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thoughts on this approach re:caster
Home away from home
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Lowering a 1200 a lot and keeping the stock length castor arms is like a rough night out with your mates on the booze. You have fun and everything is going great but it gets to a point and you bail/miss judge the fence jump/walk into something you shouldn’t and now you can’t self centre when you’re walking. The problem I found in the past when drifting my truck is that the front edge of the wheel sits really close to the front edge of the wheel arch so instead of just shortening the castor arms to solve my loss of castor, I’m left with the options of either cutting the gaurds and loosing the smooth factor curve or running skinnier wheels (which wasn’t about to happen).

Instead of either of those options I’ve re-drilled the holes in the top of the strut tower by 30 degrees and effectively shifted the top of the shock towards the firewall by about 20mm. I’ve also filed out the camber plates a bit more to gain back the camber you loose when rotating the camber plate. Using our pal Pythagoras’ theorem, I can estimate an increase of about 2 degrees of castor. With other variables no doubt having an impact on the result – more mass up front, stiffer front springs and a wet track – it’s helped a lot, well obviously, but enough for me to notice a pick up in the amount the steering will self centre and rotate the wheels when switching. A pleasant change from normally having to fight the steering wheel into each switch. I definitely recommend the aforementioned modification if shortening the castor arms is posing similar problems as what I face. My sunny truck isn’t very pretty (is mustard with rust proofing surrounding it ever pretty?) but it now drifts and drives a lot nicer!


beeoneoneoh

Posted on: 2012/10/23 1:32
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Re: thoughts on this approach re:caster
No life (a.k.a. DattoMaster)
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nothing wrong with that, but the cops won't like it if they lift the bonnet. I'd be fitting a strut brace to cover it up.

nothing wrong with cutting the gaurds either - you can cut them without hacking them up and making it look #OOPS#. This has cut gaurds - done with an angle grinder...
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Posted on: 2012/10/23 2:05
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"if you're not on the edge, you're just taking up space"
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Re: thoughts on this approach re:caster
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You can rotate the camber tops a little more so no need to re drill the holes as piggy and I did (Based on his advice).

Posted on: 2012/10/23 2:41

Edited by unfamilia on 2012/10/23 6:01:05
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Re: thoughts on this approach re:caster
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That method increases caster by moving the top of the strut rod aft-ward from the normal "center of the strut top".

Quote:
shifted the top of the shock towards the firewall
Exactly.

Posted on: 2012/10/23 5:13
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Re: thoughts on this approach re:caster
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So does this no drilling. Would've more if I milled the.tops like boofhead haslook here

Posted on: 2012/10/23 6:05
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Re: thoughts on this approach re:caster
No life (a.k.a. DattoMaster)
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yeah but that way you get almost no extra static camber.

Posted on: 2012/10/23 6:57
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Re: thoughts on this approach re:caster
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True it is less camber but still manage about neg 1 camber with Ute ball joints. If I put stanza ones in will be more like neg 2 degrees camber

Posted on: 2012/10/23 7:19
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Re: thoughts on this approach re:caster
No life (a.k.a. DattoMaster)
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Thanks to the approximate length of the strut from ball joint to strut top (and I realise it varies with ride height!) on datsuns, I seem to recall it was very close to 1cm=1 degree of angle. This will work at small angles/changes in distance, which is the limit of what would be achieved here anyway, it certainly won't be accurate when you get out around 10-12 cm difference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_in_60_rule

It's not dead accurate but handy enough for guaging the approximate changes you might or already have achieved via moving strut tops or control arms or caster bars etc.

Posted on: 2012/10/23 7:54
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