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Rear Lateral Arm Prototypes

Goumba said:
It's silly that this still annoys me even though I theoretically improved my rear suspension geometry. What kind of silly head do you have to be to let something that bother you?
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dont worry, i do it to. lol i hate where the front roll center is with a lowered Contour. because of this i have decided to try to come up with a way to modify the front roll center. i have looked at the rear and there doesnt seem like there is any easy way to do the same due, mostly, to the knuckle design.
 
Goumba...while you entered your initial post, I must have been typing my first responce. You are correct. We are very limited due to the fact that the contours inner pivot mounts are high on subframe in the rear and therefore it effects the roll center of the vehicle. While running a shorter/dropped strut helps get it closer to ground level it only does so much for that "stability" feel. Maybe I should engineer drop spindles to get it lower! :laugh:
It seems with contour owners that suspension is very difficult to fit a group and almost needs to be tailored to a specific driver. While one person wants to increase roll stiffness so they can pull wheels off the ground while cornering, another is overly concerned with roll understeer and keeping everything planted while cornering. At least with these billet bars there will be no lateral deflection steer to take into consideration, but then again, there really isn't with the factory bars.

It's tough with the contour because Ford really did a pretty bang up job with the design for all around purposes...minus traction. I don't get why so many contour owners are hung up on camber and the garbage kits that are out there to try and adjust it. It isn't like we have massive amounts of camber gain to contend with. Lowering the contour on coilovers just doesn't give enough negative camber for it to be of concern(in my opinion) to want to try and get some positive camber back in the system. I'm on air and through 6-7" of travel there isn't much of a camber problem. If there was I'd go through tires like crazy. Unless people want more negative camber because they think it gives them more grip for cornering. It sure does on the outside wheel in a turn...the inside wheel is another story. Not to mention the loss in braking. It's like that Ratt song, "Round and Round"(sorry, I like 80's).:laugh: Suspension is a just a round and round topic.
 
There is a sacrifice with traction/braking with negative front camber in a fwd car, but its minimal depending on scenario anyway. If your looking for handling the negative camber is a big help for weight transfer to the inside of the wheels. The kits out there are still better than nothing. At least allows you to equalize the camber and caster. I have seen anywere from a -1.00 - -2.00 degrees camber in the front depending on how much it has been lowered.

FYI nearly all manufactures adjust rear camber from a lower lateral link i.e. Corvette, Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche etc... some even rear caster......... The only one I know of off hand is Subaru, that adjusts at the knuckle, Holdens have a set screw adjustment in the front, but have rear lateral links for camber...Most of these the roll center calcs are figured in to this and there tolerance. There a lot of other things to consider other than roll center. Only a small piece of the pie.
 
Livinsvt said:
There is a sacrifice with traction/braking with negative front camber in a fwd car, but its minimal depending on scenario anyway. If your looking for handling the negative camber is a big help for weight transfer to the inside of the wheels. The kits out there are still better than nothing. At least allows you to equalize the camber and caster. I have seen anywere from a -1.00 - -2.00 degrees camber in the front depending on how much it has been lowered.

FYI nearly all manufactures adjust rear camber from a lower lateral link i.e. Corvette, Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche etc... some even rear caster......... The only one I know of off hand is Subaru, that adjusts at the knuckle, Holdens have a set screw adjustment in the front, but have rear lateral links for camber...Most of these the roll center calcs are figured in to this and there tolerance. There a lot of other things to consider other than roll center. Only a small piece of the pie.
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This is true, but you are comparing apples to snickers ice cream bars when you start talking other manufacturers chassis design, especially when alot of those cars are rear wheel drive. I was trying to stay more in the realm of the Contour world. Don't get me wrong though...you're making good points. Maybe if we all put our minds together we can come up with something that will work and work well so we can all benefit. :cool:
 
CSVT1214 said:
Instead of designing a complete new control arm, why not just box a stock arm? That's what I run. How much more solid do you need them?

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how much did it cost for that set up? think any good welder could reinforce the stock stuff well enough?
 
Well I had one of the bars on the last day of Carcraft Summer Nationals. Sorry, I know I'm lagging on this.
I would have taken pictures of it, but they wanted to set the bar back up and do a few more tooling passes to clean up some of the lines. They would be done by now if we hadn't given them more stuff to run at the same time.
Shouldn't be much longer.
 
CrazyTalkSVT said:
Well I had one of the bars on the last day of Carcraft Summer Nationals. Sorry, I know I'm lagging on this.
I would have taken pictures of it, but they wanted to set the bar back up and do a few more tooling passes to clean up some of the lines. They would be done by now if we hadn't given them more stuff to run at the same time.
Shouldn't be much longer.
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Good! my PayPal account is feeling lonely and unused :rolleyes:
 
CSVT1214 - Hell of a set-up on the rear there, impressive.

