New Lower Suspension Arms, Thoughts?

[boffer8]

Just got my new lower arms back from the platers, designed them on Solidworks then did a stress analysis on Cosmos of the drawing and all came out good so fabbed them up, welded them and then took them for plating. I've moved the front pivot point back as it allows the arms to act more like a wishbone system and also reduces the shear stresses that will be put through the forward rose joint. Using m16 formula spec rose joints and thick wall tube for the tie bar, heres spme pictures of it when i got it back and then a test fitment to the car.
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/boffer8/IMGP1855.jpghttp://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/boffer8/IMGP1856.jpghttp://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/boffer8/IMGP1858.jpghttp://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/boffer8/IMGP1863.jpghttp://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/boffer8/IMGP1865.jpg

As you can see they look pretty sweet, got plenty of adjustment of them, and just need some longer bolts for the front crossmember to lower the bracket a little more if required and jobs a good 'un! what are all your thoughts on them?
Going to weld up the front crossmeber and the rear chassis leg to take the forces a bit better and then i'l get them bolted on for good and then set them up!
cheers

[BIGS]

where do i place my order lol

[Pistol Pete]

Look good. But do me a favour and re-arrange your pics.

[img]mhjdur[img]
[img]cjfnfnv[img]

and so on.

Are you going to make up some blocks for underneath the cross member instead of lots of plates?

[boffer8]

BIGS, dont know about orders yet but if anyone wants some might have a look in the future

Pete_58, sorry about the pics, yea will be doing they were just for mock up, going to make some 5mm blocks so i can stack it up or down to what i need.

[BIGS]

well if you did would you do wide track? i need them about 3 inches longer each side

[boffer8]

if i did do that then i would have to re-do my drawings on solidworks and the stress anaylsis and then try go form there, i'd have to have a proper think about them to be honest.

[trackdaynova]

Surely with the crossmember mounting point being so far back into the bay, the swing of the shorter tiebar will cause problems when going over bumps in the road?

[boffer8]

if anything it will reduce the bump steer values of the steering as the arms are closer to being a similar length. well that was the thought behind doing so. it means the hub is more centralised and with the steering rack adjusted aswell it means that the steering racks acts perpendicular to the lower arm.

[boffer8]

anyone else got any comments? just wanting to know about set up but been reading said threads so should be ok, cheers for the comments so far guys

[The Simps]

Looks pretty dam cool tho! I know naff all whether its any good tho! lol

Good to see peeps having a crack!

[tom reid]

well if you did would you do wide track? i need them about 3 inches longer each side

I've had some of these made by a professional suspension company, they fit Nova std/wide track, and have a left hand thread for the rose joint on the tie bar for easy adj of caster.
It will ise the same type of pin that's in a uniball fot the hub connection.
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w195/tomreid/wtsusp4.jpg http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w195/tomreid/wtsusp3.jpg
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w195/tomreid/wtsusp2.jpg

I can do them for 240.00 delivered, does not include rosejoints

[boffer8]

having rose joints at both ends will make your steering go funny! someone on here had that problem and had to lock off the rose joints on one end of the tie rod arm so it didnt move, someone posted last week i believe and there was a few comments came back from that that it needed to be locked off.

[trackdaynova]

Yes you're correct boffer8, having rosejoints at both ends causes wondering, one needs to be locked off :thumb:

[tom reid]

[quote=boffer8]having rose joints at both ends will make your steering go funny! someone on here had that problem and had to lock off the rose joints on one end of the tie rod arm so it didnt move, someone posted last week i believe and there was a few comments came back from that that it needed to be locked off.[/quote

I disagree with you, having run this type of suspension on rallycars, hotrods,etc I have never encountered any of the symptoms you described although worn rose-joints will make the car feel loose.

[nathan.]

Boffer- lower arms look very well fabricated.

What size rose joints do you guys use? Thread and bore?

[R1CH]

The bigger the better !!
I'm in the middle of making up some TCA's, Tiebars and tiebar brackets, i'm using 3/4" rose joints then using some 'top hat' spacers to bring them down to M12.

[Jonlem]

I'm sorry Tom but I'll have to disagree with you there, using 2 rose joints on the tie rod does cause a hell of a lot of issues.

Both myself and Spanishfly have both seen the flaw in that design and that was within a few miles of driving the cars so the joints were brand new.

Short of that it looks a nice design, TCA is similar to what I'm using on my Grp4 car.

The first design looks good too, can't see any issues with that although I can't personally see any gains over the ones I sell although I'm not the expert and your theory does seem to make sense

[boffer8]

tom-reid, im only commenting on what i have read on here so thats all i can go by.
nathan, im using m16 formula spec rose joints so they are really highly rated, if i can remember somewhere close to 63Kn so more than it will ever feel (or so Cosmos said!) then as r1ch said i to am using top hats to reduce the bolt size to what is used as standard so i dont have to drill out the rear mount. i am using allen bolts which are all rated higher strength than standard hex head's.
jonlem, cheers pal, just trying a new design to see what flies out!

[t45_ste]

The pillbeam setup only ever used a rose joint at one end iirc? The setup i have is a very similar design just wider. Will try and get some pics next time im at the unit.

Heres a pic of the hhms setup (copy of pillbeam)

http://www.hh-ms.com/parts_images/1177934141.jpg

[tom reid]

Boffer 8, I suspected as muchlol
Can of worms. eh?
No problem, I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but please also dont mind if I disagree with with you, I won't be changing my mind and altering the kit, as I know that it works.

