Aftermarket rear adjustable control arms...which one is best design/material?

[240260280z]

I have seen a few of these over the years. Now I need to buy a set. Does anyone have experiences they can share?

Thanks

[Phred]

Hi Blue,

I'm in the same boat. The silver billet ones look good. The red billet ones look good too, but look more complicated than they need to be. Of the fabricated steel ones, the black, gusseted ones would do the job. Buget considerations have to be reasonable though too. Do you have prices, and manufacture of these? My race car project and budget took a hit, as I had a heart attack this summer, but I intend to finish the car. Thanks

Phred

[theczechone]

The last picture is of the Arizona Z car rear arm (old style) I just bought a set of those from a local guy. I really like the quality of the welds and I can appreciate the triangular layout of the design compared to the t3 rear arms that have to use gussets to add stability. However I can imagine that the t3 are lighter, also the spindle bolt has to be taken out to adjust camber on the AZC old style arms whereas the T3 is adjustable without removing the pin. The billet arms seem to be a bit ridiculous, but I'm sure they offer you a lot of adjustability, I also would not be surprised if they were lighter compared to the others.

[30 Ounce]

I have the TTT control arms (the 3rd picture) and am very pleased with them. Their quality is outstanding. The Arizona Z billet ones are really nice but I've always worried about having the pivot point moved with another pivot point. The red ones have the same issue. I just don't like that design. I've had the TTT setup for about 3 years now with 6 track days and several thousand miles driven in the mountains of Colorado.

[240260280z]

Hi Phred,

I am leaning towards the black ones. They are available from Techno Toy Tuning for $475. They are interesting in that they have shims for moving the whole arm forward or backward up to 1/2" ( I guess this may be for series one 1/2 shaft alignment or to get front and rear wheel axis parallel for tracking or for rear caster).

Here are more details:

[*=2]https://technotoytuning.com/nissan/260z/rear-lower-control-arms-datsun-240z-260z-280z

The billet aluminum ones are ~ $750-900

[*=3]http://www.arizonazcar.com/lowarms.html
[*=3]http://datsunpartsllc.com/cart/index.php?p=product&id=201&parent=34

The blue ones are $600

[*=3]http://www.modern-motorsports.com/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=68

There are some DIY variants too:

Edited October 12, 2012 by Blue

[John Coffey]

Given that the OEM 280Z LCAs are strong enough for any use (including the East African Safari Rally), what you're buying with the aftermarket LCAs is adjustability.

[jmortensen]

Don't shim the arms forward or backward arbitrarily. The bad part about an H arm setup like the Z uses in conjunction with a strut is that the strut and H arm need to be perpendicular. If you shim the arm back (which would be the way most people would move it in an attempt to center the wheel in the fender) then what happens is that you get a misalignment of the strut at the top. It might be relatively easy to get the strut in at the top, but as the suspension compresses you get more and more angle between the strut and the control arm. I would imagine this is going to lead to strut issues and possibly bearing or bushing issues depending on what the control arm is using. When I did my first set of DIY arms like the middle ones in Blue's 2nd post, I took the springs out and shimmed the strut so that it came up right in the middle of the monoball in the camber plate, and then compressed the strut and verified that I didn't have a lot of side load there.

About a year later the subject of rear control arms came up again, and I think my redo is the best design that I've seen. It's an A arm with a toe link, and the toe link is in front. This allows for some misalignment in the control arm and the strut top without binding, which I think is a really important benefit for a racer. Anything to reduce friction in the suspension is a good thing. Making an arm with the toe link in rear is easier, but having the toe link in front means that the solid part of the arm attaches directly underneath the strut.

This thread has the discussion which led to the arm idea: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/62776-yet-another-rear-control-arm-design/

And here is a picture of my arm:

Edited October 12, 2012 by jmortensen

[jmortensen]

Let me try that again.

[Jason240z]

Remember when you bolt them on your into a whole world of chassis set-up. You need to know what you're doing and what you want. All this is very costly if you don't have an appreciation/knowledge/understanding of what goes on.

[gnosez]

I have the AZ Z LCA in the rear of my street 240 and we have the TTT in the 240 race car. To stop the tube from moving after setting the AZ version I drilled and installed bolts.

Both do what you want them to do, namely allow for a whole range of alignment tweeking.

More adjustability with the AZ version and I needed it to over come a CV issue.

[Soedward11]

Has anybody installed  or heard about  silver project   Control arms ?