OK then, got a late start yesterday morning owing to the weather again. For those as yet unaware the middle of the United States had a big tornado outbreak again late Friday early Saturday morning with several killed across the area. Everyone I know is OK but several people had near misses again I avoided the area for obvious reasons but there was damage reported about a half mile south of the house this time and it sent the family scurrying for the basement about 3:30 Saturday morning. Spent a while making sure everyone close was safe and then went in and got to work.
Immediately started on the control arms because I was (am) excited to see arms on the car. New bender worked like a charm and things basically worked as planned with it. The lowers bent and tacked together we test fit them to try and check for interference issues under steering. Took two people obviously with no upper arms at that time and done up found that the way the leading edge of the lower arm is done there was tire interference to the lower arms. Then it was lunch time. I'm not sure how that happened, honestly I was just working and it felt like I had only been there 45 minutes or so but it had been nearly three hours.
I had designed in 41 degrees of steering...on something. The 41 number I remember but I can't recall if that was inside tire, outside tire, or an average. What I've got here before the tire touches the control arm is 35 degrees on that outside tire. I want more but 35 isn't really the end of the world. The other bit to that is while the suspension obviously isn't assembled and I haven't mounted the shock, it looks like any more than 35 on the outside tire will cause the brake caliper to touch the shock so there's that.
Back from a lunch I largely skipped I laid out the upper arms while Corey drew and cut the upper arm mounts. Bent some more tubing to make the arms and then we all had a good laugh because the actual tubing sections for the upper arms are only 4 or 5 inches long. Everything else is tubing adapter and heim joint. So went ahead and did 4 tiny tube sections and welded them to the center joints in a wide enough arrangement to allow the shock to go up through the middle and went to mock everything up and weld on the upper arm mounts to the frame.
Had everything mocked up and asked Jeff to help tack the mounts on. The weight of the spindle kept causing the stuff to twist so I would hold everything in alignment while Jeff tacked the mounts to the frame. I went over and got the welder and set it up, Jeff sitting beside the chassis, turned around to turn on the welder and gas supply and just froze. After a minute or two Jeff asked if we were gonna do this thing or not and I said no, something wasn't right with the setup. The upper arm mounts should be centered over the chassis tubes and they were hanging over the inside edge. I went back and started checking things and when I had laid out the upper arms on paper I plotted the ball joint, counted up six and a quarter inches from that, then marked three inches on either side of that mark to give me the five inch spread to clear the shock. For reasons I still can't comprehend though I added another inch to those marks to make them seven and a quarter inches from inside mount to outside mount and made both arms to this incorrect length. If you zoom in on the picture with just the upper arm laying on the paper you can see the tic mark centered between the two legs an inch closer to the outside joint than the holes in the heim joints.
There was no way I was leaving that mistake last night even though it was five and everyone else was wanting to head home for the weekend. We cleaned up there and I took the arms across the street and set about fixing things. Luckily the tubing adapters are so long I was able to simply cut the ends off those to shorten things back to the proper length. I finished the welding on the upper arms and added the plate to the lower arms which will mount the shocks with the addition of a couple tabs to be added later. The arms themselves are otherwise completely assembled now though. The Johnny Joints (ball joints) weren't completely assembled when the mock up pictures were taken which is why there is nearly no gap from the upper arm to spindle.
I hadn't ever worked with this type of joint before, and to be honest I'm not sold on them in this application. The claim of 30 degrees of available deflection seems pretty ambitious. I measured 28 with the joint assembled in the arm measuring off a rod inserted through the bolt hole in the joint. That was with the center of the joint bottoming out against the washers that hold the joint together too, but even before that the center butts hard against the rubber cups that hold the ball section of the inner sleeve. So to get to that 28 degree number you have to physically displace the rubber that allows the joint to deflect in the first place. PLUS that 28 degrees was measure off the rod through the hole and not on a plate bolted to the joint. Any plate bolted to the joint will contact the casing sleeve of the joint before you get to that 28 degrees unless you space that center bit up off the plate.
That last bit there causes slight problems in the same way the tire contact to the control arm under full steering lock does. Yes there are ways around them, I can run wheel spacers and get more tire clearance, and I can put spacers between the joint and spindle to get that articulation back. Both of those things are unaccounted for in the design though and will alter the suspension and steering geometry slightly. The articulation issue must be solved first and foremost, so there will be spacers there and there isn't much else to be done now cause I aint rebuilding the spindles. The tire spacers though is a maybe. I've got a set of I think quarter inch spacers laying around and plenty of lug stud to use them. That will increase scrub radius negatively impacting steering feel for what is likely little additional steering angle. I'll probably just try them and see what sort of change it makes or maybe just keep them in my back pocket for a rainy day later.