I'm lowering my car and would like to correct the roll centre. This involves dropping the lower arm around 25-50mm. There are at least 5 ways of going about this.
1. Make new knuckles/uprights and incorporate any design changes into it.
2. Add extension pieces to the ball joints in order to space it out.
3. Buy longer ball joints. My favourite idea.
4. Weld in an extension onto the knuckle and use spherical bearings. My least favourite idea.
5. Find an existing off-the-shelf lower ball joint that has the right dimensions and adapt it to fit.
Making new knuckles sounds expensive. I'm going to give that a miss.
The caveat with balljoint extenders is that there have been a few documented failures over the years, whether this was a design flaw or poor material selection I cannot be sure. This would most likely be the cheapest option.
As far as i'm aware, nobody makes extended ball joints for my application, and I wouldn't know where to begin with finding a company that could make some.
I don't like the idea of spherical bearings one bit due to then having to make new lower arms and the increased maintenance of the rose joint then required. It's not a race car and I hate maintenance.
The fifth way - obtain off the shelf ball joints for another vehicle and adapt them to work with my lower arms and knuckles. This could prove to be relatively cheap if I could find something. The trouble is finding it in the first place...
Opinions?
1. Make new knuckles/uprights and incorporate any design changes into it.
2. Add extension pieces to the ball joints in order to space it out.
3. Buy longer ball joints. My favourite idea.
4. Weld in an extension onto the knuckle and use spherical bearings. My least favourite idea.
5. Find an existing off-the-shelf lower ball joint that has the right dimensions and adapt it to fit.
Making new knuckles sounds expensive. I'm going to give that a miss.
The caveat with balljoint extenders is that there have been a few documented failures over the years, whether this was a design flaw or poor material selection I cannot be sure. This would most likely be the cheapest option.
As far as i'm aware, nobody makes extended ball joints for my application, and I wouldn't know where to begin with finding a company that could make some.
I don't like the idea of spherical bearings one bit due to then having to make new lower arms and the increased maintenance of the rose joint then required. It's not a race car and I hate maintenance.
The fifth way - obtain off the shelf ball joints for another vehicle and adapt them to work with my lower arms and knuckles. This could prove to be relatively cheap if I could find something. The trouble is finding it in the first place...
Opinions?