Jonlem, is there a link to a thread on your problem?, searched and can't find one.

[Jonlem]

Some pics of all the setups I've seen and reasons.

Originally I came accross a problem using a Simpson manifold on a friends car, the manifold fitted the car it was made for but due to different mountings it would not fit 9/10 nova xe's so something needed to be made

This was the issue :

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Adam%20Moran%20Nova/adex2.jpg

That is sadly why the first design would be of no use to some people, but that is really a very small amount of people.

So anyway Lee303 off here had designed a setup for his nova which appeared to sort the issue out that I was having.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Adam%20Moran%20Nova/tiebar.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Adam%20Moran%20Nova/wrap2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Adam%20Moran%20Nova/rosejointbar.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Adam%20Moran%20Nova/draper1.jpg

So anyway once we actually got the car done we found the car wandered a lot, at first we believed it was the inverted track ends we were using but it turned out to be the twin joints on the tie rod causing the issue.

At this point I met someone who pointed out the fault and was happy to rectify the issue ( Lee303 was happy to sort it but were not local to each other and time was not on my side ) A new tie rod was made which simply only used one joint but retained the original TCA design, this fixed the self steering issue but whilst on track at Woodbridge I found the car steering itself under braking and acceleration.
We decided that the tie bar brackets being as low as they were must of been bending or maybe stressing the crossmember (which was strenghened and running the HH plate kit) so a new set of brackets were made which were stronger in design but also didn't allow quite the same drop so in theory would sort out the faults we had which they did.

The car was now perfect so the design we were using was good enough although only limted castor could be applied as the TCA still run a polybush, TAS back in the day did do a rose jointed TCA but as this no longer available a box section TCA was designed and a new complete kit was made and tested on 2 cars with great results.

My personal opinion is that this kit is perfect and basically a direct copy of what Pilbeam make without the price tag.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Tie%20Bar%20pics/DSC03094.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Tie%20Bar%20pics/advert6.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Tie%20Bar%20pics/DSC03090.jpg

[Jonlem]

I'll stand by by first thoughts, if that rod on yours Tom is double rose jointed allowing full movement at both ends then you will have the same problem we did, anyone with paint can clearly draw the problem if they have a few mins.

Que Olz lol

EDIT

What tie bar brackets does your kit use Tom ?

[The Simps]

Jonlem, does your kit suit f28 boxes aswell?

[Jonlem]

Not as yet but it could be adapted if you definately wanted some doing

[The Simps]

Not at this stage, just need to get the car running! But its an area I'd like to look into in the future.

[Jonlem]

No probs Simps, just drop me a PM when you fancy going down that route.

Regarding what I said last night about twin rose joints, my theory and Pilbeams is to use only one rose joint to limit the amount of movement in the wheel/hub when the suspension and angle of the tie rod moves.

Even if your using 1 joint there is still a small change in position of the hub when the suspension moves, it is heavely amplified using 2, so much so that the wheel and geometry will change with any movement of the suspension and I mean any, I drove 100 yds and knew something wasn't right, Gav then spent enough time in the car to run the engine in and decided that it was frankly dangerous.

I'll admit we didn't just change the design of the tie bars we also removed the inverted track rod ends but as people have mopre recently run inverted track rod ends without any issues I'm happy that the fault was with using 2 joints and I do believe Rob (SpanishFly) foudn this out when they jacked his car up as Lee was making his set, I am sure if my theory was wrong Lee would of said something and tbh certainly wouldn't of bothered to clamp the joint in place in the way he did.

Anyway I am quite sure your not stupid Tom and like yourself I'm quite happy to take advice or give it, I just cant see how your design can work considering the prolems we have experienced.

The pic below basically shows what happens when the angle of a bar (tie rod in our case) changes

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Jatec/Tie%20Bar%20pics/Tiebar.jpg

[tom reid]

I'll stand by by first thoughts, if that rod on yours Tom is double rose jointed allowing full movement at both ends then you will have the same problem we did, anyone with paint can clearly draw the problem if they have a few mins.

Que Olz lol

EDIT

What tie bar brackets does your kit use Tom ?

Jon, my tie bars will use the same cross member bracket as you, there are differences between our kits as I'm sure you are aware, I dont have a rose joint at the tca-tiebar pick up. How did you connect your tca-hub rose joint, any pics? As mentioned earlier I'm using a uniball type pin.
I'm quite happy to discuss this with you in person and Lee, when I have the car running, you're more than welcome to come and have a run in it.

[Mike]

Instead of fannying about with locked off RJ's for the tie bracket end, why dont you just use a sypherical bearing & simply weld the bearing cup insert into a custom tie bracket, slot bearing in, Circlip it, done.

[Welsh Dan]

Would a circlip take the accel/deceleration forces?

[trackdaynova]

if Mike has suggested it, it must be right lol

[Mike]

Would a circlip take the accel/deceleration forces?

Yep. RJ'd tie bar brackets are made in the exact way I described, but £150 a set. Where as a pair of bearings & cups will set you back about £20 for Brisca F2 spec items.

So if your a dab hand with a welder & working sheet steel, your sorted.

EDIT: Just looked at the Chris Astley RJ'd tie brackets, his have a bolt on circular plate over the bearing, so i suppose there is also that option if you DIY some brackets.