Project CMS

CMS-GT4":12nq7q78 said:

I may have to rethink my strut bar though.

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It'd probably be easiest to cut off the vertical bits that actually attach to the bar and modify them to be welded onto these new pieces you'd have made.

Yeah I imagine doing that or making new mounts.

Back on black friday I ordered a 4" straight intake from TCS, but I still have not gotten it. If he does not ship it soon, I will likely cancel my order. If he does come through we may have a new intake option for us as I had sent him info so that this would be alltrac specific. The 3rd gen powered mr2 guys found that they could get more power with the 4" intake over the 3".

So I put a tall piece of soft clay on top of the strut rod then slammed the hood on it. I measured my current strut rod about 34mm from the bearing, and then around 64mm to the flattened clay after slamming the hood. Keep in mind the t3 top hats allow my strut rod threads to protrude further than the tein top hats did.
So to be conservative since I do not want the rod resting against the hood I think 20-25mm will be my max increase.
My bolts are already 23mm tall over my tower brace, so next I will have to measure how how they can go. The hood vent is domed on the rc hood so clearance may not be the same for all bolts. I think I could conservatively use a 10mm spacer then a very heavy duty set of bolts going down into the backing plate though the strut tower. I also have about a 5-7mm spacer currently under my strut tower that allows me to move the t3 plates all the way back in addition to the thickness of the strut tower sheet metal. I would say 15-20mm of travel can be gained by this method. I'll do a bit more research then I'll start planning the mods next year.

I'm not sure how that works into your calculations but you could always spacer the hood a bit if that gap isn't enough.

Or just do a Jonny Milner

That is the car I got the idea from. I'd like to retain my hoods Beauty though.

A final video for the season with review of the recaros and a little talk about suspension plans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wqxBHj ... e=youtu.be

A note on the tte top plates. I found out the strut towers are 4mm reinforced versions so it is not a direct bolt on.

CMS-GT4":pls8arv5 said:

That is the car I got the idea from. I'd like to retain my hoods Beauty though.

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You could probably do a fiberglass/CF hood and drill it for that application without destroying a pristine OEM RC hood.

I have a CF hood on the way, so I will likely be working with that. After talking to a chassis fabricator here, it will likely be too expensive to do right. I would be looking at around $800 to do it properly. So it is most likely I will be looking into another set of coilovers that will have a few more features.
I am still in talks with the fabricator though about doing a lower a-arm. I might hit up a few other places about doing one instead. I need one that allows caster to be moved to center my front wheels in the well.
I have been kicking around some ideas, but I have a feeling I need to pull apart the front suspension and start figuring things out. It is 3 degrees outside so that is putting car stuff on hold. On a note of ball joints, I did discover something today.
My understanding is this monoball pin is the one with the same taper as ours.
http://www.proracestore.com/lower-mono-ball-joint.html
I was not entirely keen on the monoball pin for a few reasons. The good news though is this site lists the moog part the mono ball replaces. Seems thee are extended oem style, and adjustable ones with boots built in. So I imagine we just need a bracket, and then we have an option for a cheaper lower ball joint. I will send out a few emails, and see what I can come up with.

That ball joint looks promising!!

CMS-GT4":3fref17l said:

I have a CF hood on the way, so I will likely be working with that. After talking to a chassis fabricator here, it will likely be too expensive to do right. I would be looking at around $800 to do it properly. So it is most likely I will be looking into another set of coilovers that will have a few more features.
I am still in talks with the fabricator though about doing a lower a-arm. I might hit up a few other places about doing one instead. I need one that allows caster to be moved to center my front wheels in the well.
I have been kicking around some ideas, but I have a feeling I need to pull apart the front suspension and start figuring things out. It is 3 degrees outside so that is putting car stuff on hold. On a note of ball joints, I did discover something today.
My understanding is this monoball pin is the one with the same taper as ours.
http://www.proracestore.com/lower-mono-ball-joint.html
I was not entirely keen on the monoball pin for a few reasons. The good news though is this site lists the moog part the mono ball replaces. Seems thee are extended oem style, and adjustable ones with boots built in. So I imagine we just need a bracket, and then we have an option for a cheaper lower ball joint. I will send out a few emails, and see what I can come up with.

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This sounds like a really awesome idea.

I'm a little confused though. So, are you trying basically to make a set up with longer travel and a lower stance? I know that on my 4Runner I went toward extended/mid travel set up by having a heim joint more upper control arm and longer travel shocks. For the long travel set up the Upper and lower control arms are added as well as a longer CV axle.



