I recently pulled apart my 1200 ute's front end to change out the struts. When I removed the castor rods I noticed that they were different to to a spare set that I had stored away. I wanted to know if anyone can help identifying both pairs and suggest which ones I should use?

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It looks like the one set maybe modified so that the caster can be adjustable.

Tom

They have been machined for extra castor

Cheers gents. I began to think this might have been the case when I re-tapped the thread. The last inch of thread was a bit tight like it wasn't quite machined down enough.

Another question though. I noticed that on the standard set, the LH rod has a longer thread. Do you know if this is normal?

Do yourself a big favour and throw the machined ones away-they break and then the only thing holding your wheel from flying back into the inner guard is the little sway bar pedestal.An absolute no no. Cheers Dave

I second throwing away the machined ones. Machined threads are not as strong as rolled threads and unless they've been very careful on the details there might be stress concentrations where it's been modified.

Stress concentrations are sharp edges, nicks, gouges etc that can be left by machining/ poor design. In highly stressed parts these details also tend to initiate fatigue failures which generally give you no warning before they let go. It's pretty hard to spot a crack on a thread! Pretty dodgy if the stress is high enough to cause failure (which it is if they've broken before like Dave says).

There are better ways to adjust the castor anyway. Check the wiki if you're interested.

Yeah ok. I have adjustable camber/castor tops on my new struts anyway. Before I go ahead and use the untouched ones though, can you explain why the threads are slightly different lengths?

Have a read of this and it'll all be clear http://datsun1200.com/modules/mediawiki/index.php?title=Castor

Basically it handles better if you shorten active length of the castor rods a bit.

Quote:I think both sets have been modified

As far as I know, all untouched rod look like this: