Scottish Elises

Had a bash at these at the weekend.

Turned this.


Into this.


I was dreading drilling the subframe for the brackets but that turned out to be the easiest bit, the sub frame is apparently made of cheese.
Getting the nuts on the other wide was dead fiddly and access limited but nothing you can't fix with tape rapped round your fingers.

The whole thing would have gone fine except for the bloody top nut on the old nearside outside link. It basically got to the last nuts worth of thread and seized. I peeled open three 17mm spanners in the process of trying to get it off. Took the brakes off for better access but still a nightmare. Was close to hacksaw when, with wedges in holding things in place and a mahoosive bar, it turned. I have bruised hands. It added 2.5 hours of fecking about to the process which I could have done without but hey, standard issue DIY attempt.

Ran out of daylight so it's just awaiting some duralac (which I though my old man had but he'd lost), torquing up and setting the toe before a full geo.

The bumpsteer shims have caused a little confusion, and after searching various forums I'm not much better informed. I thought best to install as close to the existing position as I could. The old rods had three shims (washers) in and in order to get the toe link to sit approximately the same distance from the hub I needed all three supplied shims (ally washers of various thickness). I obviously don't want to mess with the bumpsteer, does this sound right to anyone who's done it before?

Generally pleased with the results though.

Hi Ferg.

I am not sure, but i thought the ally bracket was to be used on the ally hubs , and the steel ones dont need them?

Looking at the angle of the wishbone to the toe link , i would put the washers on top , to the bottom as well, but without a geo , its hard to tell.

Cheers

Stu

Pretty sure I didn't use an ally dual shear bracket on the uprated toe links on mine - unless the kits have changed over the years?

OK, so my car is not the cleanest underneath, but that is actually an Alloy Hub carrier.

The stack of washers is in the right place, happy with that, but it's the number of washers or the distance its pushed down that I'm interested in. The end of the toe link is in the same location relative to the hub (which what matters for bump steer AFAIK) as it was with the old link, so comfortable it's not going to be too different. Doesn't mean the car was setup correctly in the first place though.

Hi Ferg.

Oops, it looked like the steel one

And if the toe link is the same distance from the bottom of the hub, then thats all good. It just looked a bit low to me, but hard to tell from a picture

Stu

The alloy double shear bracket has no where to bolt to on the steel hubs anyway.

Heres a pic to show that difference between position of new and old rod ends.



So even with all the supplied spacers, the link is still fractionally higher than before. Apparently a few mm can make a large difference to the bump steer effect. Whats annoying is that considering the geometry is relatively constant on these cars, that there isn't a table showing the distance from the hub that the toe link should be in order to achieve manufacturer recommendations for bump steer at different ride heights. I'll go with it as it stands and see how it feels.

Is there space to lower the tie arm in the bracket? If there is, can you not buy more shims? Remember seeing bump steer graphs on seloc a long time ago, but can't remember the details.

Was this it?

http://arc.seloc.org/viewthread.php?tid ... pid3290466

tut

Yes I've been looking at the bump steer graphs and various measurement methods, none of which are straight forward. i.e. without removing various parts.

Ali, thanks for the link to the service bulletin. Very useful

You reaaaaally have faaaar too much time in your hands, Ferg! But full respect for taking that on.

way to set it by eye is to look at it from the back 100% horizontally when it;s on it;s wheels, then compare the angle of the toe link to the wishbone.

the toe link should be slightly lower outboard than the wishbone such that there is a very small angle between them.

then make sure they are the same both sides.

then measure with string and a jack.

Nice real world checks Scuffers, thanks.

Campbell, if only. Difficult to find time for anything recently. Tinkering with the car is welcome relaxation.