Lee's Garage

[lee303]

right, tie bars, bearings and inserts etc come to £135 odd, tube will be about £40 for decent CDS, i am actually considering making a few sets and selling them, might as well guage interest here, i would need to modify a few sets of lower arms and make/modify some crossmember brackets to go with too, but getting hold of a few of those shouldnt be too hard, knocking out just the bars would be easier, but a kit would be better no? what do you lot think?

[lee303]

lee, this is a bit of you aint it?
http://www.migweb.co.uk/forums/vauxh...ova-doors.html

sure is, already have carbon doors, would like some fiberglass front wings though

[kennybarbour]

im looking into making a copy of the pilbeam set up for my rally car, all depends on whether or not i can be bothered at the time really

[GDN16v]

would like some fiberglass front wings though

My mate has a pair of fibre glass front wings sitting in his garage, i dont think they are much lighter than the standard nova steel wing!!

[CraigGreen]

right, tie bars, bearings and inserts etc come to £135 odd, tube will be about £40 for decent CDS, i am actually considering making a few sets and selling them, might as well guage interest here, i would need to modify a few sets of lower arms and make/modify some crossmember brackets to go with too, but getting hold of a few of those shouldnt be too hard, knocking out just the bars would be easier, but a kit would be better no? what do you lot think?

Sounds good but I'm a bit lost as to why you need to mod the bottom arms..

Could you give us a full explanation of whats involved, included & likely benefits? Should give some readers more of an idea as to what they do for a Nova & for some reason I cant visualise exactly how it all goes together.

CG (interested)

[lee303]

righty craig, here goes, bear with me if its a bit long winded!!

the way i want to make these bars is so they are adjustable on the car, and as so i want a rose joint at either end, with opposite thread so you can have the joints fixed in place on the car and just turn the bar to make it longer or shorter to adjust your castor angle

castor angle is basically the angle that your suspension strut is inclined at relative to its pivot point, i.e the hub. if you have no castor(strut dead straight upwards from the hub) your camber angle on the wheel will stay the same no matter what angle your steering is at, which is fine, but if you want a better turn in and more grip through the corner, you want to add camber as your wheel turns,
this is the effect gained form having positive castor(strut inclined towards the rear of the car) as the wheel will take up the effective inclined angle of the strut as it turns around the hub and the camber will increase, in extremes this will affect tyre wear, but 4 degrees positive castor is apparently 'the' angle to have on a nova and will not affect your tyre wear too much if at all, your car will be slighty less prone to self centering the steering out of a corner though

as for why i would need to mod the lower arms, rose joints need to be mounted properly, i.e a bolt though with spacers that fit in the inside of the joint to, to make sure you grip the ball of the joint so they perform to their full specs, that said i want to make a plate to weld to the top and bottom of them to make a mounting point for the rose joint,which would need spacers to take up the excess room between the plates and grip the ball pof the joint as above
i would need to box the bottom of a standard arm, and make anti crush tubes to stop the lower arm deforming when bolting through both top and bottom rose joint mounting plate
its actually quite hard to explain what i want to do without pics, i will take some during making mine and post them up here and it will all become clear, i promiselmao

[lee303]

My mate has a pair of fibre glass front wings sitting in his garage, i dont think they are much lighter than the standard nova steel wing!!

if they are MK1 and he wants rid, i'll have them!

[CraigGreen]

Lee. Understood.
You making the complete arm or doing on exchange & utilising the existing GM part?

Lowered tie bar brkts have been referred to as castor brackets. Is this the same effect? Would you use these aswell or do they not offer as much/same adjustability?

thanks for spending the time to type that out btw

[kennybarbour]

what lee is trying to make (i think) is a length adjustable version of this kind of set up

http://www.eurorallye.co.uk/product_...roducts_id=501

(apologies in advance for any confusion if im wrong)

[lee303]

yeah i would make new arms, the only GM bits would be the modded lower arms and crossmember brackets, a roll bar fixing need designing too, but i will do that when mine are done

replacement cross member brackets do normally give you some more positive castor as they are designed to bring the tie bar forward, i will be lowering my fixing point on the cross member, but purely to dial in some anti dive into the suspension geometry, which is the main benefit when people just lower the brakets off the crossmember
the good thing about my setup is the fact its fully adjustable on car
no worries about all the typing, just hope i make sense!

