I have read a number of good things about ball joint extenders. They increase the length of your front spindles. They add 1 15/16 to the length of your spindle. They are easy to install and suppositely cause your front end to go to negative camber instead of positive. When you corner hard the front outside tire is pushed into positive camber which causes the front end to push. With the increased length of spindle which the newer cars went to but can't be used on our older rear steer cars does just the same. It forces the wheel into negative camber.
Any thought on this. With my 6 link done, my axles almost done I am looking again for a project.

 

Hi Norval,

I don't get it. Do these change the track, or the vertical position of the spindle? There's something I'm missing.

Do you have any pictures of your 6-link?

regards,

 

Me and a guy talked about lowering a c3 once, like really lowering it. First dilema was the exhaust. So we decided it would be cool to have side exhaust come through the fenders, similar to the Corvette Summer car. That would have taken care of any ground clearance issues. The next was the suspension. Dropping the car so that the frame almost touches the ground isn't really a problem but screwing up the suspension geometry was. I can't remember exactly but he said something about building spacers or something for the balljoints to bring everything back to factory spec. I wonder if were talking about the same thing.

 

Norval, what did you decide to do with your rear spindles. Did you build those franken-axles? ;)

-Joe

 

:confused: I don't understand ball joint extenders would extend the front spindles.

Johnny

 

IF your suspension is so seriously modified as to need the extra camber range, I could see that, but as a handling increase on the street, I"d forgetaboutit....that camber change is pretty well settled between tire wear and performance.....I"d say anything more than a stock type camber change when cornering will increase tire wear to the point of money shortage for other projects better considered....

 

FRank These extenders go between the upper A arm which holds the upper ball joint and the spindle. The spindle has a mount for the upper and lower ball joints and a part which we refer to as the spindle to mount the wheel. These extenders add to the length of the arm above. They bolt to the upper ball joint mount on the spindle then the ball joint mounts to this.
As for pictures of my 6 link I posted them and a short discription this morning.

Stingy74 No To lower the car you would want to make the lower ball joint move closer to the center where the wheel is mounted. You need spindles that have the part or the spindle where the wheel mounts very close to the lower ball joint. With the spindle extenders you are adding distance to the top. On a alignment machine they did bump steer reading then installed the extenders then did more bump steer reading and where lowering the car caused positive camber with the extenders it went to minus 3 1/8th. Very good results. These are sold for around $200 a pair. All the newer cars have this extension built into them to prevent this positive camber change


Flareside My fankenstein rear axles are finished. I have them in my desk right now. I was going to post pictures of them today but with pictures of my 6 link and trailing arms I feel I have posted enough new things for today.
Leave something for tomorrow.

 

Heh, you said "Ball Joint Extenders".

 

Woah. I need to think about this a bit. Don't have the time to give it an educated reply now but it doesn't sound like something I'd want to do. I'll try to explain it in detail later.

Dave

 

IF your suspension is so seriously modified as to need the extra camber range, I could see that, but as a handling increase on the street, I"d forgetaboutit....that camber change is pretty well settled between tire wear and performance.....I"d say anything more than a stock type camber change when cornering will increase tire wear to the point of money shortage for other projects better considered....

mrvette
I am lucky to have a very rigid rack at home. It is extremely heavy duty I beams that are perfectly level and parallel and guaranteed no movement with the vet of any other vehicle on them and about 4 feet in the air. Aligment measurements can be taken off them. I can easily raise or lower the suspension 4 inches either way effortlessly with this rack. I am very worried about bump steer, camber change on launch, it effects me alot, scares the wife, I have found 2 inch toe change on launch but I also will more carefully check camber. I have a magnetic camber castor gage that is very accurate. It is a long winter and I need something to do.

ddecart Hot Rod magazine really like the ball joint extenders. What does the upper A arm do? It keeps the top of the wheel in place. The loads exerted on it are not that high. A jack placed under the lower arm to keep the spring in place and you can remove the upper ball joint without loosing the spring so driving down the road the upper joint holds the wheel in place. Extending this joint shouldn't wear it out much fast , a little yes.
Once again my 6 link is just finished, my axles are almost done, my Tremec is installed, my new stainless calipers are ready, my new hydra boost master is finished. Almost running out of things to keep me going through the rest of the winter.

 

I'll agree that the loads on the upper ball joint aren't that great. I'm trying to think of a situation where having the upper arm LONGER would be a benefit.

If you have your car lowered a LOT then you are well into the camber curve for jounce. Instead of having a relatively slight camber change with a small shcnge in suspension travel, you are starting out well into the range where camber change is greater with a given amount of wheel travel. You get MORE negative camber than you want for a small change in wheel travel.

Thinking out loud here, but I suppose you could alter the camber curve somewhat by increasing the length of the upper control arm, making the suspension more of an equal-length suspension rather than a SLA. The particular angles of the arms would make a big difference though on the outcome.

I'd be interested in seeign any info on something like that and any claims they make if you have a link to a source.

Dave

 

We should all have your problems... :D It's good to be Norval!

 

ddecart The upper A arms are not longer. These extenders make the spindle longer. The spindle is a T on it's side. The wheel goes on the one side , the lower spindle into the one side and the upper on the other end, this other end is the part extended. It moves the ball joint higher up away from the centerline of the wheel. Newer generation camaro's had this longer spindle right from the factory. When you are making a hard right turn the car leans to the right, the top of the right front tire leans over to the right with alot of positive camber, the side wall rolls under and the car plows. How about instead of positive the top of the right front tire rolls to the left of negative camber so instead of riding on the outside edge of the tire the tire pushes harder with the inside of the tire and doesn't roll the sidewall as much under itself. This is what the extenders do. Instead of plus 1-2 degrees positive camber they rolled the tire into 3 1/2 degrees negative camber for the same deflection. Sounded nice in the test and they picked up 2 plus miles per hour on a slolum coarse. Hot Rod magazine endorsed the product, they even suggested removing the rear sway bar to further improve the plowing. I had never heard of this product before and was just fishing.
Thanks

 

Ok. Now I think I follow you.

You had me thrown off for a minute with the 'positive camber' stuff and the reference to the spindle (which to me is the round pointy part of the KNUCKLE that the wheel bearings ride on).

Technically, camber is referenced back to the vehicle and not to the road. What you're talking about doing is basically rotating the upper control arm up, making the top of it go in slightly (as it povots up). This will alter the camber curve of the suspension, making the curve a good bit more agressive.

So, for a given amount of suspension travel, you're simply increasing the amount of negative camber of the wheel relative to the body. Camber gain is measured in degrees of camber per degree of roll, with typical values in the 0.9 range. So if the body rolls 1 degree to the right (in a left turn) the wheel cambers out 0.9 degrees. This, by the way, is one reason to have some negative camber in the suspension alignment to start with.

It's hard to evaluate the effect of the knuckle height increase without knowing other info about the suspension. You are going to be operating in a more agressive part of the camber curve, so tire wear will suffer because of the amount of camber that happens under normal bumps & stuff. Interesting though.

Any info on how the C3 front suspension compares geometry-wise to the F-cars? And which newer generation camaros are you referring to? I might be able to find some suspension test data.

Dave

 

I have an article here from our December Street Machine magazine which deals with exactly what you guys are discussing. The pieces you have been talking about are called Spindle Extenders in this mag and as such completely replace the upper ball joint altogether.
This article is mainly about a company that makes a complete front end kit which is centered around their own tubular A arms which include the spindle extenders. They don't look half bad either.