Tuesday, August 3, 2010

MOER CASTER!!!!

So, in the continuing battle of building a 20 year old hatchback into a supercar slaying track killer, I've come up with an idea. No, an EXPERIMENT.

Lightness and handling are a great equalizer on the track. Lightness is easy to achieve, remove everything that makes it comfortable/tolerable, there, done.

Handling on the GTi-R is touchy. Prone to overcome front grip with a fantastic 60/40 weight distribution and a ridiculously big front anti-sway bar.

Ive looked after Camber with dual camber bolts in the rear knuckles, and Cusco camber plates in the front.

And then there was Caster. Currently, the car needs caster. So, i have installed the Whiteline Anti-lift/Caster adjust bushing in the front lower control arm. That gave me +1.0deg of caster. I want more. (On a side note, Caster helps in straight line stability, but more important to me, adds camber as the wheels turn).

Now on to my experiment. The car needed ball joints anyhow, and being JDM, a direct replacement is unavailable, unless you get a full lower control arm ($$$!!) So I got one from the local NAPA for a 1991 Nissan Sentra.

Turns out, the Sentra's ball joint is an near twin. Everything measures the same except for the widest part of the cup assembly. It measured at 0.050" bigger in diameter then the GTi-R unit. So I had this thought, and off I went to Madco Machine Inc to have the cup turned down. The tricky part, I had them machine it into an eccentric.




Here's a bit of a better view of the eccentric, the black is the OE 'paint'.






More to come....