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Ball Joint Spacer - For lowered not raised cars

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Sorry im new i did look in the forum but couldn't find decent info on Ball Joint spacers for lowered cars. 

 

Has anyone made these?  After a wedge shape idea for a 3 bolt ball joint to keep the car low but even out the ball joint to avoid binding. Wanting to make it myself so cant really go down the road of drop spindles.  

 

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3 minutes ago, scottly said:

Savy Motorsport make them I think

Hi Mate thanks for the link.. wow $230AU 😗  I was just kinda hoping to make one out of tapered steel rather then alloy 👌   

 

Your Ute looks pretty awesome 

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On 5/27/2020 at 3:02 PM, deankdx said:

i think it was @Crazy2287 that made /modified them in his car if you check out his thread i'll see if i can add the link in a sec

 

I looked but couldn't find it, has any one just made a simple wedge that bolts in to correct the angle? 

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the problem with wedges is that it will cause misalignment and shearing action on the bolts used to hold the ball joint on. Not really ideal, I cut the mount out of my upper arm and weld it in a new one.

also putting a wedge in will increase the angle of the upper arm and depending on how low you want to put your car you will end up with your upper arm binding against the tower. From here you can machine the back of upper arms get more clearance. 

if you are going to wedge make sure you try to do it so the top and the bottom of the bolts are bolting on a square surface, you may achieve this by wedging the underside of the top and bottom of the bolt by equal and opposite angles, and it should be fine. make sure you use high tensile 8.8 or 10 grade bolts. 

The better option is to purchase upper arms that are already modified with angles to correct ball joint binding these exist and are cheaper now than they were when I had to make my own arms.

 

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Awesome thanks heaps for the reply 👌 Im pretty lucky in that respect ive been in the Fastener industry for a very long time 😁  Any idea who sells the arms?  Its a funny topic when you say you want to slam a car as low as you can on springs.. if someone says it cant be done it makes me want to do it more and ive always had slammed cars so its gonna be slammed.  

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Savy motor sport in Oz also do a 3 bold ball joint that has a 18 degree wedge built into the body of it. It would be a bolt in and go option and a lot safer/stronger than the other wedges in my opinion. Also cheaper than modifying your UCA and getting them weld inspected/ crack tested for cert if its a road car

I've been trying to order a pair off them for the last few months but they can't get stock due to covid.

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Crazy i went down this road  few years ago and i got welded shorten arms from an XF track car but they wouldn't pass a wof for street use!! Im thinking along the lines of putting them back in and doing the Shelby mod but drilling the holes 1" above and slightly forward not below.

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Crazy i went down this road  few years ago and i got welded shorten arms from an XF track car but they wouldn't pass a wof for street use!! Im thinking along the lines of putting them back in and doing the Shelby mod but drilling the holes 1" above and slightly forward not below.
The 'shelby drop' wasn't intended for the purpose of lowering the car, it was intended to improve suspension geometry.

I'd be doing some homework on suspension geometry before making those changes....

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I realize it wasn't intended to lower the Shelby. I'm implying the same principle in reverse with a shortened arm to stop ball joint bind. I understand suspension geometry and I'm trying to engineer a solution for a slammed ride without spindles and ball joint spacers. I think track cars and suspension geometry may be in another thread?  

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Got ya now, higher uca mount on strut tower and shorter uca to ramp camber on with bump....... you would almost have to move the uca pivot mount outwards to keep camber reasonable with the shorter arm?

It would be interesting to see how the position of the roll center would change and the amount of bump steer induced?

I haven't done one yet but the roll center diagrams look fairly simple to construct.

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Raising the UCA mount point would indeed assist with the ball joint problem but mess up the handling big time. The reason for the Shelby (Arning) drop is to provide increased neg camber on compression, correcting the factory geometry that induces understeer by going to positive camber under compression. This was deliberate by manufacturers in the day, who engineered that kind of handling into passenger cars because understeer was considered safer than oversteer.

 

What the Shelby drop essentially does is allow close to zero camber at static height, rather than having to dial in lots of neg camber at static to compensate for the positive camber coming on when loaded.

 

What you are proposing will increase positive camber under compression even more than factory, although with an extremely stiff and low spring, that would be less pronounced than if you were at stock height. One thing you could do to counter this is to wind the camber adjustment bolt on the lower arm around 180 degrees so its mount point is higher. This will go some way to matching the increase to the top arm angle.

 

The physical ride height will actually increase by approx 1/2” as this is the accepted amount of lowering that happens when you go the other way. This aspect will work against the spring lowering you're planning on doing.

 

I have to ask, if going so low as to bind the ball joint, would the car still be at a legal ride height (considering you are worried about the legalities of modding the top arm to suit)?

 

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