Cutting late dual spring plates down to single?

[Slow 1200]

If I recall correctly on the front of Type 3s you can actually adjust both upper and lower balljoints so you can get quite a lot of negative camber without messing with anything else, I think you're not supposed to mess with the lower one though...

[Piledriver]

Basically the lower ones supposed to be set max forward offset and left alone.
The center of the spec is just over +1 degree camber +/- 30 minutes.

The upper adjuster lacks the range to get to get out of spec by itself.

You can get to ~zero setting the adjusters completely wrong and losing most of the caster.
Lowered even a tiny bit and you are pushing zero caster with it adjusted like that.

I'd prefer go get the base camber decent so the adjusters are properly centred in their range.

[Steve Arndt]

Max Welton just made new T3 beam bushings out of bronze for his T3. He was having problems finding fresh replacements. How are yours?

[Steve Arndt]

Upper inner trailing arm bushings he made.

[Piledriver]

Nice, ISPWest used to offer Delrin bushings as well.

I need to fix my 73 front end as a spare, the R upper arm had some play

I currentlyhave a *barn find ~40K mile early front end with absolutely zero slop installed, made a huge difference.
Between it and the matching steering box it deflated my desire to go rack and pinion or with a different suspension as it has zero steering play as well after minor adjustment, and the car drives like it just left the showroom.

Do need to yank the steering box and replace the factory grease fill with the good stuff available now.
I just dug out what I could get from the top and topped it up.
The 40+ year old factory grease was kinda krunchy and dried out.

The front beam was apparently the only part left that didn't sell on ebay or go for scrap, so i got it for "get it outta my yard".

* 69 square, was stored shortly thereafter due to "unfixable" EFI issues out of warranty in southern Oklahoma and forgotten.
Zero rust, perfect interior, title. I found out about it long after it went to scrap.
Some of it became a trike.
Sad.

[Max Welton]

You mentioned ISP West bushings ... beware.

Left to right; one of the ISP West bushings I removed after a few years of daily-driver service, an original from a 71 beam and one of my oil impregnated bronze replacements. Notice how much shorter the ISP bushing is.



And the OD comparison. The white plastic ones virtually fell out of the beam.







Max

[Piledriver]

Interesting, so you replaced the factory plastic bush too.

The ISP bushings are (allegedly) oversize on OD and undersize on ID and basically supplied "machine to fit", so it may be a PO or whoever installed them fitment issue?
Perhaps the first batch were pre-machined and it was later discovered that didn't fly?
The width is a concern, how did they wear on the ID?

When you had it apart how much seating area did the lower arm bushing/bearing have?

Could one... (purely hypothetically ) pull the lower arm out 1/4"-1/2" and still have full contact, or is there a raised area on each wear surface? (camber adjust)
Or perhaps the arm is too short for that/pull out past the inner bush?
Perhaps not enough spline contact?

The bar takes the thrust on the lower, so the clamp/seal and bearing/bushing engagement are my concerns.

I'll find out one way or the other this weekend if I get that far.

[Max Welton]

I didn't do the lowers this time. They still seem fine since the last rebuild in 2011. The lower inner bushings were also the ISP style.

I had not thought of repositioning the trailing link outward. I would have had to reconsider the geometry.

Max

[Piledriver]

Tore down the front ends and put the larger 73 springs and swaybar in the the mounted suspension last weekend.
(I'm not sure if the springs were any bigger, but the swaybar was ~50% larger diameter.

Also lowered the arms ~6 degrees, but with my setup that resulted in about a 1" drop.

Due to bearing width, you can only get ~4mm of spacer on the inside of the torsion to space out the bar>arm for camber adjust.
Moving the arm end out isn't practical due to the design.
If the arms were sleeved you might get a bit more, but the inner spines are not really all that wide.

It looks like my lower ball joints are not eccentric as I thought, anyone have the part# or a source for the proper ones?
Google-fu is letting me down.
I'd like to be able to keep some caster.

[Piledriver]

I forgot about this pic... Wilwood 8x7" mount rotor over a std T3 or 914 rotor... Was considering a rotor-ectomy using the OEM "hat"/hub...
(rotors both upside down vs desired final setup, the turned down old rotor/hat OD would fit in the ID of the machined areas on the rotor mount tabs, I didn't think there was enough meat in the "lip" for the bolts, too thin there, but it might work)

[Piledriver]

OK, completely different take on adjustable spring plates. (@$1600!)

Next step would be unequal dual trailing links... which would be a lot simpler, even if you kept the torsions and springplate for lift only. You could have it toe in under load going that route.

Looks like a DIY T1 variant would not be that hard, although getting the right geometry might be a bear.
You can make interesting toe and camber changes with travel... rotates the trailig arm back as suspension rises above a certain point... you could even make that adjustable if diy.
It literally rotates the trailing arm back vs. the spring plate on the upstroke and thus adds additional negative camber with up travel, as modern low profile tires require.

You can adjust ride height, toe and static camber with car sitting on the tires.

I'm visualizing a t1/t3/944 and maybe a 914 version of this, in combination with a tubular trailing arm and perhaps 928 hub bits...(rear coil over location works) but a shortened 928 trailing arm/link setup might work better for that, lighter, probably stronger and could still retain the Weissaach geometry.(the trailing link is steel tubing and has a nice straight bit to make the right length)

Height adjust, toe, geometry including some dynamic camber adjust and rate gain (primary purpose).
Still uses the torsion bar.(not completely obvious)
A uniball on the inner pivot would probably work best with this.

http://www.elephantracing.com/suspensio ... gplate.htm

Check the kinematic animation at the bottom of the page.

[Piledriver]

Here's what I've been up to the last couple decent weekends, even took a couple days off due to good weather and got a few things done, reworked my muffler ditching the phase9 can I was running as a muffler, reworking some nasty POs rear bodywork to get the rear door to actually seal etc (bottom lip has always been below the seal)

I mentioned previously about the inner fenders on a T3, this is a square, a fastback should be ~identical.
The Notchbacks cooling air intakes is behind the rear window sort of like a T1 so no side air boxes, not sure why.

This is with 245/50/16s (25.56" slightly taller than stock) on 944 7 slots ET52.5x8s, with 15mm spacer and single spring plates, steel bump stops cut about half off horizontally for sidewall clearance.. The fenders actually sit about 3/4" out and there are seals between the inner fender lip and the fender, as well as the air intake and fender.

Still working on the other side due to pulling apart the intake airbox attempting to de-crush it.
Apologies for the image rotation, they look fine on this end...?
Car height did not change, object of the exercise was to allow full suspension up travel with no tire rub on inner fender.
Should have taken a shot horizontal to top of tire, I picked up about 3 1/4" of up travel, the rear suspension is ~on metal there with no bump stop.
Could have gone up another ~3/4" but would have been getting into the air intake seal, and not needed.
Gap difference appeas more than it is as the new lip has to be further in due to the fender profile.
I used EPDM garage door bottom seal cut n half lengthwise and used contact cement to bond to the inner fender and intake lips.
.

rear-inner-fender-1.JPG

rear-inner-fender-2.JPG

rear-inner-fender-3.JPG