Crank Motorsports Front Axles

[Josh K.]

Is anyone running these axles?

R32, R33, R34 GTR front Axles. shafts itself rated 950hp. Suit all RB26 engines Croydon, Melbourne, Victoria

Would be nice to pay half the cost of Driveshaft Shop Axles. I'm building an AWD S13 Coupe that is very low ride height (high cv angle) compared to stock R32. Has an RB30 with appx 600whp.

Just looking for feedback.

Thanks,

Josh-

https://www.instagram.com/feng_shui_garage/

Edited May 29 by Josh K.

[Duncan]

I haven't used the Crank Motorsport ones, but can I ask why not use standard gtr/gts4 axles at the front? They would easily cope with that power level.

BTW.....sounds like quite the project!

[GTSBoy]

16 minutes ago, Duncan said:

but can I ask why not use standard gtr/gts4 axles at the front?

I think that might be in the question. He is going very low, and I think the standard GTR ones are simple tripod joints (like the rear NA/S chassis ones), not proper CVs (like R chassis turbo/GTR ones). Proper CVs take the misalignment better than tripods.

[TurboTapin]

I've also been eyeing their rear axles for my car. I purchased seat mounts from them about 7 years ago and they were hot garbage so I've been a little wary about purchasing them. With that being said, please buy them and get back to us haha. 

[Josh K.]

Here's Logans Silvia with R32 Drivetrain, mine will be slightly lower (more angle). He was constantly blowing the RH axles at around 16deg. I want to avoid this.

 

 

Edited May 29 by Josh K.

[Josh K.]

Motor and body mockup. Wheel fitment and ride height not set. Last pic shows front ride height after modifying the front uprights to make a 1.25" drop spindle.

Edited May 29 by Josh K.

[Josh K.]

The frontend wouldn't go low enough because the coilover was max low and the upper control arm would collapse into itself and potentially bottom out in the strut tower. I made a brace and cut off the kingpin and then moved the upright down 1.25" and welded. i still have to finish but this gives an idea. Now I can have a normal 3.25" of shock travel and things aren't binding. I'm also dropping the lower arm and tie rod 1.25".

Edited May 29 by Josh K.

[GTSBoy]

Pay careful attention to the kinematics of that upper arm. The bloody things don't work properly even on a normal stock height R32. Nissan really screwed the pooch on that one. The fixes have included changing the hole locations on the bracket to change the angle of the inner pivot (which was fairly successful but usually makes it impossible to install or remove the arm without unbolting the bracket from the tower, which sucks) and various swivelling upper arm designs. ALL the swivelling upper arm designs that look like a capital I (with serifs) suck. All of them. Some of them are in fact terribly unsafe. Even the best one of them (the old UAS design) shat itself in short order on my car.

The only upper arm that works as advertised and is pretty safe is the GKTech one. But it is high maintenance on a street car.

I'm guessing that a 600HP car as (stupidly, IMO) low as you are going is not going to be a regular driver. So the maintenance issues on suspension parts are probably not going to be a problem.

But you really must make sure that however your fairly drastically modded suspension ends up, that the upper arms swing through an arc that wants to keep the inner and outer bolts parallel. If the outer end travels through an arc that makes that end's bolt want to skew away from parallel with the inner bolt, you will build up enormous binding and compressing forces in the bushes, chew them out and hate life. The suspension compliance can actually be dominated by the bush binding, not the spring rate!

It may be the case that even something like the GKTech arm won't work if your suspension kinematics become too weird, courtesy of all the cut and shut going on. Although you at least say there's no binding now, so maybe you're OK.

Seeing as you're in the build phase, you could consider using R33/4 type upper arms (either that actual arm, OEM or aftermarket) or any similar wishbone designed to suit your available space, so alleviate the silliness of the R32 design. Then you can locate your inner pivots to provide the correct kinematics (camber gain on compression, etc).

[Josh K.]

16 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

If the outer end travels through an arc that makes that end's bolt want to skew away from parallel with the inner bolt, you will build up enormous binding and compressing forces in the bushes, chew them out and hate life.

OEM suspension starts to bind as soon as the car gets away from stock height. I locked in the caster and camber before cutting off the kingpin. I then let the upright down in a natural (unbound) state before re-attaching it. Now it moves freely in bump and droop relative to the new ride height. My plan is to add GKTech arms before the car is finished so I can dial camber and caster further.

It will be fine. This isn't rocket science. Caster looks good, camber is good, upper arm doesn't cause crazy gain and it is now closer to the stock angle and bump steer checks out. Send it.

Edited May 29 by Josh K.

[Josh K.]

Had I known the diff between R32 and R33 suspension I would have R33 suspension. That ship has sailed so I'm doing my best to replicate a drop spindle without spending $4k on a Billet one.

[Komdotkom]

15 hours ago, TurboTapin said:

I've also been eyeing their rear axles for my car. I purchased seat mounts from them about 7 years ago and they were hot garbage so I've been a little wary about purchasing them. With that being said, please buy them and get back to us haha. 

I've got the rear ones, they're certainly beefy. I need to take them to my driveshaft guru to check over, he's very fussy about the quality of components so I'll let you know if they are made of cheese by a blind man.

 

22 hours ago, Josh K. said:

Is anyone running these axles?

R32, R33, R34 GTR front Axles. shafts itself rated 950hp. Suit all RB26 engines Croydon, Melbourne, Victoria

Would be nice to pay half the cost of Driveshaft Shop Axles. I'm building an AWD S13 Coupe that is very low ride height (high cv angle) compared to stock R32. Has an RB30 with appx 600whp.

Just looking for feedback.

Thanks,

Josh-

https://www.instagram.com/feng_shui_garage/

Are you in Australia? A mate just had a set of EN26 shafts made for his K20 Lotus by our fabricator which were quite cheap (compared to Driveshaft Shop) so if you can procure the CV's and draw what you need he'd make them for ~$800 for the pair.

[MBS206]

Depending on the purpose of the car, and how much more fabbing you want to do, and what clearances you have, you could look to raise the motor, which will raise the front diff up. Likely would mean altering the chassis rails etc etc, hence the more fab work you'd need to do.

However, this can create issues, not just in clearance with everything fitting under the bonnet, but you've also raised a LOT of weight up in the car, and this will DEFINITELY alter handling characteristics (But, so will how much weight you've already added to the front end).
You'll also have to deal with the fact the gearbox to rear diff is now out of alignment too for the tail shaft, and alter the angle of the diff, or deal with a bit of potential vibration.

Raising the motor an inch up, is effectively the same as making the whole car sit higher by not lowering it as far. So one inch higher motor, theoretically means you can drop the car an extra inch lower, and maintain the same angles in the CVs.

Again, depends on the purpose of the car. If it's a just cruiser on the street car, maybe won't be an issue. If it's meant to be a time attack car, I can see you not wanting to raise the motor.

This is just for you to ponder as an idea.

[funkymonkey]

I was just watching these boys up in QLD AWD'ing their S13 too.

 

[Josh K.]

1 hour ago, funkymonkey said:

I was just watching these boys up in QLD AWD'ing their S13 too.

 

Thanks for sharing. That's a great video!

My buddy is doing the same thing on his build (S chassis struts and towers). He's building an S14 with billet RB30 shooting for 2000whp... a race car with a TH400 just like this video.

For a road car I just couldn't go this route as the strut has to be almost vertical and the caster is not going to pivot correctly (let alone camber gain). You think the R32 frontend is bad, wait till you put a MacPherson strut on without modeling it all in Solidworks to check geometry.

I'm not saying it's a bad way to do it but I'd be really curious to see how it affects the geometry.