Hey guys,

 

The other day I pulled apart the whole front of my 81 brumby and replaced the strut brace bushes, adapted the struts to fit new shocks, and went to fit vented rotors.

 

It all went pretty well until I went to bolt on the calipers.

 

The NZ assembled cars have their chassis built slightly differently and the calipers wouldn't bolt on.

 

The spacing of the bolts on my car is approx 100mm instead of the approx 125mm of the vented disc calipers.

 

I dug out the EA82 steering knuckles from my scrap bin and they will fit onto the bottom of the strut but of course the ball joint is different.

 

On my car the ball joint fitting is a taper fit like the tie rod, but the EA82 one slots into a hole. I didn't measure it but it was something like 30mm.

 

I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a part number of a ball joint that fits from the EA82 knuckle to the Gen 1 control arm (three bolts in a triangle pattern) or is there a better way to do it?

Best way to do it is what I did on my old '79 wagon.

 

I took gen 2 control arms and bolted them to the engine crossmember once I removed the strut rods. Then I made some strut rods that were the same length as the original gen 1 and welded them onto the gen 2 control arms while most of the weight of the vehicle was on the control arm.

 

I bolted on EA81 knuckles, ball joints and the gen 1 struts. I also used the vented EA81 brakes and calipers. It was fairly simple and not terribly hard to do. I ended up using some heavy steel round stock a little bigger then factory, put it into a lathe and machined the threaded end down, then put it into a vise and made some threads.

 

Here's a couple pics...

Hey that's a good idea, but for me there is a problem.

 

In New Zealand if you make anything other than simple modifications you have to get it certified and a cert plate put onto the firewall. This costs something like $400 plus another $200 or so to the guy who overlooks it.

 

If I could make it look factory I might be able to get away with it so I might see if that's possible.