Okay guys, since there seems to be a few conversations on the subject i thought it would be easier to discuss here.
Starting with this question… mid way through the discussion of course:
my response… and of course this is to the best of my knowledge since i’ve investigated this various times over the years…
IMHO LCA’s are overkill for street cars anyways… Sasha won GT class with stock LCA’s and my arms… i’d like to know what Scott Murfin (Can Align) thinks about this.
My perspective is that you can get your car set up properly without expensive LCA’s F&R. If you’re going to get them though you might as well go wtih SPL instead of opening up a can of worms by going with a set of China arms.
My idea was to just replace the RLCA bushings with Nismo bushings however they’re discontinued and I didn’t really feel like buying new OEM ones at around $160+ each considering some aftermarket LCAs run in the $400 range.
As for FLCAs, this is probably the best bet: http://nissanroadracing.com/showthread.php?t=1407
My thought was to do the same thing for the RLCAs as they did for the FLCAs in the aforementioned thread, however a lot of people are concerned with Godspeed and other arms since they have a threaded rod end which means all of the stress goes onto the arm through a threaded “joint” instead of like how the OEM arms are with the highest stress point directly onto the arm itself.
With respect to the godspeed stuff… iono, the arms themselves are crap material, crap welds and crap finish… you might as well go for SPL and save yourself the time.
The problem with those ball joint “roll center adjusters” is that they don’t actually adjust your roll center. It’s the joint that you want to offset lower and with those it is only the base that is growing in height but the joint still stays around the same location as stock.
I had an issue with this too before where if you were to slam your car but were concerned with roll center, the only (easy) way to retain your roll center was to get aftermarket LCAs with a longer stepped shank to offset the outboard rod end lower. I suspect this is a big reason why guys are still interested in the LCAs.
At the end of the day though, I would say most people could care less unless they actually are consistently lapping with a slammed setup with smaller wheels. Not worth all that $$ for the fully adjustable LCAs if you’re on the street.
This was always my one pet peeve with the LCA joint design. Wished it was more like the 86’s LCA where you can just bolt on a spacer block in between to offset.
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By the way, what do you mean by industrial thread? Just wondering…
Ya, I’m hesitant to buy that GS horseshit. As for those roll center adjusters, they are if there are two types which I will discuss below.
That’s not entirely accurate when talking about the roll center adjusters. There are two types: collared and shank. Ideally, you want to move the pivot location downward, which subsequently requires a longer shank. A collared RCA, in layman’s terms, is a raised-base shank such that you’re not lowering the pivot point at all but instead just placing a spacer or something like a stack of washers on the base. I know megan makes collars RCAs but IDK about Hardrace RCAs which is what deluboz is selling there… Here’s a good point to illustrate it…
Have you looked into modifying the stock arms for full adjustability? I have a spare set of flca’s sitting around that I’m going to experiment on sometime in the future. Theres a bunch of scattered info on it in the roll center thread on Zilvia if you wanna read up on it.
what i meant by industrial spec was the thread pitches, diameters and race features among other things.
for Canadian drivers you should have a self sealing, teflon-lined low misalignment rod end on your rear suspension arms and they should be fine thread. These rod ends protect the race of the rod end and in general are strong, higher quality and last much longer though can still develop noise after a while.
industrial applications usually see lower quality rod ends with funny specs with coarse threads…usually not teflon lined and if they are they are still poopy race designs that allow for crud to get in there and wear itself and develop play or make noise really early.
That’s why lower end arms usually have a dust boot like… cusco
Circuit Sport has upgraded their hardware i’ve noticed and the ISIS arms appear to be similar but the bodies of the arms are still total china… i took some pics recently that i’ll get hosted shortly
Good diagram. That’s what I was talking about. But I still don’t see how a collared RCA will correct RC. This is purely in theory since your RC is driven by your pivot points in space. I agree that it’s really a negligible thing for almost everyone. Just trying to be technically correct that’s all. The collared RCA will increase your LCA’s effective length, which affects your camber gain (similar to how you can play around with camber gain with short-long-arm double wishbone lengths).
Yeah I agree, that’s what I was thinking… Lack of lining and coarse threads -> definitely not recommended. If I were streeting with any of these rods ends though I’d still like to see a dust boot since I don’t think the PTFE or teflon liner would be enough over time…
Ya, there’s a thread on Nissan Road Racing about it too, but it’s a lot better than the junk info you will find on Zilvia.
The nice thing about Circuit Sports is that they have lifetime warranty… I just don’t know how well they honor it.
I understand what you’re saying about increasing length of the lower arm, but that’s the point; collared RCAs do not correct the RC… just poorly designed chinese crap that have eventually passed on to many other comapnies. I’m having a hard time finding extended-shank RCAs.
The roll center thread actually has alot of good information, surprising coming from zilvia, but a few of the NRR guys are active in it which helps alot. Theres a few guys that have experimented with it in slightly different ways than the NRR thread shows.
I’ve met many “full-on” azns… I don’t particularly enjoy them except for the korean girls The rest, I prefer halfies, fo sho.
Anyway, I’m thinking of just swapping the ball joints and bushings on my oem RLCAs… Anyone know how and where to get Hardrace bushings for a Nissan?
all these require different set up and set different goals. There have been a couple of different opinions that are both correct, one for grip.
Bing maybe separte the thread to accomodate each.
Sasha could also chime in here.
What I do on my car is set the ride height to best accomodate my goal without spending a ton of time and money. The question of front and rear LCA’s engineering to get the car 1" lower is not worth the aggrivation to me. There are many more things to correct after making those changes
I understand your situation, but mine is up on stands getting all brand new suspension components with everything completely taken off the car, so it’s worth it to replace it now while it’s all off, ya know?
i think Scott makes a good point that is sitting beneath the surface.
i know he has guys show up who put on coilovers and then bolted on the multi-link arms, set it by eye and rolled into his shop with their car dumped as low as it will go until it rubs and then ask for an alignment.
Scott’s first response is usually: “Raise it up 1.5 inches”
If you do that you dont need the LCA’s i suppose. Scott could clarify that.
Scott and Sasha know much more about setting up a car than i do so i basically just take their advice on that stuff.
So your car is an inch higher but you save yourself several hundred or maybe over a thousand dollars in LCA’s by keeping a reasonable ride height.
Scott, i dont know that we have enough appetite for separate threads on each discipline but you go right ahead and start discussions on how to set up a car for different purposes in different threads I am sure people will get engaged.
I just uploaded the pics of my arms vs. the off shore stuff. In this case ISIS. I don’t promote them but if a guy insists on using poo parts i guess i will oblige him.
No comparison on arm thickness, mine are twice as thick.
Another view…and consider the powder coat details. On the asian arms they just spray away… i guess those parts of the thread dont get used anyways.
The welds are probably the worst part though… i guess if you put enough paint over it no one will notice right?
There is a reason off-shore arms cost half the price as SPL. To be honest, i’m very surprised that PBM keeps the price point they do. They should be charging more since their arms are noticeably better than the typical off-shore stuff.
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