January 30, 20197 yr 19 hours ago, jdmleggy97 said: Completely understandable, but have to proof the product first before you go all in. Just how I run things. Upgrades to better quality products can always be done! Geometry modeling would be awesome, I'd love to do that. But considering budget constraints the number of vehicles I have on hand which are far superior imo, I'm just not going that deep. Gotta pave the way and start somewhere my friend! Think of how far suspension modding has come with the s13/14 chassis with just back woods country techniques. I was hoping you would have liked the 3rd gen legacy top hat discovery considering everyone else redrills and welds lol I've never redrilled strut towers. On a couple cars, I had to open up the holes a touch with a dremel, but that's it. Lengthening the control arms isn't a major geometry change, gets done every day on MacPherson cars. Don't worry about it. As long as your welds are strong, and it doesn't bind the joint, let 'er buck.
January 30, 20197 yr 13 hours ago, jdmleggy97 said: yeah I think I'm going to make new top hats with correct orientation. even if I was to weld and re-drill holes I could not rotate the top hat in the correct orientation with out further modification aka. opening a can of worms, I did look into it though but there's just not a whole lot of room for play in that tower in stock form. But for anyone trying to use Stock Stuts/ lifted or solid top hat coilovers your good to go!! I'll have to look at the camber plates on my RX tonight to see how they're oriented. I think most of the adjustment is already used up. @NumbchuxI wouldn't modify the strut towers (except to add the Group A reinforcements). Camber plates are pretty simple to fab, so I'd probably just cannibalize some inexpensive plates for their bearings/hardware and fab an EA82-specific plate. I would really love some top-of-the-strut-tower camber plates like Ground Control has for Imprezas, but the geometry of the strut tower leaves me scratching my head. I'd love to incorporate some sort of master cylinder brace and a triangulated strut tower brace too, if I can squeeze all that functionality into one place...
January 31, 20197 yr Author Rear coilovers are good to go... made new bolt collars on the lathe... Fits like a glove!
January 31, 20197 yr Excuse my ignorance, is that a metal bush replacement for the rubber bush? If so I’ll be keen to know what sort of rear end noises you experience. And have you retained the upper rubber mount on the strut? Cheers Bennie
February 1, 20197 yr Author On 1/30/2019 at 11:12 PM, el_freddo said: Excuse my ignorance, is that a metal bush replacement for the rubber bush? If so I’ll be keen to know what sort of rear end noises you experience. And have you retained the upper rubber mount on the strut? Cheers Bennie The collar is so the bolt sits correctly in the lower strut mount. The newer Gen stuff uses like a 14mm bolt for the lower strut bolt and the L series is a 12MM, so Instead of making a bushing to close the clearance gap in between the collars the coilovers came with and my bolt, I just remade them to suit. The lower still retains the rubber bushing. For the rear top hat/ mount, I could not retain the factory bushing setup and it had to be stripped off. The mounting plate is sitting directly on the coilovers top hat rubber mount. Honestly it fits pretty damn good. Will be checking into solutions if NVH is present when the cars back on its wheels.
February 1, 20197 yr If there's no bushing between the absorber shaft and the body, you may want to consider shimming/slotting the mount in some way to reduce stress on it. Because of the forward/aft movement of the rear swing arm, it will bend that rod a bit. Both WJM and I tried mounting factory rear shocks (his were BE/BH Legacy, and mine were NA Miata) to an EA82 by deleting the bushing. It worked fine for a month or so, and we both snapped a shock absorber shaft right where it meets the upper mount. Not a fun experience. I switched to an NB Miata shock, which does use a big bushing on the top, and never had a problem.
February 1, 20197 yr I have no idea how the BC coilovers on the rear of my RX are mounted up top, I should check that out. I know Nico made some sweet looking billet upper mounts for his GL. On the lower mount, we just knocked off the captive nut and used appropriate diameter hardware.
February 2, 20197 yr Author On 2/1/2019 at 11:08 AM, Numbchux said: If there's no bushing between the absorber shaft and the body, you may want to consider shimming/slotting the mount in some way to reduce stress on it. Because of the forward/aft movement of the rear swing arm, it will bend that rod a bit. Both WJM and I tried mounting factory rear shocks (his were BE/BH Legacy, and mine were NA Miata) to an EA82 by deleting the bushing. It worked fine for a month or so, and we both snapped a shock absorber shaft right where it meets the upper mount. Not a fun experience. I switched to an NB Miata shock, which does use a big bushing on the top, and never had a problem. No joke I was thinking about that last night. Granted it wouldn’t be that much movement due to the setup but I realized it couldn’t be hard mounted. I came up with a solution that would allow some play and give using a glad hand seal as a bushing. Ill keep you all posted on how it works out Edited February 2, 20197 yr by jdmleggy97
February 4, 20197 yr Author As of: 3 Feb 19 Car Is fully on suspension, some aesthetic changes have been made. A few final tweaks here and there and locating the right car for the ej swap and paint and I will be all set. I will post future innovations as they are created as well as driving experience. Whos got some RX side skirts!!??
February 5, 20197 yr Looks like it’d go like a cut snake! We need more pics of this thing once it’s outside! Cheers Bennie
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