[DarkHorse]

Hey all,

Been thinking about how best to get my front wheels back to upright after the Hagan Widening mod moved the balljoint outboard.

The options seem to be either move the top strut mount out, or the top bolt where the strut attaches to the knuckle.

I'm not dead keen on butchering my struts, so I've been thinking about how to go about moving the top of the strut outwards.

I have a pair of Calmini strut spacers that I'm no longer using, so can hack them up. They are 55mm high and look something like this:


What I'm thinking of doing is slicing the guts out of it, so I am left with the two bolting faces and about 10mm of 'rise' - enough room for a nut. These will then be welded to some 3mm plate offsetting them half their 64mm internal diameter:


I'm anticipating some bracing on the sides as well to minimise any deflection under load. Otherwise I may have to either cut the plate or allow more rise for the stock mount to bolt up to the lower face.

My concerns are that the load coming up to the lower face will be transfered through the mount off-centre, effectively twisting the mount and putting some weird stresses on the top bolts and the relatively thin sheet of the strut tower.

36mm is further than the control arm mount moved, but they are nowhere near a direct geometric relationship. I'm hoping this will at least get camber back to close enough to be adjusted with camber bolts.

So - is this going to work? Is there something I'm forgetting to take into account? Should I be doing something else with the design? Is it just a stupid, dangerous, idiotic idea?

Any help much appreciated.

[got_bar_work]

How bad is ur camber
Mine is pretty close with a bolt back in it
Is ur top of ur wheel pointing in or out

[royce]

for an extreme measure, chop the strut tower and make a new one in the right spot

the amount the things move a stronger one cant hurt

[christover1]

You don't need much, only a few mm is enough to straighten the wheel.

Think about moving the holes in the strut tower,
using just the spacer plates on the top and bottom,
to aid strenghth.

Or use camber adjusting bolts, works reasonably well on mine

[atari4x4]

you trying to add or remove camber?

can you unwiden you widening mod a bit?

[got_bar_work]

Wat way does the top point when u normally lift it
U might not have enough lift for the amount u widened it
R u running calmini arms
If so there is ur camber and cv problem right there
They r longer to make up for being on a angle. same thing the widening mod does
Together u have way to wide a front end
Put the stock arms on and c how it goes

[Damo]

Can you Retro fit a camber adjuster plate off something else? Ricer donor perhaps?

[Buddies72]

I thought I was going to have to do the same thing with mine, either some sort of adjustment plate or dual camber bolts or fill and redrill strut bolt holes.

I ended up checking the camber bolts myself before pulling the whole thing apart for filling/redrilling the strut holes, and found that the camber adjustment bolts whilst fully adjusted out, had the locating lugs on the washers in the wrong place, meaning when fully adjusted they were still only giving the same alignment as the original bolts.

I would suggest checking these for yourself before doing anything else, and probably the best thing you could do if you still need it is fill and redrill the struts. IMO it's the least likeley to fail, and is also reversible if necessary.

If you mark the struts with a stamp for the centre of the original holes, you should be able to redrill in the correct location if necessary later.

[DarkHorse]

Firstly thanks for all the replies/suggestions. I had a good go over the car today and took a heap of measurements, then left all my notes at the workshop, so I don't have that detail - hence all the answers below are a bit vague for now.

got_bar_work wrote:

How bad is ur camber
Is ur top of ur wheel pointing in or out

Camber is pretty bad:



From the widest point at the top of the tyre to the widest point at the bottom is 9mm

royce wrote:

for an extreme measure, chop the strut tower and make a new one in the right spot

That's a bit more extreme than I was hoping to go... although I agree it would probably be the best solution.

christover wrote:

You don't need much, only a few mm is enough to straighten the wheel.

Think about moving the holes in the strut tower,
using just the spacer plates on the top and bottom,
to aid strenghth.

Or use camber adjusting bolts, works reasonably well on mine

Don't need much at the hub, but by the time you get up to the top of the strut it needs to move quite a bit to change the angle. Hence redrilling the tower is probably out of the question. Farkin things are hard enough to get to as it is!

Already have camber bolts in, did the job with the lift but not coping with the widening. Will recheck them tomorrow.

atari4x4 wrote:

can you unwiden you widening mod a bit?

Really don't want to have to redrill now that I've welded 4mm plate each side...

got_bar_work wrote:

U might not have enough lift for the amount u widened it
R u running calmini arms
If so there is ur camber and cv problem right there
They r longer to make up for being on a angle. same thing the widening mod does
Together u have way to wide a front end
Put the stock arms on and c how it goes

With how much the front has sagged (didn't notice until today) you may be right about not enough lift. New springs needed, then will re-evaluate.

