On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Chuck Arnold wrote:
> Two topics/questions:
>
> 1. I got the stiff springs, have removed the bump stop, have one
> rebuilt rear hub, but not the other. Have put on the sticky Kuhmo's
> [but not run it yet] -- now I'm worried about hub failure. Am planning
> to put in the Nissan 300Z diff next winter. Does anyone have practical
> experience with installing the rest of the Nissan [240/260/280/300??]
> rear -- meaning the axels as well as the diff? Bob Lang, I know you
> have the corvairs, Mike Munson, what do you run? IF I decide to do
> Corvairs, where can I get info on what parts to source [and will I still
> be able to use my brand new 16x7 Panasports [with the TR6 4 bolt/4.5"
> spacing]?
If you want the Corvair axles, talk to Ted Schumacher. He has the last set
from Dave Wingett (at least that's what Dave told me). After that set is
gone, you're on your own to fabricate the bearing housing... the rest of
the stuff is "off the shelf" and "some fettling required".
The Corvair axle (later style IRS) uses a 5 on 4.5" bolt pattern. So you
need to drill the hub flanges for the 4 on 4.5" bolt circle. This is
pretty straight forward for a machinist who has done hot-rod type
refitting of parts between different makes of cars.
As far as installing the Nissan 300 ZX stuff, talk to Richard Good. I know
that he has done this. I know of others who had done this, but none of
them own the cars anymore and I have no idea what happened to the cars!
Soap box mode on - the folks that have spent the time to make these custom
parts (like the Dave WIngett hubs/Jack Wheeler hubs/ Group 44hubs) spend a
lot of time mucking with parts and machining and fettling to get them to
work. Please, please, please buy the parts from those guys if you can, a
lot of time/money goes into developing this stuff so that YOU can enjoy
it. Capiche?? Soap box mode off.
> 2. Now that I have 205-45/16's all the way round, the front sticks up
> too high. I just installed the tt4207 450lb 6.0 inch front springs
> which brought down an inch, but the front is still 1" higher than the
> rear [which already has stiff short springs]. I like to lower the frame
> -- how did you do that Bob? Anybody else have any ideas/warnings?
Okay - two things. You can get between 1/4" and 3/8" more lowering in the
front if you toss the packing rubbers for the front springs. If you don't
want to do that then...
You can also lower the front some more by putting a packing spacer between
the lower a-arm and the spring pan. The ratio is about 2:1, so a 1/4"
spacer will lower your front by about 1/2". If you go more than 1/4", you
may have to modify your lower a-arms by removing the inner stud and
drilling the a-arms to accomodate the body of an appropriate AN -5 bolt.
You can drop the frame almost to the ground with a big enough spacer, but
don't go too crazy here unless you want to spend a lot of time checking
the bump steer and spacing the steering rack up.
you're going to have to raise the rear. TRF and others sell spring spacers
that are stackable. A 1/2 inch spacer will lift the back about an inch
(actually a little less than an inch). For the really short TT "sprint"
springs, you'll need a 3/4" or 1" spacer and you'll have to modify the
shape of the rear upper bump stop rubber to get more than 1.5" of rear
suspension travel. Also, when you get low in the rear, you'll need to
modify the inner and outer brackets to get rid of excessive camber. I
won't tell you how to do this other than the charts available on various
web sites are very helpful in determining what you need to do. I will say
that you need a baseline configuration before you can fix anything. I
wound up with 1" spacers and a one-up inner and a two-down outer (I think)
setup. I arrived at this from having -3.0 camber with the stock setup
(one-up inner and two up outer, I think) and determining that I need 1.5
less camber than what I had. When I went to the chart, I realized that I
just had to flip the outer bracket to get rid of about 1.5 degrees of
camber.
It worked, I'm at -1.6 degrees on both sides.
Oh - you can also modify the upper bump stop brackets on the body to get
more suspension travel, but you need to be careful that the total motion
does not allow the tire to rub the fender "lip".
Note: YOU WANT AN UPPER BUMP STOP of some kind!!!!!
> Thanks in advance,
> Chuck Arnold
I hope this helps.
One of these days, I'm going to take some pictures to show all this stuff.
It really is quite easy and more or less right out of the pages of the
book "How to Make Your Car Handle" by Fred Puhn. Highly recommended
reading, I might add.
regards,
rml
p.s. converting to coil-overs is a _lot_ easier and gives you way more
choices for springs and shocks. Something to "mull" over.
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