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Roller upper and lower tubular control arms

Shaun

Shaun

Member
I've been working on and off for many years on some roller bearing upper and lower tubular control arms.

IMG_6615.jpg


The lca pivot features a 3/4" monoball and the upper is held to the 4140 shaft with giant heims. Yes, I know they are in single shear but the through bolt size is so large it is not a concern. Both control arms feature screw in ball joints that are super easy to replace/service. Tubing is .120 tig welded.

I shortened the UCA and changed the BJ angle so I can increase the negative camber gain. An added benefit of the shorter UCA is I can run a 245 tire on the front with a rolled fender lip.

I've had them out on the track for a few hours already with no issues so far. I'm still messing with lengths getting the negative camber gain and desired alignment specs sorted out.

What do you think? These prototypes are rattle can painted grey just for rust protoection through testing. They will be blasted and magnafluxed for cracks after testing. I was going to powder the production pieces black like our strut rods but I kind of like the grey. Vote?
 
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I dig them, but how are they going to compare price was to the TCP, Global West, Ron Morris, etc all? There are a billion suppliers of them, the only way to gain any market share has to be the price point. Its not like they are billet pieces where you have to own a CNC, but you do have your overhead and associated costs. IMHO, they seem to be cheaper than snot for the Chebby guys, but for some reason the Mustang pieces are made of platinum.
 
"monkeystash" said:
Nice work Shaun. If they were blue, they would pass as TCP. However, I vote for black.
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They may look similar because they are made of tubing and the UCA uses heims. The pluses of ours are they use screw in upper and lower ball joints and the rear brace bar that runs across the UCA. The adjusters on the TCP pieces are nice for the guy setting your alignment but not as stiff as ours.

The major plus point will come once I finalise the coil over shock system. I've been working with Bilstein for some time on custom valved shocks. I already have a few valvings for the regular spring perch shock and plan on using the same valving for the coil over system. Nobody else offers custom valved shocks with their coil overs. I'm not a fan of the gimicky 'adjustable' shocks so I'm going the Bilstein route giving guys a 'real' shock with the option of totally customizing it down to shock valving based on weights of the car etc.
 
"Fast68back" said:
I dig them, but how are they going to compare price was to the TCP, Global West, Ron Morris, etc all? There are a billion suppliers of them, the only way to gain any market share has to be the price point. Its not like they are billet pieces where you have to own a CNC, but you do have your overhead and associated costs. IMHO, they seem to be cheaper than snot for the Chebby guys, but for some reason the Mustang pieces are made of platinum.
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I would not of pursued the project if I didn't think I could make an equal or better product than the competition that I could retail for less.
 
Hey Shaun, it don't want to be a jerk here but, you can't use a screw in ball joint under compression, they are for tension only. The end cap will pop out at some point (don't ask me how I know that). If the spring is on the lower arm it works fine but with the spring on the upper arm, it's going to break. You can change the upper ball joint to a Moog K8036 and it'll work great. Nice looking arms, I like the grey.

John
 
I'm using a set of Opentrackers roller perches on my "blue" control arms and they work great. I'm sure they'd go well on the "grey" ones too :pep
 
"Opentracker" said:
Hey Shaun, it don't want to be a jerk here but, you can't use a screw in ball joint under compression, they are for tension only. The end cap will pop out at some point (don't ask me how I know that). If the spring is on the lower arm it works fine but with the spring on the upper arm, it's going to break. You can change the upper ball joint to a Moog K8036 and it'll work great. Nice looking arms, I like the grey.

John
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John,

Thanks for the input. I did my research on this and I couldn't find any reason why not to use one there. I spoke with a manufacturer of circle track arms and even they had no answer why I couldn't. They had never heard of the ball joints having issues depending on spring placement. I even read through a lot of cc.com posts on the subject but could only see people saying it would happen but nothing that it did happen.

What experience did you have that blew out the cap?
 
Under the end cap is a spring that keeps the ball-stud in place. If you pull on the ball-stud it won't move, it also won't move north south east or west. If you push on the stud it will compress the spring inside, unseating the ball-stud letting it move around N S E and W. The end cap is only swedged in place. if you push hard enouph it does come out.

noncoilover1.jpg


Here is what I did about 4 years ago. I was on the way but decided it wasn't going to work. We test everything for a full year before it goes on the market and this didn't pass the test.

We have been friends longer than either of our LLC's. I would hate to see you or your car get hurt.
 
John,

If you were using a Moog K772 Chrylser style ball joint then they are not designed to be used for the UCA carrying the spring. You are correct that the cap would push off.

There are ball joints available that are fully encapsulated and can be run on either control arm regardless of spring placement. Problem is they are 5+ times the price of the Moog one. This makes the UCA more costly so is probably why most mfg's go with a regular bolt in. I like the screw in but may switch the design if the costs get too high.
 
I didn't know that. Five times the cost WOW !

I thought it was a great way to go till I found out about the issue with the cap.

You did your homework better than I did - A+ for you :cool
 
Made a design change so we could use a regular bolt in ball joint for the upper. This shaved almost $100 off my cost (and subsequently the retail cost - shooting for $499pr for the uppers and $349pr for the lowers):

uca.jpg


Other than a few dimensional changes the lowers haven't changed other than now being black! These test parts are just rattle can painted right now so we can easily blast the paint off and magnaflux/inspect after testing.

More testing going on for the rest of this year with production scheduled for sometime this winter.

Feedback?
 
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I now have rev. 2 control arms on the car.

With the UCA mounted directly onto the shock tower and using the LCA eccentric to adjust camber I have a massive amount of tire to fender clearance. In the pics are my 17x8 4.75"bs wheels with 225/45/17 rubber. I can easily see 245/40/17's on there if not maybe 255's...

-2.75 degrees camber was easily achievable. Heading to the track tomorrow to see how well it all works.

Let me know what you think!

control_arms.jpg


control_arms2.jpg
 
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Stay away from curbs. You could get a 245 under there no problem. Wow !

Nice work Shaun.

control_arms.jpg
 
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Is something rubbing the inside of the tire? Look at the logo on the tire

control_arms2.jpg
 
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Looks like it's hitting the outer shocktower cover like mine did.

outershocktowermod2.JPG



Here's how I fixed it. I welded a plate over the cut and added a new bump stop.

outershocktowermod1.JPG
 
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