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chicken-fried coilovers for 2g

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a95gsx

15+ Year Contributor
36
0
Apr 26, 2006
B'ham, Alabama
MORE PICS IN POST #8
Thought I'd throw this project of mine up since I haven't posted much, ever. Here's a southern style take on how to do coilovers using technology thats popular here in the south (that'd be circle track racing, boy).

Basically circle track shocks like this threaded body QA1 are cheap, readily available, fairly high quality, and come in a HUGE variety of damping rates - both compression and rebound. Most are upside down mountable too. Dyno sheets are shipped with the shocks on request by many for the ones who can benefit from that info. These QA1's are even user rebuildable and revalveable.

Since our 2g's 'struts' are really just shocks, I figured why not and machined up an adapter for the bottom (see pics). Just have to weld up a plate for the top mount. 1g strut cars need not apply this idea. Now that 2g's are getting cheap I don't mind hacking up the strut mount a bit. The upper monoball mount takes care of the movement the shock undergoes as the suspension moves too, and it is loaded radially instead of axially to boot. Soon as I finish up my FMIC install I'll be back onto these.

Placed in newbie cause of my posting status
 

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I don't know much about suspension but I think I would want more than just zip ties holding my springs in place :p

Looks like an interesting project though, keep us up to date.
 
I am interested in this, Please keep me posted on this and if you get these installed and they work fine. I do not like the zip tie idea either but I figure that it is just temperary.
 
ROFL
elfroggo said:
I don't know much about suspension but I think I would want more than just zip ties holding my springs in place :p .

They are surprisingly effective in keeping the cone and spring centered/together and weigh less than tender springs. ROFL
 
It looks like the ride on these will be rough though. Not much throw in the shocks or springs. You haven't mounted yet?
 
Looks nice. To put the questioners at ease, the zip ties serve their function only when the spring is unloaded. Once on the car, or the adjustment made to put some load on the springs, then they will stay in place by themselves

OP: Since it is positioned upside down, do you plan to use a dust boot to protect the piston shaft? What plans do you have for the top of the assembly for install? Please post some more pictures. :thumb:
 
looks good, have you been using these and how does it handle?
 
Yeah I know it's been 3 (yes three) years but I've been busy. In reality the (worn out) AGX's and 350lb springs I was running up front had me thoroughly discouraged with the car and I parked it. That and the hole in my bell housing from the intermediate shaft bearing that disintegrated in the transmission. In any event I finally got around to installing these and getting the car rolling again. I'm running 450lb springs in the front. I've only got about 20 miles on them so far but they are light years ahead the old setup. The pics: First is a view of the body with the car jacked up. 2nd is the upper mount. These mounts used to be available from just about any circle track vendor. I am sure there is an equivalent out there still. Third pic is with the car at rest on the ground. If you look you can see where the tattletale (o-ring) was left after driving around on birminghams ghetto roads in pic one - there's plenty of travel left. I 'designed' (meaning scrounged the parts) so that it bottoms just before the upper a-arm does. It also bottoms by having the lower spring seat hit the shock instead of letting the valves impact the shock body.

By offsetting the mounts slightly inboard(see pic 2) I have enough room to lift the shock body through the center hole enough to clear the fork/drive axle and facilitate quick shock changes - takes <10 minutes to swap a shock assembly. Take off the wheel, undo three bolts ,and swap the shock. You need to jack up the whole front of the car or the load from the sway bar link makes removal difficult. Also note that the sway bar link does seem to introduce a slight side load on the shock....they really should be moved to one of the control arms. How, I do not know. We'll have to see if the mounts hold up or needs a bit of reinforcing.

Yes I know there isn't a bump stop in there - I will add one after a bit more testing. I'll add paint after a bit too - need/want to keep an eye on my shoddy welds for cracking.

These shocks are QA-1 series 62 and run around $150ea. They have a threaded body, can be run upside down, are available in a huge variety of rates, and are user rebuildable/revalveable. The springs are just some 8" 450lbers I had lying around. A coilover kit for each shock (upper spring seat/hardware) is $28. The upper weld on mount is like $5.00. I turned the bottom adapter out of some bar stock I had lying around. So total cost is <$200 per corner.

