Hey all! Back at it again! Yet again, over a year since my last update. I mean, at least I'm consistent, right? Even if it's consistently horrible.. it's consistent!
Finally got the 7 moved back over into it's 'working' garage space, after the winter being in the 'storage' garage space (so the wife could park), and being covered in a wonderful pile of junk. Since the last update, not much has changed. I got the aluminum radius rods from Jack, so the front UCA and LCA are 'completed'. Meaning, built, but not fully welded yet. I ought to just do that. Final welding is just so.. final, haha. I've constructed one side's rear UCA and have plans for the LCA done up as well. I would have gotten that finished the other night, but realized I hadn't dimensioned the plan well enough, so rather than go inside and mess around with autocad during the rare few minutes I had to do physical work on the car, I decided to start messing with the steering rack. So, I got that mostly cleaned up, removed all the lines, purged it of fluid, and 'mounted' it in the car. I still need to depower and shorten it, but had to get it in to figure out how much to shorten it by. At 4" off the top of the frame, I'm looking at shortening this thing by about 3.5". If I lower it to 3", that will be slightly more. I think if I'm within .25-.5" of the pivot plane, I'll probably be okay.
I like Hempy's idea of just winging it. I spend too much time on this thing with mental constipation just worrying and contemplating. I could have been finished with it, if I had just winged the whole damn thing! -- In either case, I'm a genius when it comes to some things, but wishbone and vsusp are not those things. As seemingly easy as they are to use, I just can't figure it out, so screw it! I'm mounting this thing wherever the hell I please! I think 3-4" above the top of the frame will probably do it. The photos below are with it mounted @ 4". With it being full length, the tie rods are at a 14* angle, but that will decrease as the rack is shortened, and the rods are lengthened. If I can get away with it mounted at 3", and clear the LCA's, I'll probably do that to further decrease the angle. This is also using the OEM miata rod ends mounted from the bottom. If I swapped them out with some 323 units, tapered the top of the spindle mount, that would decrease the angle a LOT more. I'm definitely considering this, but need to figure out the proper taper, and if it's worth trying to do on my own. I suspect this is something I can do in the future if I want to, and isn't necessarily necessary at this point.
As far as bump steer, since the inner pivots will be inline with the control arm pivots, I honestly feel like being off by .5" up or down really isn't going to make that huge of a difference. I won't be tracking this car, or taking corners at 100mph, so I'm not super super worried about it. I probably should be more. But again, I overthink -everything-. If anything, it'll create more oversteer, and I'd rather that than understeer anyday. Worst case - I raise or lower the car 1/2" to fix it if it's honestly that bad.
I'm excited again. Every time I work on it, I get so excited. I'm not sure why I keep stopping. (Oh, right, life. Among all of the other things that haven't changed, I now own a custom apparel and vinyl printing business. I have too many jobs/projects/hobbies... I wish I could just choose one).
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), showing the suspension at full droop. At normal ride height, the rack arms point a tiny bit down, and go level at just a bit of suspension compression. The idea, of course, was to eliminate bump steer as much as possible. The rack mounts are on slotted plates, so I can adjust for Ackerman a little.