[lee303]

what lee is trying to make (i think) is a length adjustable version of this kind of set up

http://www.eurorallye.co.uk/product_...roducts_id=501

(apologies in advance for any confusion if im wrong)

yup! mine will be a bit cheaper though!

[stuartp]

Please correct me if im wrong but them on eurorallye arnt adjustable i.e. have opposite threaded tubes with rose joinst??? But i can picture what you mean lee, so i'l defo be interested once you've done the hard work off making them.lmao cheers for all the advice and keep up the nice work on the nova and please paint the car the same colour!!lmao lmao

[lee303]

ok, so now the mods start getting really interesting!
started to make my tie bars tonight, thought i'd start with the TCA end as its the most straight forward
first things first, made some templates and cut some steel

these go either side of the arm, with holes in both spaced as per the ball joint
drilled them then clamped them up nice and parralell(the TCA is not parallel!!)
then welded them on


the joint will then sit between them, with a spacer like this either side of the ball
of the joint to make sure it is gripped properly and allow the full movement of the ball that is available

the inner shoulders dont touch in the middle fo the joint so as to make the clamping force all on the ball
of the rose joint, here's the joint in place without spacers as i need to make them!

on the car(standar arms to be removed )

this is sort of what the finished setup will look like

obviously i need the bracket at the other end, gonna just fabricate a totally new one, the GM item
is going in the bin as its a bit tricky to modify it how i want
so, hopefully what i want to do is a bit clearer now

[lee303]

should say, when i bolt the ball joint on i will have some anti crush tubes under it inside the box of the TCA as i want to bolt it all the way through

[novashed]

liking that mate!

what quality/spec are the rose joints, needing some for the lowered steering arms on mine, in female if i can get them

[Benn]

edit,looking at the pics i get it,

but why remove the tie bar off the bolt for the ball joint?

[lee303]

i went for 'race' spec, much as i hate that termlmao they are from rally design and are heavy duty, i.e 31,350 lbs static loading capacity, which is plenty for any suspension loadings you could have, they do male and female in varying sizes and arent too pricy either tbh

[lee303]

edit,looking at the pics i get it,

but why remove the tie bar off the bolt for the ball joint?

just makes it easier to mount the rose joint this way than trying to bolt it through the ball joint

[Benn]

ah ok cool,

[novarallycar]

Looks Good Lee ,
I'm sure you probably thought about this so tell me to shut up if you have but are you going to get enough lock with the tie bar bracket that close to the ball joint. If so i like the idea as the Pilbeam/ HH stuff has a big overhang after the tie bar take off towards the ball joint if you see what i mean and i alway's thought it puts a lot of load on the end of the bottom arm.
This is so you get enough lock i was told as the fabricated arms are quite a bit wider than standard.

[lee303]

yup, am thinking if there is a problem i can move the rose joint inward a bit and reshape the plate, its close for sure, but i think it'll just clear, might even act as a lock limiterlmao
i wanted to go as close to then end of the TCA as poss though, to avoid loading the end like you say, we shall see this weekend!

[novashed]

are you going to uprate the balljoints too lee?

[spanishfly]

Brilliant work chap, that car should handle well

[GDN16v]

if they are MK1 and he wants rid, i'll have them!

They are MK1 wings, i'll ask him at the weekend if he wants to sell l!!

[lee303]

are you going to uprate the balljoints too lee?

nope! only time i've seen a ball joint fail is on a stage rally, and i dont intend to go off roading! the ball joint shouldt really see any more load than standard either