Are you sure we cant use Evo X suspension?

[Uemoto-JP]

I poped out to the garage for another Homebrew and snapped a photo of the wheel well. You can see where the wheel is pushed forward, if you compare to your own. The wheel rotates fine and there is no rubbing, even under load. I think I'm nearing the limit of adjustment in that direction.

[Uemoto-JP]

DSC~76, 77, and 86 are pictures of the modified arm.

in DSC~76 you can see the "Dimple" in the front of the arm were I didn't cut through (to keep everything straight), where it was bent, like a hinge. I think the amount I did was 3/4 of an inch, i just made it match the Evo X arm.

You can't see it very clearly, but in DSC~86 I boxed the whole lower are all the way to and including the outside ball joint.

DSC~91 and 94 show how not the half-shaft arm is more "aligned" with the front wheels, less torque steer! You can defiantly notice it in the car.

[Uemoto-JP]

DSC~797 - Clearance for the front of the tire, it's larger then it looks, and I have no touching issues.

DSC~801,804 - Replacement bump stop. The stock ones have almost no travel. If you corner hard with all the stock suspension components, you are riding on the bump-stops. The stock bump stops are not a progressive style stop.

DSC~808 - A photo of my homemade upper strut hat with spherical bearing. With this design, the weight of the car "DOES NOT" ride on the bearing, it uses the stock roller bearing on the bottom side. The bearing is there to triangulate everything.

[Uemoto-JP]

In DSC~809 and 811 you can see a side view.

In DSC~820 and 821 you can see the Caster at full lock either direction.

In DSC~825, that's Static Camber with a centered steering wheel.

My floor is relatively flat. All the photos were are ride height. I haven't sat down and did a full workup on the front caster and camber degrees yet.

Right now I run 0 toe front and rear, and almost max camber adjustment in the rear.

Next time I have the car up on the stands, I plan to reinstall the Evo X arms. Didn't happen this week as other things kept pilling on. I only had time for some photos on the ground.

[LiX]

Did you installed the Evo X LCAs?

[Uemoto-JP]

Originally Posted by LiX

Did you installed the Evo X LCAs?

Not yet, I haven't had a free weekend to do this kind of work yet, all I can say is that I own an "older" home. Nice, but older. That should tell you a lot! (^_^)

I have the parts ready, and I'm hoping this weekend may be the magic ticket. I am very interested in this; believe me when I say that I want this to work!

[Uemoto-JP]

Originally Posted by Uemoto-JP

Not yet, I haven't had a free weekend to do this kind of work yet, all I can say is that I own an "older" home. Nice, but older. That should tell you a lot! (^_^)

I have the parts ready, and I'm hoping this weekend may be the magic ticket. I am very interested in this; believe me when I say that I want this to work!

Ehhh! The heater core in the Truck just started leaking, have to replace it this weekend. The truck has to be operational this winter.

Also, My Ultimate Racing exhaust won't be arriving until next week, so this is looking like I have to put it off until next weekend...

Edit:

Also, my roof developed a leak this weekend (the 2nd)! Had to tear up the whole lower left corner. Should be good now...

[Uemoto-JP]

So, I finally got to checking out the install of these front lower control arms.

The short answer is: Yes, you can definitely install stock EVO X front lower control arms in a Ralliart.


Now the long answer:

In my rush to install these I discovered a few things...

You might have to shorten the rod for the anti-sway bar. It's already very close to the stock LCA, and the EVO LCA is much thicker. If you are already doing this mod, you probably have adjustable links. I didn't see if it's a close hook-up to the EVO X sway bar pick-up on the EVO X LCA.

I installed the Whiteline anti-lift caster bushing on the arm before actually test fitting. I didn't realize that the stock bushing has a lot of travel, and the whiteline kit is probably meant for coil-overs with limited travel. There is about two inches of LESS travel in up or down travel with the whiteline bushing installed. This means that I can't install the strung and hub assembly back on the LCA, because the LCA is sitting about level with the lowest part of the brake caliper, and I can't move it lower then that without bending metal (which means that it's the same travel in the UP direction, not good). There's no contact with the arm and the chassis, like it's hitting something. I forgot to take a picture of this while it was on the car.

You can infer this by looking at picture 3065 and 3066. 3066 show the bushing, which is actually a nice spherical bearing mounted in a hard rubber (or urethane) carrier, so it still has some more wiggle room then I'm showing here.

This is really annoying, because the Whiteline anti-lift kit for the Ralliart LCAs "HAS" a high-misalignment spherical bearing in it to accommodate the long travel of the strut in the car. I'm wondering if the EVO X has less travel on the struts in the car, but the bushing the factory install precludes that.

SO, I'm still not running my EVO arms on the car yet! Once I get my new monster press built, because I broke my old homebuilt one (installing these bitches), I'll be on my way. I'm probably going to press out the Whiteline Anti-lift bushing and re-install the factory spherical bushing in an orientation that will better prevent toe changes under load.

I might also call Whiteline and see if these spherical bearings are right, or if I can get two of those high-misalignment spherical bearings from Whiteline and install them myself. I still want to run the spherical bearing kit, but by this point, I just want the LCAs to work because I've already spent a lot of money on this. I probably could have spent half as much and built some highly adjustable tubular control arms! I know I'm still sick enough to actually do it! (^_^)

[Uemoto-JP]

I think I've found a solution for the range of movement. I've removed the boots from the bearing and found that the shoulders that hold the rubber boot are impinging on the range of movement of the bearing, so I'm going to remove the spherical bearing from the aluminum carrier and cut 50% of the shoulders off in key areas to allow a greater range of movement where it's needed, but still allow me to utilize the boots. I'll have to clean everything well and re-grease.

[Uemoto-JP]

Finally was able to install one today!

I patched my old press up, it's on it's last legs (pic 3078, ignore the wrecked work bench). I pressed out the Spherical bearing , trimmed some 50% of the shoulder off, front/back top/bottom. Now I have a tad more travel then the Ralliart Whiteline bearing (pic 3083).

Installed all this back on the car. I installed the inner and outer bolts on the LCA, but couldn't get the rear hole to line-up, I had to use a small bottle jack to line up the rear hole by jacking up the arm a little, and everything bolted right back up! (pic 3087)

Was able to now installed my aero cooling fins for the brakes after a few tweaks to the mounting brackets to clear the brake calipers and half-shaft boot at opposite locks. (pic 3088 & 3089)

(These pictures are not at ride height, it's actually on jack-stands)

Will be working on the other side tomorrow, check the alignment, and take for a test drive.