R33 Lca Into R32 - How Too Guide

[Simon-S14]

Thought i'd give it a go as a cheap upgrade... Thanks to Adelaide Jap for the parts. Pretty easy to do but i thought i'd help others by making a short guide on how to go about doing it.

First of all, take the wheel off

Castor rod needs to come off, undo the two nuts on the underside of the LCA, they are a 17mm.

Then undo the Bolt for the LCA on the crossmember, its also a 17mm. This will be bloody tight so use a spanner on one side and a big breaker bar on the otherside and undo it, take the nut off, you prob wont be able to get the bolt out easy yet so just leave it for now.

Then you need to undo the large nut on the bottom of the hub when the ball joint for the LCA is, there is a split pin through this so take that out first then use a 22mm spanner to undo the nut, once the nut is off, you will need a LARGE hammer to hit the side of the hub hard several times to make the ball joint pop out. Never hit the threaded section of the ball joint. once its popped out the bolt will come out of the crossmember easy. then your arm is out!

Here you can see the two arms side by side, the R33 one is longer

Here there are some slight differences, the lock on the R33 arm is deeper which gives a bit more angle, if your a drifter like me the lock stop on your r32 arm will be hammered out.. like mine Apart from this everything else is the same and the arm just bolts straight in. Installation is the reverse of the above.

Once installed, you'll have major toe out due to the toe being the same and running longer arms, I got a white texta marked the top of the tie rod's then cracked the big 22mm locking nut, i then turned the tie rod a total of 7 times (anti clockwise, to make them longer) on both sides, then locked the nut and measured it up... its close enough to drive to a wheel aligner on now. (took me a few goes to get the toe right, but the total number was 7 full turns)

I put some stock rims on with rubber i dont care about, my wheel aligner is 50 kms from where i live so i didnt want my 17's being scrubbed out on the freeway. I suggest that an alignment is carried out straight away as both toe AND castor will be out.

heres what it looks like with the R33 arms in,

As you can see theres a bit more camber, i took it for a drive and even the toe is out it feels really good.

Reasons for doing this was that my 32 is a drift car, so the extra track and camber would be benificial, there appears to be slightly more lock also which is a bonus.

Enjoy!

[dori34]

nice write up.

how much did you pick up the r33 lca's for ?

[Simon-S14]

they are pretty cheap.. usually 100 the pair

[=premo=]

good write up, does this put more strain on the strut tops?

Apart from wider track and more camber, what other gains does this upgrade have?

[abu]

Very good write up, I will be looking into doing this when I put my after market caster rods in.

Get the whole thing aligned at once

Seems to have a fair bit more camber over the LCA's.

Edited October 29, 2007 by abu

[Simon-S14]

aligned my car and i have 3 degrees camber. still stock upper control arms. Im happy with that.

My car handles amazing now... the steering is much more direct! less bump steer also which is a bonus