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Always good to verify a second time before hitting it with the plastic wrench. I'm glad there's multiple people to bounce this off of who are also of questionable sanity
I'm glad there's multiple people to bounce this off of who are also of questionable sanity
Boy am I feeling that now, in the process of de-rusting a crappy NB so I can make a snow/offroad machine that will last a few years and having just bought a $500 Alfa Spider with mechanical fuel injection.....
So I remembered max spring length was 8.4" in the rear. Which going off of that, and depending what motion ratio you're using (I've seen both .72 and .75) you're seeing 415lb or 445lb @ ride height (3.3" or 3.4" of compression by ride height), which you're right, is a bit on the low side. You'd have to jack up the spring collars a little over a half-inch which then may be running close to spring bind if qa1 block height is close to our manufacturer's 2.5" coils (93mm). Unfortunately 12" runs too high at that rate with around 750lb at the wheel by ride height. There are 11" coils but they come in a minimum of 250 which is also too high. 12" 150s come in a bit high as well, plus they might be on the soft side overall. Maybe 10" 200s and a little turn of the collar is the move.
It seems like I need a few more measurements including corner weights before I 100% decide to go forward. Thanks for catching that btw, now I really want to check what I goofed up when I get home, maybe working on my phone calculator wasn't the best idea hahaha
We're re-organizing things in the shop right now so I won't be able to pull brad in until the weekend, but I'll get corner weights and report back.
All of this is why I ended up settling on 325/225 since I was originally looking to do softer rates like you are. Glad to see my math isn't totally off base. Could you lower the spring perches? It's fairly easy with a lathe to just move the step higher in the threaded sleeve.
Yeah, so apparently if you punch the divide button instead of the multiply button, it changes your answer, who'd have thought?
I finished enough organizing to pull Brad into the shop last night and throw the car on the scales. I expect about another 20lb on each side of the rear due to some other stuff that will be going in.
So yeah, I re-ran everything (in a spreadsheet this time so I don't fat finger anything) with the updated numbers and it looks like my initial spring choices were wrong haha. I'm expecting another 40lb in the trunk evenly distributed, so add 20ish lb to each rear. Moving the step higher on the sleeves is definitely possible, I could lean on my buddy up north a bit and see if his dad would do it for me since I haven't bought a lathe yet :( I think without doing that, the options in 10" are basically what you had come up with or 12" spring and 225/150. Those will both be a little high at ride height with no weight in the car, but they look like they might sit a little more where I want them with me in the car.
225/150 is a little lower spring rate than I was looking for, I was kinda hoping for something in the high 200/high 100 range. Looks like if I wanted 275/175ish, I'd need to raise the step 25mm/30mm. So I guess I need to make a choice on where I want to go. If I did go with the 12" springs, it looks like I'd be fine block height-wise, at least if I used Eibach springs since they post theirs.
I think I might give the low spring rates a shot and see how it goes. X_25, if you end up picking up the 325/225, you'll have to let me know how it is.
So I fucked up and missed a pretty major thing. The extended tophats reduce the max height of the spring lol. Which Albert literally asked me about but I understood the question/situation wrong, so I feel extra dumb. But yeah, hopefully someone reads this and doesn't make the same mistake, just measure your **** after you have all your actual components. Springs showed up, but they're getting sent back, because they aren't even close to working.
With that said, I made the tophats this weekend. Huge shout out to Gordon for sending me his set of nb tophats to use. I'm gonna try to get them powder coated since I was actually pretty happy with them.
I started out with a 3d-printed fixture to locate the 3" holesaw. The print kinda turned out like **** since I didn't notice Katy had messed with the bed settings for some different filament she was using, but it was good enough to work. It actually worked pretty well, I would definitely do it again.
I had some pretty heavy wall 3" tube sitting around from a past project and it looked like I would have just enough, so I cut out 4x 1" sections. I then spaced the lower part of the tophat up with some square stock and angle and tacked the tubes in.
Moving from there, I tacked the tops on.
Lots of welding followed, with lots of nasty burning paint.
And that's that. Like I mentioned, hopefully getting them powdercoated today. I'll make another post about re-doing spring stuff later this week.
Thanks guys! I'll have to give it a thought Andrew, that's interesting. Maybe this spring when I pull the suspension back apart to lower it again.
I decided against powder coating since part of the point of building these was to avoid buying some, kinda defeats the purpose of saving money if I go spend it on powder coating. I set up a couple of boxes and a heater and blasted them with some self-etching primer and black paint. Probably not as durable as powder coating, but I did sandblast them before, so hopefully it comes out alright.
I've got some stuff going tonight, but I'm hoping to take off the rear suspension, re-verify measurements this week, and then re-do spring rates later this week now that the tophats are done.
I decided against powder coating since part of the point of building these was to avoid buying some, kinda defeats the purpose of saving money if I go spend it on powder coating.
Sounds like you need to set up a DIY powdercoating rig.
Well, I did a bit of grinding on the control arms, and then I did some more. And now the suspension can travel through the full stroke without hitting anything. The caveat here is that the camber settings *on the cam* have a maximum. This is the difference that max/min camber at the cam have on the shock to the control arm:
So, as you can see, it's pretty significant. This also applies to the outer edge when at full droop. Too much camber and it'll cause problems at droop, too little and it'll cause problems at compression. However, due to the bumpstop, we hopefully won't ever see the shock actually go completely solid, so maximum camber is more what I need to watch out for. Basically, make sure there is clearance at full droop. And check back after a bit to make sure movement in the bushings isn't causing problems.
As far as cutting, I basically trimmed a bit of the lower edge off of the front area and trimmed the rear area to where a non-nb2 control arm sits. There is a possibility that the nb2 rollerskate Brad is on is making things worse as far as clearance, idk. Anyway, **** fits now and I tossed the front suspension in with the current 7" 450 springs to see how it was. I'll get different springs later, but for now, I just want to get the car driving again. I need to drop it about 40mm in the front, but lol.
Lolol, that's actual money for a project that is a bit of a joke
I did get the car sitting on the ground last night and at ride height. It's got about 60mm of droop front and rear and once I do a little more trimming and rolling, everything should clear all the way through bumpstop engagement! The pinch weld heights are around 11" which is pretty lolz.
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