it was a sorta serious april fools post.
when starting on the 442 we went with the "cheaper" route of oem type parts over the more "expensive" upper/lower A arm
problem is we cant make the oem mcpherson work with the 442....unless we want 1" suspension compression or nearly 8" ride height
so we have nearly 3 grand in custom, new, oem suspension parts to unload and we get to go back to what i can only ASSuME would have actually been the cheaper route or the U/L a arms (aka SLA).
a major issue is that the sla setup with the stock knuckle and a bracket bolted to the strut ear, would lead to a really short upper control arm.
on the rear this isnt so bad, up front however....holy hell does it make for some undesirable geometry as well as sticking you with all oem type crap.
so im tossing all the OEM BS out and since the damn chassis and car is a clean sheet, time to stop the horseshit and clean sheet this problem as well.
now this aint cheap, but we're getting a helluva deal. our current Fbody brakes are retained, using ears far stronger than the newer vette uprights, we can build the car and run it on 12" rotors with all the 16" rims/tires that we have, as well as easy larger vette style upgrades.
in the future though we'll need 4 corner slicks, and the ability to use the F body brakes with the smaller 11" rotor will let us use the 15x10-16" wide mustang fitment rims and much cheaper and plentiful selection of 28x15" slicks.
swap rotor, rebolt bracket and you just swapped from 1/4 mile drag brakes/slicks to 1/2 mile/street brakes/rims tires with no brake bleeding.
knuckle has through hub air supply for rotor cooling, max area at 11" and a fair bit more at the 12" rotors 1" larger dia air entry. surely directional vane rotors would be ideal but this is easily ducted cool air, and is a huge improvement over the oem knuckle with the smaller 11" rotor
the layout also makes easy mounting of any required driveshaft safety loops that we may be mandated to run inthe future.
huge upside is the knuckle is modular for 4 identical units to fit each corner of the car.
the modular adjustable upper and lower sections allow for the rear to use an A/H arm design to get rid of the need for a toe bar/tie rod, as well as an upper/lower A arm up front.... it will also allow for changes in the ball joint positioning for suspension geometry or upgrades.
this lets us use the massive monoballs for the upper and lower front A arms since the lower is carrying the cars weight, and oversized shank (7/8ths) 3/4 rod ends at the outside of the rear (x3) while all four inboard joints at each end are the double adjustable 3/4 rod ends. this lets us use almost all of our current joints and parts but requires a few additional parts.
the modular design also allows up to move the steering rack lower in the chassis and move the steering arm lower for a nice bumpsteer free frontend.
with the range built in to the arms as well as the chassis/knuckle, we can adjust track width and all points of alignment to fit whatever rims/tires we come across while being able to fine tune the front and rear suspension for good streetability or track manners.
using conventional strange double adjustable coilovers ends up cheaper than the damn zzp agx stuff by a hair. the plus side is that the removable rear powertrain now only needs two casters as we can roll it out from under the car on the edges of the rotors or with some cheap 15" montana rims without tires.
cliffs: im about to pick off 7 birds with one expensive stone
