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Summer wheels, 10mm spacer in the rear. It sits exactly as I had envisioned it from the beginning. It still needs some fresh paint on the bumpers and a couple tweaks here and there but overall, I'm quite happy with the car.
So, forgot to update the sway bar endlink situation and only remember when someone PM'd me saying they were also putting a kit like this together.
For the OEM camber arms and UR sway combo, (probably also applies to stock and sport OE sway) There is too great of a difference in angle and horizontal distance between the sway bar and the mounting points on the camber arm. The angles achieved by the heim joints isn't quite enough so you need to reduce the horizontal distance between the sway bar eyelet and the eyelet on the control arm. You basically have to purchase spacers to reduce that distance. I believe the correct combo should reduce something in the neighborhood of 30mm total between the top and bottom eyelets. In the config picture above, (Figs camber arm, UR sway) they bolt right up but the heim joints are at their maximum range of motion so I decided to add a spacer, seen between the top misalignment spacer and the sway bar eyelet. Its a 15mm unthreaded spacer which can also be found from McMaster. Remember that with the spacer, you will also need longer bolts.
With standard sway bar and arms, adding spacers will improve ride quality? I can see there is a slight angle between the two mounting points, the link is not straight up and down. Looks like adding a spacer will allow each side of the suspension to droop down a bit more before the sway bar link is fully extended.
With standard sway bar and arms, adding spacers will improve ride quality? I can see there is a slight angle between the two mounting points, the link is not straight up and down. Looks like adding a spacer will allow each side of the suspension to droop down a bit more before the sway bar link is fully extended.
Here is the left sway bar link.
Just seen this. The angle difference between the two mounting points is why it requires spacers. The universal links don't accomodate as much of an angle compared to the OE style end link so you need to decrease the angle by reducing the side-to-side distance between the two points. The spacers don't improve ride quality, they are there so that the endlink will fit. Its a bit hard to explain, but once you start mounting it up, you'll maybe see what I mean.
The sway bar travel on this car is pretty limited as pointed out to me by the guys at figs. If you disconnect both sides, and move it by hand, you can see that with the suspension at ride height, the sway doesn't move too much further upwards. Its especially noticeable if your car is lowered.
Was chasing down a front end clunk and first went to the left lower ball joint since that LCA doesn't seem too straight as its missing almost a degree of caster. Replaced it and it was still there. While I was in there, the inner tie rod end seemed to be going out slowly. No play yet, but its really loose. Outer tie rod is completely fine.
I'd thought that the ball joint on that side of the car was the culprit as it had taken a hit at some point. I'd then inspected the LCA again. The wheel isn't perfectly centered in the wheel well and there's signs of a minor bend in the LCA. The LCA is steel and from how it's bent, I'd highly doubt it's prone to catastrophic failure, but will wear tires faster. I'll need to replace it at some point.
Minor cracking of the powder coat here indicating its maybe bent. Not really a worry.
Was a bit frustrated after that since I was almost certain the ball joint was the issue. Looked around a bit more and someone said that their car was creaking after an alignment and it turns out the front camber bolts weren't tightened to spec at the last alignment place. The torque spec is something like 130ft-lb which is quite a lot more than you can manage with a box wrench in your hand. Once I tightened it up, creak was gone.
Also got to the root of creaking doors seals. It's not the rubber seal against the glass that creaks, but the outmost top door seal against the body. When you roll the window up all the way, it slightly changes the shape of the door frame and causes creaking. I think having the rack on the roof probably contributed to this since the jaws / hooks break the seal and probably dried the last application of shin-etsu out faster.
Anyways, I'm back to a silent car which is absolutely fantastic.
03-05-21, 09:42 PM
