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The plated A-arms I have are plated on the underside and have a small plate under the arch of the shock mount. I've seen the lower A-arms plated on the top before, but if the plating extends too far back it hits the body of the car. A good thing to do (which it sounds like yours have) is to run a bead around the rod on the A-arm where it goes through the two "C" shaped pieces of steel. The factory arms are only spot welded there. Another thing someone could do would be to weld material on the "C" shaped pieces of steel so that they now became completely boxed pieces. I've seen some A-arms that had a small section of that done around the rod.
One of my cars also has the upper A-arms plated. When doing that you need to plate the upper side of the A-arm because a plate on the lower side of the A-arm will push on the arch in the body and collapse it (making suspension work tough).
When plating the upper A-arms it would be wise to reinforce the body mounts as well if you're going to be driving the car hard. I landed a jump with the wheels cut to one side and blew out the rear upper A-arm mount on the passenger side of my rally car. That got fixed with a strip of angled steel (which is actually part of what SAAB used to sell as a reinforcement kit).
My street car has Bilsteins front and rear and OMP springs. How do you like the TME springs? Do you know what the spring rate is? The calculated spring rate for the OMP springs is 523 lb/in on the front and 620 lb/in on the rear. I won't be autocrossing this car as I spend most of my time rallycrossing (I'm the current New England Region RallyCross Champion for the front wheel drive modified class - yeah, in a 99). I probably won't track race it either because without power steering on a car with really stiff suspension and wide tires I'm sure my arms would be killing me. I learned my lesson on that at Lime Rock at the 2000 SOC. I drove my old '85 SPG (with Bilsteins and the same OMP springs) for 4 lapping sessions and my 99 rally car for one lapping session (I'm not sure, but maybe around 20 mins a lapping session) and my arms hurt for a week!
posted by 68.186.254...
, Wed, 28 Jan 2004 08:25:34
, Thu, 29 Jan 2004 22:33:00
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