So if I follow correctly you are planning to cut and reweld the upper shock mounts, get some custom longer travel shocks and extend the LCA or add a ball joint with more flexibility?

I would think you would need something to push your caster back out if those rotating top plates can achieve that. This is probably overkill or unnessescary, but the bump stops might need to be adjusted too. Reverting back to my 4runner build, I picked up these soft bump stops from wheelers offroad that are super soft and compress down and made my ride much softer.


Bumpstop
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 1318_o.jpg

I'm just throwing ideas out there to see if anything helps.

Thanks. That was sort of the plan. I already have top plates that will get me over 3 degrees of extra caster. I decided I am not going to extend the chassis though. I am also adding some caster at the lower a-arm as well. I am just going to end up spending more on shocks that have more tuneability. Part of the problem with that is a lot of the well known ones start at about $4500 and go up from there. I have been on the phone a lot lately with Tein, Bilstein, BC, and Fortune. I am still trying to figure out what plan I going with. Even if I do a custom Koni or Bilstein setup its going to be over 2k. I have been learning a lot about suspension and I am learning I may not know enough to build my own, at least up to a standard worth bothering with. I had been looking at EVO MR's, GM magnetic struts, used Penske's and Ohlins that I might rebuild in a custom housing as well, but I certainly do not know enough if these particular setups will fit. And either way it is going to cost a lot of money to make them work.
Once I get my voice back from being sick, I might do a video on some of this stuff. I did look at the ball joint some and took it to some places for a quote. The oem joint has a much wider base than the monoball, so its likely not going to work. I did find what you need to modify on the spindles though. There is a ring at the bottom of the taper that keeps the bolt center. The thread at the end of the oem ball joint is smaller than the one from the GM. So by drilling out that small hole, I think we can use this gm taper. I am going to return the parts though. I am thinking of buying a bump steer gauge and getting actually readings on the car before doing any mods as I rather know if something needs to be changed and by how much if it does. All this trial and error stuff is too expensive, and I have a fixed budget this year, so all my expenses have to fit into that. I had done some research in bumpstops too, and I do think if I stayed tein I would had gone with some other ones. Turns out you can tune your suspension with them. Most of these off the shelf bump stops are high rates. I posted some a while back that should be good. They are taller and progressive so they get firmer as they are compressed rather than being hard on first contact.
Suspension tuning is a complicated beast, and I do not think that I will ever get my head around all of it. I have a lot more phone calls to make this next week, and hopefully I am getting closer to finding something for my car.

New parts that will likely go into storage until next year.

A new episode talking about suspension research.
http://youtu.be/t49TWO-hjJ8

Some really good points on the video!

I hope you realise that CEIKA coilovers give you the option of a camber and caster top mount. and you can fix your ride height and shock travel issue by specifically ordering a shorter shock body/shorter spring combo.

Another thing I haven't told you is that I mounted my front top mounts diagonally giving me castor adjustment and the camber was corrected on the bottom mount elongated hole. (not sure if that makes sense to you) so you may not even have to buy camber+castor top mounts.

Thanks. Yeah, I already have camber/caster top mounts so I would just use them with whatever I got. I do like their rear plate option though. I want to find some more shock dynos of their struts before I am sold on them. I found an BMW site that had some but all the links are dead. Right now, Fortune Auto is still looking like a strong option.

Another part came in today. It should not fit the 205 head, but Hux racing sells the flanges for welding on your intake manifold. This is another part that goes into storage until the end of the year unless I need more cash for my suspension budget.
Side feed, larger throttle body, and better flow from my understandings.

Going over my notes to decide if I should go through the trouble of adapting a set of fortune auto coilovers or getting a set of Feal.
Both would be built to spec, with a dyno sheet and cost close to the same and use the same swift springs. Feal is willing to do more for the community while fortune could care less. The advantage of Fortune is I can upgrade it as I decide I need more, ie two way adjustable etc... Both have digressive characteristics. Hoping to decide this week.

CMS-GT4":1n6b7rmx said:

Going over my notes to decide if I should go through the trouble of adapting a set of fortune auto coilovers or getting a set of Feal.
Both would be built to spec, with a dyno sheet and cost close to the same and use the same swift springs. Feal is willing to do more for the community while fortune could care less. The advantage of Fortune is I can upgrade it as I decide I need more, ie two way adjustable etc... Both have digressive characteristics. Hoping to decide this week.

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Thats cool! Keep us posted.