I did hear Bradness was making rear arms with camber adjustment? Dont know how much truth is in that though.
 
It is completely ridiculous how people are so obsessed with camber on this forum....just completely disregard any other suspension geometry fundamentals...but oh, thats ok as long as I got some camber adjustment. :nonono::nonono::nonono::nonono:
It's like those tubular LCA's that are made. Yay...I got my camber adjustment, but now I screwed with my caster and my steering axis inclination is off which pitched my scrub radius so now I have bump steer and this weird feeling when I corner hard wooo hooo, but I got my 1º of camber adjustment I wanted.

Maybe I'll just jump on the band wagon and make some bars with camber adjustment just so I don't have to hear about it anymore....yup, I think I see the golden goose egg. :cool:
 
CrazyTalkSVT said:
It is completely ridiculous how people are so obsessed with camber on this forum....just completely disregard any other suspension geometry fundamentals...but oh, thats ok as long as I got some camber adjustment. :nonono::nonono::nonono::nonono:
It's like those tubular LCA's that are made. Yay...I got my camber adjustment, but now I screwed with my caster and my steering axis inclination is off which pitched my scrub radius so now I have bump steer and this weird feeling when I corner hard wooo hooo, but I got my 1º of camber adjustment I wanted.

Maybe I'll just jump on the band wagon and make some bars with camber adjustment just so I don't have to hear about it anymore....yup, I think I see the golden goose egg. :cool:
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I just want stronger stuff for my car :shrug:

I bought some of those bars just recently, and the only reason was to replace the flimsy OEM stamped connectors. I was just going to adjust them to the same length as the stock stamped ones :shrug: is that the right thing to do?
 
Yeah. That's totally fine. Keep in mind alot of the way I type stuff is done in a sarcastic manner. A little adjustment in camber probably wouldn't change things enough for it to be a bad thing or have ill effects in your steering geometry.
I don't really see the need to even change it because you really aren't going to gain that much. I'm more or less just stating that people over exaggerate the need for camber adjustment on these cars.
 
I dunno about people on here being obsessed with camber, but it is one of the basics of getting a decent geometry set up. It's no where the be all and end all on the rear of a Mondeo/Contour but if there's adjustment, all the better as the lower the car is, the more important it is to have that adjustment to make sure as much of the tyre is in contact with the road for even tyre wear.
Not teaching you to suck eggs, just didn't understand the sarcy reply.
 
Marney said:
I dunno about people on here being obsessed with camber, but it is one of the basics of getting a decent geometry set up. It's no where the be all and end all on the rear of a Mondeo/Contour but if there's adjustment, all the better as the lower the car is, the more important it is to have that adjustment to make sure as much of the tyre is in contact with the road for even tyre wear.
Not teaching you to suck eggs, just didn't understand the sarcy reply.
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Actually my sarcastic response is because I had little doubt that I could type it and it would go without someone coming on here, just like this, to explain to me why camber is important. I don't mean to pick you out Marney, but it really is like beating a dead horse to me. Someone types something factual on this site and people proceed to bombard them with minute assumptions and idiosyncrasies. If James Watts were alive and he came on this forum to explain why he designed the Watts link the way he did, there would be a good handful of people on here telling him "nuh uhh, thats not how it works".

:crazy: I don't know...I must sound like a moron when I type or something. :crazy:

Look, I have 19x8 on my car. I'm running GT Tires, 235/35/19 which are cheap tires because my wheels cost close to 3 grand alone (custom drilling sucks). Anyways, I roll my car inches lower than 99.9% :laugh:(Bagged, you're that .1%) :laugh: of you guys. I have a little over 10,000 miles on my air ride set up. Rear is still factory aligned. I have no signs of inside tire wear due to massive amounts of camber. Trust me, I have done the math. It's part of my job. Camber gain is not a huge issue on these cars. I hate to say this because so many do and turn out nothing but junk, but go to the shop webpage www.crazytalkcustoms.com and see what I do for a living.

I deal with camber on a daily basis at the shop. Please stop telling me about it like I'm some kind of 16 year old who doesn't know his a-hole from a hole in the ground. It's really starting to piss me off. *LMAO* Just Kidding!!!
 
i totally agree about the rear. The top of the rear tire is inside my wheel arch and i have never had any tire wear issues at all. Stronger lateral arms would be welcome though. I recently put adjustable toe arms on at stock length and it makes a firmer cornering feel. The front however is another story :mad:...G.
 
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