Still running Cal arms, but they are only marginally wider than the stock ones - I compared them when I put the Cal kit in and could hardly make out the difference. They can't be much wider or they'd cause CV problems, no?
Measured the track front and rear today, and it was a bit. Will report back specifically tomorrow.
No longer have stock arms, so can't go there.

Damo wrote:

Can you Retro fit a camber adjuster plate off something else? Ricer donor perhaps?

Don't know enough about it...?

buddies72 wrote:

I ended up checking the camber bolts myself before pulling the whole thing apart for filling/redrilling the strut holes, and found that the camber adjustment bolts whilst fully adjusted out, had the locating lugs on the washers in the wrong place, meaning when fully adjusted they were still only giving the same alignment as the original bolts.

I would suggest checking these for yourself before doing anything else, and probably the best thing you could do if you still need it is fill and redrill the struts. IMO it's the least likeley to fail, and is also reversible if necessary.

If you mark the struts with a stamp for the centre of the original holes, you should be able to redrill in the correct location if necessary later.

Here's hoping it's as easy as a camber bolt tweak. I don't like the idea of mutilating strut collars, as I'd never be able to keep them in good enough shape, and would be worried about cooking the oil with the welding...


Anyhoo, thanks again, will be back tomorrow with some more specific detail for y'all.

[got_bar_work]

After u get ur hight sorted Just die grind the strut hole like a slot
Replace bolt with a big washer each side
Keep playing with it till u get it right then just tack the washer in place
U shouldnt need to put much heat in it
It cant be any weaker the the pos camber bolts
I have had 2 snap now
Once u get enough lift u shouldnt need to much more adjustment
Mine is close
Close enough that im not going to bother with anything else

[Pico42]

DarkHorse wrote:

...

What I'm thinking of doing is slicing the guts out of it, so I am left with the two bolting faces and about 10mm of 'rise' - enough room for a nut. These will then be welded to some 3mm plate offsetting them half their 64mm internal diameter:


I'm anticipating some bracing on the sides as well to minimise any deflection under load. Otherwise I may have to either cut the plate or allow more rise for the stock mount ....

I looked seriously at a similar fix for our camber with two key differences. 1) Instead of a plate, the offset was over the 50mm height of the spacer, and 2) we were trying to correct the other way.

In the end it didn't work for us because the amount of correction required had the strut touching the spring - found that at mock up stage. But this shouldn't be a problem for you as the top needs to move out?

[DarkHorse]

Cool, thanks GBW.

Pico - you were trying to correct camber after lifting it, yeah? See measurements below for some more detail, but yes, I'm talking about moving them outboard, away from springs/chassis etc



For the sake of interest, some of the measurements I took the other day... an initial disclaimer - these are taken with an old tape measure in less than scientific conditions, so I make no pretense or guarantee as to their accuracy. Hopefully it gives an idea of what's going on under my car though.

This is a rough schematic of what the widening does:

NB - these figures do not take into account the fact that the balljoint on my car currently sits 77mm lower than the control arm chassis mounts.

In summary, moving the rear mount 33mm outboard moves the balljoint outboard 20mm and forward 28mm.
Wikipedia lists the LWB standard wheelbase as 2479mm. I measured it roughly at a round 2500, so that vaguely adds up if you allow a few mm of shortening due to the lift.

As for wheel track, I measured my current front track at 1500mm, rear at 1435 - so I'm 2.5" wider at the front with Calmini arms and the widening (as above, accounts for 20mm.) I can't imagine the Calmini arms are 45mm wider than standard...



Camber at the moment is 9mm out between the bag of the tyre at the top and at the bottom, a distance of 570mm. That works out to 0.9deg.
I worked out that to correct this I would need to move the top strut mount outboard 14mm. Not as much as I expected. This would also drag the bottom strut mount outboard 9mm - maybe enough to cause CV issues given that that's probably half the range of movement in the slip joint?


Other interesting numbers:
Hub to guard is 520mm front and 565mm rear, so the front springs have sagged something like 45mm
Chassis clearance under the front body mount is 298mm, rear is 341mm. Extrapolated to the wheelbase this actually comes to 74mm difference

Vit stock rear arms measure 467mm bolt to bolt, Calmini arms 474mm. My new custom arms are 482mm.


Anyhoo, brain is melting now. If any of that rings alarm bells for people please let me know if there's something I may have missed.