how many hours I have spent aligning cars when guys stick adjustable control arms in their car, end up with geometry all over the place and have far worse handling than what they had before they spent their hard earned. The fact is there are not many people around the place who have the know how, experience, equipment and time to fix the resulting geometry issues. And if they do have them they charge appropriately. My experience with spherical bearings has been gained in the course of race engineering many cars in most categories of racing over many years. That's using some of the best around, from the original Rose Joints (yes I have been around that long), to Aurora, Endura and QA1 etc. Whether I spend $20 or $200 on a spherical bearing the fact is they aren't suitable for an application where there is no maintenance schedule, they aren't lifed appropriately and the buyer has no idea what trouble he can easily get into and how much it's going to cost to get out of it. So it's all very well to engineer a good product, but selling them to someone who has no idea how to maintain them and how to use them properly is the problem. The seller doesn't have those issues, it's the poor aligner who has to bail the buyer out of the shyt when it hits the fan. Then cop the complaints when you tell them how much it costs to fix the problems. Or when the chassis and/or subframe cracks because there is no cushion in the joints to absorb the impacts. Compared to the other issues, the cost of the product itself is irrelevant. I'm totally over telling guys that it's going to cost more than the product costs to align it after they have fitted it. Forget about product warranty, what we need is someone who sells adjustable control arms who has the courage to pay for the alignment to be done properly, that would really be standing behind what they make/sell. Cheers Gary

Knurled bolt, rotating the bolt head turns the eccentric crush tube. Cheers Gary

Enough for most people to notice the loss of traction. As per above, I would always suggest adjusting the upper control arms and traction rods in tandem. Cheers Gary

I use moly grease. To lubricate them you don't have to remove the bush itself, just the crush tube. Tap, tap with hammer and punch or a squeeze in the vice with a suitable diameter socket as a pusher. What you are lubricating is the surface area of the bush where the crush tube rotates, not where the bush fits in the arm. I usually do the race cars once a year, but if they get sand trapped then I do it before the next meeting. Chrome molly grease again. From the Aurora rod end instructions; Lubrication: A metal on metal bearing, when regularly misaligned or oscillated in operation, will require lubrication. A lightly loaded bearing may be run with minimal lubrication, relying on a boundary, or very thin, lubricant film. More heavily loaded, or frequently misaligned bearings require a film of lubricant between the ball and race, to prevent galling, or micro welding of the two surfaces. A sign of insufficient lubrication on a used metal on metal bearing is noticeable discoloration of the ball, either to black or brown, on the wear surfaces. The big sphericals, for example the ones we use on the lower control arms, have grease nipples for inside out regreasing. Most of the suspension arm spherical bearings fall into the category of "more heavily loaded" as above. Cheers Gary

Out of date, the better polyurethane bushes are internaly knurled to retain grease and provide smooth rotation for the crush tube. "stock bushing" is that polyurethane? If so, you either have unknurled bushes or you haven't greased them enough? I hope you are up on the maintenance schedule, remove, clean and grease after every race meeting. Othwerwise they wear very fast, knock like crazy and allow uncontrolled movement and lock up binding. That's not going tight, that's 100% locked up. If you do any road driving I trust that you have dust seals on every joint, a few weeks of road grime and you will be looking for new sphericals. Don't get me wrong, we use sphericals all the time in the Sports Sedans and the average service and replacement cost is over $1K per year. That's doing it on the cheap, the bill for sphericals for the 2 car V8Supercar team was over $5K per season. Sphericals workvery well if sized and specified correctly, maintained properly and replaced regularly, just make sure you're up to it. Cheers Gary

Steve Cramp Manta Racing Services Pty Ltd (08) 8234 8688 Unit11 4 Deacon Ave Richmond SA 5033 http://www.mantaracing.com.au/ Cheers Gary

Sorry I don't carry a pile of catalogues around with me all the time Andrew and Ralph are good choices, you should also consider Centreline. Cheers Gary

Yes, for Whiteline Plus (nee Noltec) No, for Whiteline Flat Out That;s why I use Whiteline Plus No, the bushes go in the arms. Yes, there are bushes in the hub and they can be replaced if you need more adjustment ie; rediculously low cars have too much negative camber to be fixed for road use with just the kits in the inners, so you can use them in the outers as well. Obviously in race cars we want to remove as much compliance as possible so I always replace the outers (in the hub) as well. Cheers Gary

I don't use them, I prefer the eccentric crush tube in the standard arms for the reasons I posted above. The KTA117 are a better solution for a road car than arms with spherical joints, but you probably won't like them that much if the wheel aligner gives you a bill for $700 for adjusting out the bump steer. Actually worse than that, would be getting a bill for $50 for a wheel alignment and then find you have huge bump steer problems and hence no traction for acceleration, braking or cornering. Which is worse, poor for lack of money or poor handling? I guess I should point out that replacement bushes in the standard arms are legal and replacement arms aren't. Cheers Gary

It depends on how experienced the person doing it is in correcting bump steer and whether or not they have a bump steer gauge. If they are inexperienced and trying to do it on wheel aligner then it may take even longer. Rear bump steer is a really big problem, it affects acceleration, braking and cornering. If you ignore it you will be chasing handling and power down problems with springs, shocks and static wheel alignment endlessly. And you will never cure the handling ills until you eliminate the bump steer. To give you some idea, we corrected the bump steer on the back of John P's 300ZX and next time out it was 1.5 seconds faster at Wakefiled. That's a car with big slicks, lots of grip and the rest of the suspension system was more than reasonable. The driver's first comment was it didn't feel like it was going to bight him every time he turned the steering wheel. That's how important it is. Don't think it's just related to circuit cars either, I did a drag R33GTST a while back and it was 0.2 secs faster to 60' and 0.5 secs faster overall. with not one extra horsepower. Cheers Gary

