D48:Rear Suspension Mods D2

Here is my second attempt at rebuilding the rear upper arms. This time I took the original, cut the sides off one at a time and then welding on new sides. This way it preserved the length and angles of the factory arms. I wanted to mod these because the originals are obviously designed to use separate springs and also weigh a ton. The new ones are lighter and a little sleeker. They also don't look as factory which I like. The first pic shows the original next to the newly modified one.

D47:Rear Suspension Mods D1

I wasted a day attempting to rebuild the rear upper arms for the suspension. This is my attempt. After trying to match the factory angles, etc, etc... I gave up and decided on other alternatives.

D46:Front Suspension

I'm still working on my front end... not sure I'll ever settle on a final design. I've made a few changes that you can see in the pics. First, the crossbar that will be the mount for the front lower a-arm and the steering rack has been upgraded to 1/8" from 16ga. I felt like that part is going to see a pretty large amount of stress, and I watched "Senna" around the same time. I don't feel like having a catastrophic steering failure. Not that I really think something like would happen... mostly it's because the bushings I'm planning on using for the a-arms will be 1 3/4" wide and a 2" square 1/8" wall tube has... 1 3/4" width inside. Perfect.

I'm also working on the upper a-arm mounts as well. I'm attempting to build a McSorely-esque design except a little more homemade. I'm not 100% settled on something yet. I keep thinking it might just be easier to make the upper mounts fixed and forget all the complexity with making them adjustable.

Last bit of progress for the day was cutting the new front a-arm mount down tubes. If I choose the route of adjustable upper a-arms, I'll need both mounting tubes to be vertical. These will also work to support for the steering rack crossbar.

D45:Control Arm Mounts

The a-arm and control arm mounts are almost finished. I used a a piece of 2" x 4" 1/8" tubing, cut to width, then drilled, then cut in half. The stages are pretty clear in the second pic. I plan on adding one more hole in the bottom to weld in the final spot in addition to the sides.

D44:Steering Rack Mount Supports

Take 2 of the steering rack mount supports/control arm mounting point supports. I think these will do a better job than the first iteration.