InflatableDog

Been a long time lurker here but today the Blu808 guys posted up a new suspension system that from what I heard will replace every component on the car with a billet aluminum adjustable piece.
Even the uprights are adjustable and have a modular system for mounting different tie rod pickup arms.

They say that there will be more info soon after some testing.
Does anyone have info on this? It looks pretty sweet.

mgarfias

$$$$$$$$

crease-guard

That stuff might as well be made of out gold because you are gonna need cold bars for that stuff.

But man is that sweet looking.

InflatableDog

cold bars?

Solofast

Looks pretty...

Unfortunately, the person who designed that knows how to do nice CAD design, but doesn't know a lot about stress analysis. Might be fine because it could be way over designed. Remember it's easier (and cheaper) to leave material in a hog out job than it is to take it out, but there are several areas where it shows the person desiging it doesn't understand structures. If a structures guy designed it it would look a lot different, and there would likely be a lot less material in there. JMHO

Vettechris996

Probably way out of my price range but I'd like to know more. Anyone know who's making these?

mAydAy121

Just because you can draw pretty things in CAD that fit doesn't mean you should....

They'll probably work fine if they got the geometry right, but they're a freaking tank (with plenty in the wrong places) compared to what's necessary

Timothy Lottes

I know Luke at Blu808 and I'm going to be testing this setup on my C5.

Reasoning is that probably like other C5 owners, I want an aftermarket option which is lighter than stock, stronger than stock, adjustable, and is easily serviceable. This is exactly what Luke is has in the current prototype, even if it is overbuilt.

rfn026

Adjustibility is not always a good thing. It usually means you can just screw things up. I'm doing a new column on shocks. The shock companies all agree that unless you have a team engineer you shouldn't be buying 4-way adjustables. In fact Ohlins feels most people should be buying one-way adjustables.

The companies just feel that added adjustability is creating too many problems for most people. How many folks have the engineering ability to actually use this suspension?

Richard Newton

Solofast

The problem is that the stock upright was optimized for strength and weight, and the part is made as a forging with forged material properties and material flow during the forging process that maximizes the structural properties of material. GM spent a lot of money to do this analysis and optimized the part if for no other reason than to make darn sure it was safe and wasn't susceptible to fatigue failure, not just breaking due to a single bump impact.

Making the part out of a billet material gives you forged properties, so that's a good thing, and if you had less material it could be lighter. But this thing looks to be stronger than it needs to be in some places and it has holes and stress concentrations in areas where it shouldn't and that's going to make it susceptible to fatigue failures. If the basic material stress is really low fatigue may not be an issue, but aluminum is really nasty stuff in that the fatigue limit is really low. What this means is that you could have a time bomb that, even though it looks strong, could have a high local stress and eventually fail due to fatigue.

What the person designing this really needs to do, in order to insure that it wasn't a failure waiting to happen is take the CAD model to someone who is well schooled in the art of structural analysis and run an analysis of the stock upright, and then run an analysis on this and see what it actually looks like over a range of load cases.

I've done structural analysis on aircraft and automotive structures for over 35 years, and at this point you can (like mAydAy121 obviously can also) pretty much visualize what the part should look like, and what features should and shouldn't be there, and these parts are pretty CAD pieces, but they weren't designed by a structures guy, or there wouldn't look like they do.

If the objective was to make it lighter than stock that's probably not going to be the case with this design, it looks like there's a lot more material there than a stock part. It could be stronger in a lot of areas, and much stiffer overall, but it may not have longer fatigue life than the original part due to localized stress concentration effects from some of the features in the design.

The OP asked for opinions on the parts and, unless I saw the stress analysis output plots I wouldn't be buying or using these things.

There are a lot of aftermarket parts that, although they look pretty and are hogged out of light materials, are junk because the folks didn't understand structural analysis and the fatigue issues with materials like aluminum.

These parts may be fine and last forever, but you just don't know for sure unless someone does the analysis. Another approach is to have someone who is a structures guy do the original design work in the first place. He will do a quick spreadsheet analysis on the sections and then make sure he doesn't create any localized stress risers and it will likely work out just fine.

It's easy nowadays to get a very capable CAD program for a couple of hundred dollars and, if you have a CNC mill make some pretty parts, but that doesn't mean they will be safe or work right. What the designer really needs to do is go to someone like Fin-el and get a proper stress analysis done ( http://www.fin-el.com/ ) and revise the design and go from there. It doesn't cost that much to do it right.

Solofast

Mark Daddio once said he just used single adjustable shocks because he'd just screw it up if he had more things to dink with... We wish we could all be as successful as Mark, so there's some obvious wisdom there...

InflatableDog

I can agree to a point about the shock settings getting confusing for the average person. These are however not shocks and when it comes to alignment adjustability the more the merrier. I emailed Blu808 and spoke with them. Luke replied and said that all components had undergone stress and fatigue simulation. He also mentioned a few interesting things about the design process and in general to aluminum suspension components.

Since Blu808 has been factory backed by GM for the past couple of years, and has had success with their billet uprights for the Camaro, I don't have any doubts with their products. They mentioned the following about aluminum suspension components in general.

Reply:

Don,

Thanks for the interest in our new suspension system for the C5 and C6 vettes. We were surprised to see criticism regarding the adjustability of the system. I guess true racers will appreciate it. Anyways here is what I can tell you about aluminum suspension components.

Aluminum parts will always fatigue and will fail - this is related to the S-N curve for aluminum. Even the factory GM control arms will eventually fail due to fatigue. 6061-T6 may initially seem like a poor material choice, but a component that is designed to survive millions of duty cycles can be constructed, and when put into service life, that could be 30 years worth of average driving, or 1000's of track days. That is how the factory GM forged components are designed. The overall look of the arms will be different than any factory arm since these are billet and not forged. The shock mounting posts will be smaller diameter on the production pieces. It would be great to create forged parts, but the tooling alone would end up making these unaffordable. These look a certain way due to the end result of stress and fatigue analysis testing. We are in the prototyping, stress validation and abuse-testing phase of these components and so far, are pleased with the results - this is not to say that we have ruled out further optimization. Not only is there a benefit to the adjustability of the arms but there are many other advantages to the system. Here are a few.

* Adjustable upper control arm angle to allow camber gain adjustment.
* Adjustable lower control arm roll center adjustment.
* Sway bar end link modular mounting system to allow different sway bar roll centers.
* Massive caster adjustment (can run non power steering if desired)
* Track width adjustment
* Replaces factory bushings with teflon heim joints
* Modular Tie rod pickup mount. You can swap these out for different steering geometry
* Bump steer adjustment
* Added clearance on control arms for wide wheels (wont rub on arms at full lock)
* Similar weight to stock
* Compatible with leaf spring or coilovers (heavy duty mounts)
* Aligned shock mounting bolts with angle of shock to reduce shear load on mounting bolts
* Great alternative to adding mono ***** to your stock arms
* Pricing will be much lower than people are anticipating
* Can utilize components individually, or use them all as a system
* Larger diameter lower balljoint to fix the corvette ball joint issues
* Hard anodized for a easy to maintain finish


We should have a press release on the system here within the next week or so. We initially leaked some pictures on our facebook, but had no idea it would stir up such interest. Feel free to share this email with your board, and let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks again.
Luke