This set up provides for the often mentioned 'coaxially' mounted spring, is cheap, allows for quick shock changes, loads its' monoball bearing radially instead of axially, is highly tuneable, and will allow the use of of virtually any/all upside down mountable racing shocks on the market. This cheaply opens up the door to the high dollar penske/ohlins/bilstein shocks that are out there.....I was planning on getting something like the ASN's but the QA-1's seem to be just fine so far.

Cheers
 

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Im not sure if im surprised you did this project or that you bumped your own thread 3 years later.

amazing LOL...

That's not a bump, it's an update. Big difference. No matter how long it took, the only abandoned project is the one sitting in the graveyard. Props, keep us updated on the handling and if those hinges/brackets break.
 
Props, keep us updated on the handling and if those hinges/brackets break.

Thanks.

Handling: All I can tell you at this point is that the setup runs much smoother than my old AGX's which rode like crap from the day I got them. They bounced and bottomed no matter whether they were on 1,2,3,or 4. Despite running on 100lb/in stiffer springs (450's vs 350's on the AGX's) the car rides quite well without bottoming on our fine birmingham roads OR having the tire leave the tarmac with the new setup. Car is at the same ride height as with the old shocks. You can kinda see how much travel is left in the third pic which was taken through the wheel with the car on the ground. I've still got AGX's on the rear, they work much better than the fronts ever did.

The upper mounts: Yeah I plan on adding a bit of gusseting but for now they are holding. I ground the thin body sheet metal away to get to the thicker reinforcing plate underneath and welded to that. These mounts are used for building dirt track and circle track cars and usually weld on to a 1 1/2" piece of rollbar/chassis tubing - look at the radius on the battery side of the thing. Should be a little bit stiffer by welding on the bottom edge all the way out to the shock mounting holes as opposed to being held at the end where the tubing is normally welded to them. If they can hold up to a dirt tracker I 'think' they ought to be ok here. A little extra glue/metal sure wouldn't hurt though.

The idea at first was to provide a way to use an off the shelf bilstein, penske, or ohlins type racing shock without trying to fab/find a shoktek type set up AND run/buy/fab the upper 'coaxial spring mounts' like Farnorth racing was using. As a street car I don't have to meet any of the sanctioning body rules about shock mount alteration like Farnorth did. So far so good - I've got less than $400 into the front and a plan for the rear too. I think the qa-1's will be more than adequate for a street car but the option will always exist for say a bilstein bgt or asn.

The upside down thing is cool but honestly I think the spring end weighs more than the aluminum body shock end. It really just helps with the packaging/install for me. Should be better weight wise than the nested shock in an adapter tube that all the japanese coilovers run.

Sorry, 1G cars need not apply.
 
Why has this thread all but died?
How's it going?
Got any more details on the lower mount you used to adapt the lower perch to our cars, maybe a tech drawing?
 
Since I am new to dsm cars this is one of the things I was thinking about since I have done road racing, but have also worked on circle track cars I even though of maybe replacing the complete suspension for a pinto or mustang set up, I am in the process of building a road race car and this looks very interesting, not only money wise but also functional.

Please keep us inform.

Thanks
 
For everyone watching this thread it was three years after the thread started that he updated on it. So just giving you a heads up it may take 3 before he updates again. So look for results in 2012:thumb:
 
I'll toss in my thoughts since the OP may be a while. The top mount needs to be redesigned, period. I'm thinking something that actually bolts to the 3 factory holes from the bottom to evenly distribute the load on the strut tower. Yeah, you can't quick chance struts anymore, but I'd feel 110% better about it.
 
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Ok then I am still alive and it is still working. I drive it on an almost daily basis about 14 miles a day to/from work and about once a month to huntsville, al maybe 220 miles roundtrip. As everyone focused on the ugly mounts instead of the idea I never bothered to follow up on this.

I rebuild the shocks about once a year as invariably they get a bit of air in them which causes some clunking. It costs about $30 for four. I made a setup to run the same style shock in the rear, there's a thread somewhere on ecmtuning with the lower mounts I had made for that.

