Rear LCA Bushing
Discussion
Paul,
I think you got to see Bill's solution on my GTR, no? As you know, he used heim joints everywhere on the control arms instead of bushings, but he pointed out that lower rear control arm to me as a particularly vulnerable place for a bushing, and said he used a 3/4" monoball in it, bushed down for the regular bolt size. He also reinforced the arm with a boxed gusset along its length to prevent it from bending. Here are some poor pics of it I just tried to take.
and the gusset:
HTH,
TT
I think you got to see Bill's solution on my GTR, no? As you know, he used heim joints everywhere on the control arms instead of bushings, but he pointed out that lower rear control arm to me as a particularly vulnerable place for a bushing, and said he used a 3/4" monoball in it, bushed down for the regular bolt size. He also reinforced the arm with a boxed gusset along its length to prevent it from bending. Here are some poor pics of it I just tried to take.
and the gusset:
HTH,
TT
Ken-
I might be able to partially help out with that, since I can take some more pics and post them, or whatever, but I did not build the car, Bill Lackey did, and I have only had it for a little over a week now, and am not yet familiar with all the details of it myself. What I do know is that Bill built the car for track days, as he is a racer, which is fine with me, as that is what I want to use it for as well. I have not, and never will, go wheel-to-wheel racing with it, but I do enjoy autocross, time trial, and DE/track-day events, having participated in them for the last 10 years or so.
I have reviewed a lot of info on this forum over the past 3 weeks, and took special note of the multiple threads asserting that the Ultima is a road car, and not a race car, so I have no wish to offend anyone, but for me, there is no point in having a car like this and not driving it on the limit. To me, this means taking it to the track, as I cannot in good conscience condone driving it at even 8/10s on the street, especially since I wish to remain outside of the penal system here in the USA.
What I do know about Bill's suspension mods at this point are that besides the heim joints and monoballs instead of soft bushings, along with the reinforcement of the rear control arm below where the shock pickup point lands on it shown above, he had new front A-arms fabricated to obtain more caster (-5.7 degrees, if I remember correctly) and reduce the scrub radius from 4" to 1", which entailed new front wheels with different offsets. He used Ohlins double-adjustable shocks with remote reservoirs and coilover springs with 2-3 times the stock spring rates (the street set on the car now is 600/900 lb./in, I believe, and the heavy track set is 1000/1500.) These are combined with adjustable anti-roll bars front and rear, which he just added before I bought the car, in the hope that they would control chassis roll without having to resort to the very high spring rates. He ran the GT2 size slicks on 16" wheels on the track, which required some mods to the rear parking brake linkage to fit, as well as clearancing of the fender lips.
I have only driven it in anger once so far, on a short autox course on Dec. 15th, and it handled pretty well, considering we ran on the street tires, without checking corner balance or alignment settings, just a day or two after the car arrived here in San Diego, CA. (for that report, see this thread: http://pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=474557 )
TT
I might be able to partially help out with that, since I can take some more pics and post them, or whatever, but I did not build the car, Bill Lackey did, and I have only had it for a little over a week now, and am not yet familiar with all the details of it myself. What I do know is that Bill built the car for track days, as he is a racer, which is fine with me, as that is what I want to use it for as well. I have not, and never will, go wheel-to-wheel racing with it, but I do enjoy autocross, time trial, and DE/track-day events, having participated in them for the last 10 years or so.
I have reviewed a lot of info on this forum over the past 3 weeks, and took special note of the multiple threads asserting that the Ultima is a road car, and not a race car, so I have no wish to offend anyone, but for me, there is no point in having a car like this and not driving it on the limit. To me, this means taking it to the track, as I cannot in good conscience condone driving it at even 8/10s on the street, especially since I wish to remain outside of the penal system here in the USA.
What I do know about Bill's suspension mods at this point are that besides the heim joints and monoballs instead of soft bushings, along with the reinforcement of the rear control arm below where the shock pickup point lands on it shown above, he had new front A-arms fabricated to obtain more caster (-5.7 degrees, if I remember correctly) and reduce the scrub radius from 4" to 1", which entailed new front wheels with different offsets. He used Ohlins double-adjustable shocks with remote reservoirs and coilover springs with 2-3 times the stock spring rates (the street set on the car now is 600/900 lb./in, I believe, and the heavy track set is 1000/1500.) These are combined with adjustable anti-roll bars front and rear, which he just added before I bought the car, in the hope that they would control chassis roll without having to resort to the very high spring rates. He ran the GT2 size slicks on 16" wheels on the track, which required some mods to the rear parking brake linkage to fit, as well as clearancing of the fender lips.
I have only driven it in anger once so far, on a short autox course on Dec. 15th, and it handled pretty well, considering we ran on the street tires, without checking corner balance or alignment settings, just a day or two after the car arrived here in San Diego, CA. (for that report, see this thread: http://pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=474557 )
TT
Edited by ttweed on Tuesday 25th December 19:08
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