Have you tried a search, this has been done heaps of times. Short answer, you buy alloy conversion collars, try the For Sale section and use an RB26 or RB20 fuel rail, done. If you can't find them in the For Sale section, Hi Octane sell some expensive Japanese brand conversion collars, GReddy if I remember rightly. Cheers Gary

It's impossible for a rear strut brace on R33/34's to "stabilized the rear through cornering". In R32/33/34's the control arms are attached to the rear subframe not the body, so sticking a strut brace between 2 parts of the body doesn't do a single thing for maintaining the rigidity of the mounting for the upper and lower control arms. So the suspension angles, camber, toe and bump steer benefit nothing from the addition. All it achieves is the linking of the top mounts of the spring and shock units, which in a double wishbone car contributes nothing to maintaining the suspension geometry. This is especially so in an R33/34's where the parcel shelf support structure already does a good job of linking the strut tops. In R32's, where the strut tops are mounted lower, at the inner guards, and are therefore not joined by the parcel shelf, there is a slightly better argument for a rear strut brace, but even then the effect is miniscule. Unnoticeable by even the most sensitive of drivers. I should mention that this is not the case with the front strut brace on R32/33/34's, because the front upper control arms are mounted to the body ie; the inner guards. So linking the inner guards adds noticeably to maintaining the rigidity of the mounting for the upper control arms. Technically what your are feeling with the rear strut brace is placebo effect, you spent the money, you put something on the car that looks good, so it must work and therefore you truly believe that you can feel it. If you don't believe the facts then that's your choice. But if you want to prove to yourself that it's true then a blind test is the only method, have someone remove and replace the rear strut brace without telling you, then you try and pick it. I've done it on an R32 and even a current V8SuperCar driver couldn't get it right more than half the time, mere mortals like you and me have no chance. Cheers Gary

Just to make sure we have this covered, there are 3 links (each side) in the rear suspension of an R32/33/34; 1. Upper Control Arm, this mostly adjusts the camber, but it does change the static toe a small amount at the same time 2. Traction Rod, this mostly changes the dynamic toe (bump steer), but it does change the static toe and static camber by small amounts at the same time 3. Steering Arm, this changes the static toe (HICAS connected or disconnected) You can't set the traction rod length by a simple, static wheel alignment. You have to remove the sping and shock units from the car and then move the suspension up and down through its range of travel and adjust the traction rod to minimise the bump steer. Since adjusting the length of the traction rod also changes the static camber and static toe, it becomes a circle of adjustments. It can take up to 3 hours to get the length of the 3 arms optimised so you get the desired static camber, static toe together with minimum bump steer. Then you do the same to the other side. That's the problem with infinitely adjustable traction rods, they are cheap to buy but expensive to install correctly. Hence why I prefer the standard arms with bushes and eccentric crush tube adjustment. If you rotate the eccentric half a turn on the upper control arm to get the camber you want then you adjust the traction rod the same, half a turn. The eccentrics are the same offset so the relationship in length between the upper control arm and the traction rod remains the same as standard whenever you rotate them the same amount. No matter how well made the upper control arm and the traction rod are, it will still cost you 3 or 4 times their cost to get them aligned. To make it even more compex, I have seen upper control arms and the traction rods with different thread pitches, even from the same manufacturer. That makes alignment a real nightmare where 1 turn on the upper control arm is the same as 1.25 turns on the traction rod. Cheers Gary

Whiteline Flat Out = the original Whiteline range, some of which I have designed over the years Whiteline Plus = Noltec designs. There are some part numbers which are better in Whiteline Flat Out and some in Whiteline Plus. I tend to use the Whiteline Plus part numbers when I need on car adjustment (eg; front caster and rear camber), they cost a bit more but it pays for itself in the ease of adjustment (ie; lower wheel lalignment costs). Plus there is no front camber kit for R32's in the Whiteline Plus range. I do also use some Nolathane part numbers and very rarely Superpro. All polyurethane bushes need servicing, bit of grease once or twice a year. Cheers Gary

I have been using bushes again for some time, the original Whiteline Flat Out or the Whilteine Plus (nee Noltec). As far as I am aware no one is making the original Noltec replacement, bushed upper arm. I would never use spherical bearings anywhere in a road car, so that rules out all of the other aftermarket designs. The spherical bearing fauilure rate in R32's is huge due to the convoluted angles the upper control arm moves through. Cheers Gary

Adjustable Cheers Gary

Off the shelf Eibach's, $250 per pair, all you need to know are the simple spring dimensions of ID and free height then order the spring rate. Cheers Gary

Lower control arm inner bushes are also a good idea on R32GTST's, I very rarely see one these days that doesn't need them badly. Cheers Gary

There's bunch of mixed metaphors. I run more caster and less static camber than most but I run more dynamic camber change. For every degree of chassis role I have 0.75 to 1.0 degrees of negative camber built into the front camber curves. I do run soft spring rates with a lot of anti roll but then I can tune the balance quickly on the day with the swaybars. To stop excessive negative camber under brakes I run more than standard anti dive geometry in the front end. There are lots of "tools" at our disposal but we can only do so much when 60% to 65% of the static weight is on the front wheels. That's where driving technique has to be developed. Slow in fast out has always been the fastest way around a circuit for a 4wd Skyline. If we treat them incorrectly, such as fry the front tyres under brakes, followed by a yank on the steering wheel and then expect no understeer we are truly dreaming. No amount of suspension set up can overcome inappropriate driving technique. Even a perfectly set up F1 car can be made to understeer and a GTR is long way from that.. Cheers Gary