gday everyone. bit of a story for this sorry but it paints the picture. dave(355lx) and myself have had loooong conversations about this, it started from what do we need to do to fit a better shock, which lead to the idea new lower and upper arms and different way of mounting shock and spring.
after doing targa south west, which is a rough event, I decided to give murry coote a call, for those who don't know he builds and services shocks for targa, rally, offroad and circuit. His question to me was, what is your goal out of this, do you want something that will be ok for the job or do you want to do it properly, I said if im going to spend money I want to do this properly, so that started a long conversation.
couple of points, for targa work he recommends using a reservoir shock to help with heat, monotube design, allows better control and better valving, the standard lower front mount of the shock is junk, if using the correct shock working properly it should be able to bend the lower mounting bar or and break the mounting bolts off the lower arm, very interesting.
so that leads me to this, cutting the spring mount ear off the crossmember to allow the mount of a proper coilover reservoir shock, eye, eye mount and moving the lower mount closer to the stub axle and raising the top mount, my goal is to have some caster camber adjustment in the lower control arms for fine tuning, and using rose joints at the pivots, dave is thinking a bush type rose joint for street use.
now after talking to an engineering mate, he made my serpentine style pulleys for those that have seen them, he has made a comment to me, if you can get a few people that are interested to share some costs he will make the arms and help cad design, we are talking crom moly that will be heat treated for extra strength at the welds.
so if your keen and have some ideas please put them up, its not going to happen over night but there is a couple of us serious about this.