Since almost everyone, myself included, has bitched about the upper mounts here's the skinny on them. They did not break. The upper strut tower sheet metal DID distort after a run on Lewisburg road just a few weeks after post #8. TO BE CLEAR: the factory metal distorted, the added brackets did not. The factory metal distorted 'cause I did not distribute the load away from the middle of the tower which I weakend by enlarging the hole. I straightened the sheetmetal with a BFH (no surprise there right--hahaha) and reinforced the mount. It still allows for a quick shock change mount and has held since then (as in for 3 years) without issue. Yes it all fits without modifiying the hood.


Here's a pic of the gusseting I added. It distributes the load a bit better as absit suggests in his post. The shock still fits through the hole I gnawed in the factory sheet metal so it takes just a few minutes to swap. This did not turn out to be a big deal as once I got my valving the way I like it I am only in there about once a year to do a shock rebuild but it could be an issue for someone who actually tracks his car. A bottom mount plate would be far stronger but is going to eat up too much vertical real estate, would be much tougher to fab with an angle grinder in the driveway to get that realestate back, would require just as much metal butchering, and getting 5" or 6" stroke shocks that would fit in there gets pricy quick.

Despite the gruesome appearance this is the BEST mod I have made to this car and after the added gusseting it has not had any issue but surface rust. All I ever did was put some extend on it and never got around to painting it. Once upon a time I was worried about the welds cracking and the paint hiding it. Never became an issue. Driving the car on AGX's in this city (Birmingham, AL) was so bad I actually parked the car and drove my BMW till I cobbled this up. Once I put the QA1's on driving the car became fun again. They aren't the greatest but work well enough that I never bothered to look for something better. 7" stroke Bilsteins, Penskes, or Ohlins will fit if I ever win a set of on egay and then can afford to valve them.

The lower shock mounts are just 6061-t6 bar stock I turned on a lathe (that is still in mom's garage all these years later....) to match the outside dimensions of the AGX's I had. The center bore is drilled/tapped to receive the AGX shaft.

edited to add 2.5" springs.
 

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Very cool, is there any way we could get a photo of just the lower mount, or a tech drawing I could take to a machine shop? I don't have a lathe! :p

Please keep us updated. I'm figuring on picking up the Koni Coilover setup but your setup would save the trouble of finding a shock dyno locally.

How did you determine the ideal angle at which to mount the top bearing?
 
Very cool, is there any way we could get a photo of just the lower mount, or a tech drawing I could take to a machine shop? I don't have a lathe! :p

Please keep us updated. I'm figuring on picking up the Koni Coilover setup but your setup would save the trouble of finding a shock dyno locally.

How did you determine the ideal angle at which to mount the top bearing?

The 'ideal' angle was arrived at by mounting the bottom of the shock and placing the top in an area so that nothing rubbed and then placing the other side in the same spot so both shocks were running at the same angle.........I did mention I cobbled most of this up in my driveway right?
 
Yeah I appreciate that, just curious, it seems like having the wrong angle on a bearing that only moves in a straight line could cause extra stress on the bearing, mounts, and induce flex.
 
Yeah I appreciate that, just curious, it seems like having the wrong angle on a bearing that only moves in a straight line could cause extra stress on the bearing, mounts, and induce flex.

I don't understand the only moves in a straight line statement. The upper bearing is a monoball - if there is any stiction/binding it is from the factory rubber in the a-arm. Shocks have been working under these conditions since they were invented. The aluminum adapter is screwed solid to the shock shaft and clamped by the pickle fork - no movement there.
 
Where did you get your set up, from summit or speedway I tried to look for something similar to yours and did no find it , also do you think this will hold up in a road race car, it looks like the ticket.
 
I don't understand the only moves in a straight line statement. The upper bearing is a monoball - if there is any stiction/binding it is from the factory rubber in the a-arm. Shocks have been working under these conditions since they were invented. The aluminum adapter is screwed solid to the shock shaft and clamped by the pickle fork - no movement there.

My bad, I thought it was a different kind of bearing.
 
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