I helped a buddy of mine install the newly designed Aldan Coilover Kit on the rear of his 1994 C4.

There is a large bracket for the lower shock mounts that run up vertically and attach on the inside of the rear hub to the two trailing arm bolts.
When I first saw this I was impressed as the old style C4 coilover kits from Doug Rippie and others only attached to the lower shock bolt and there was plenty of conjecture on this Forum about the entire rear weight of the car was being supported by that lower bolt with only a thin ear of aluminum for support. (None broke off as far as I know even with track use).

This kit seemed better designed as it had both the large lower brackets (L/R) and replacement brackets for the top.
Everything was going well until attempting to install the coilover units and the coils on each side touched the top edge of the lower bracket slightly; (See picture above brake line looking back driver's side)
Like the bracket was too far inboard or something. We could have taken out the two washers from the rubber of the trailing arm but these washers act as a bearing to the metal plate when the trailing arm moves. (The order across the bolt we used outboard to inboard was; Hub, Washer, Trailing Arm, Washer Aldan Bracket, Nut).
The directions are terrible as they are generic to any car front or rear. No specifics at all.
We called tech support and the guy there was completely clueless and put us on hold a number of times and kept stating that he was thinking.
(To put it nicely the guy was a complete moron and never had a single suggestion).

The only options are; Remove washers between Trailing Arm bushing and Aldan Bracket losing the washer as a bearing; Modify top brackets at a machine shop to have top of shock lean inward 1/2"; cut off top half of lower Aldan bracket allowing only the lower Trailing Arm bolt to hold the bracket "unsafe" or grind the bracket back to clear the top two coils.

Overall, the company recently engineered this product and without any specific directions leaves the user at a loss.
I think the best angle would be to remove the inboard trailing arm washers and let the rubber bushing rub directly against the fixed lower bracket. The trailing arms do move up and down but the rubber will give with some grease.

Inputs please!

 

Situation not good. Your orientation of those washers is correct in their position and sequence. They have potential to rotate as a bearing against the moving part of the bushing, and to your point if the washer is removed then you have bushing up against non-moving bracket. So Option 1 in your list is no bueno.

Option 2 seems best to me. This puts the top of the coilover in position so that it doesn't interfere with the bracket through the range of suspension travel. Also, as you have probably figured out, when those coils are unloaded with the car jacked up, the diameter of the coils "thins out" a bit while the coils stretch to length. When the suspension is compressed, the coil will get slightly thicker as the coils squeeze and this makes your current geometry problem even worse. So modifying the top to move that top bracket inward seems best.

Options 3 and 4 (cut off the bracket top or grind it back) still may not give you enough clearance (see the paragraph above). You'd end up removing a lot of material, and then what's the point of that top bracket mount after it's weakened? The whole point of it having two mount points (upper and lower) is to share the load so that the bottom suspension bolt doesn't take all the load.

Once you modify the kit, all bets are off regarding future support on warranty. Have you sent them that picture and asked them for a potential refund or better bracket solution? Neither good since the car is currently down awaiting a solution....

 

Hey, just a thought since I haven't seen this kit in person. Are the top mounting brackets identical left/right? Or are they different, and is it possible that swapping them gives you a different geometry at the top of the coilover? If they can change position and this gives you a more inboard position at the top, then cool...

 

SO, I have just looked at this kit online on the Aldan American website, and I see that the top bracket is made in a way that shifts the top eyelet of the shock slightly offset forward/backward depending on which way you rotate the top bracket. If this is set to the back position now, and you move those brackets 180 degrees so they shift to the forward position, does that solve the interference by moving the coils slightly forward?

 

Thanks for the reply ajp01. Yes, the top brackets are offset F-R. We spoke with Tech about that and they did state that the eyelets should be positioned as far to the rear of the car as possible. Either way we positioned them they did hit the spring. My buddy, the owner of the car felt that they cleared better with the eyelets forward. I put them in that way as he requested but did note the vertical alignment was a bit off. He being 73 stated just put them in that way as the tech support seemed clueless and not 100% sure about anything.

I installed them that way and we took the car around the block. A lot of clunking in the back end. It was late and he was tired. I am sure the powder coating has been scratched off the coils from that test drive. Aldan is supposed to be sending replacement top brackets. To modify and maintain strength of the eyelets I recommended to cut the base plate down around the eyelets by about 1/2" then shear off a new piece of 1/4" steel about 3x5" and weld the bracket on top of the flat plate. Then we can position and drill the holes exactly where they need to be located. The top bracket would be 1/4" lower but can be adjusted out. (This is instead of attempting to weld on a wider tab edge to edge as the new hole would most likely go straight through the weld and weaken the part).

btw; I have changed aftermarket suspensions to coilovers on a few cars including my Blue 69 C3 and a 73 Firebird as well as race cars...Never have I had issues like these...
But thanks for your help!

 

Well you sound like you're on top of all this; It's sort of weird to see a product as critical as this which requires re-work in the field but that's the way it goes sometimes. Your steps on the changes to the new top plates will likely help. Ping back if you want to bounce more ideas off us. Cheers.

 

My Buddy called Tech Support again and they stated to remove the flat washers; (which I disagree with). At his request we just spent the last 3 hours removing them which gave a credit cards thickness of clearance. We adjusted everything and put back together. The DS still rubs when going over bumps... Probably due to spring expansion. On further examination the top of the lower bracket could be cut-off as there are 2 lower bolts; (The lower shock mount and lower trailing arm bolt)...
But I still feel the best way to resolve is to modify the top bracket inboard 1/2".

This company must have done terrible R&D on this product. Just threw it together.

 

OP - yours is the first I've seen mention/discuss an install. Did your friend investigate and have conversations with others that have the product? I wouldn't want to be among the 'early adopters' for something as different as these seem to be. The vertical bracket certainly 'seems' to be visually impressive, If you're struggles are valid and they can't offer up substantial support I'd ask to be compensated for your efforts.

Sometimes ain't fun being an 'early adopter'!! How long have these been on the market? How local are you to the vendor?

 

The vendor says that they will refund the item if we decide to take it off and ship it back! The set-up was definitely not designed properly. The shock sits nearly vertical due to other clearance issues with the storage box and anti-skid box...but I'm not sure the lower end travels across a slight arc as it should. Changing the top brackets 1/2" inward will clear the bracket but will cause a slightly angular and canted shock body. I would assume the pivots at the shock ends will allow the slight offset.

As previously mentioned I have changed a few other suspensions such as my C3 which was much more involved with Shark Bite rear with offset trailing arms and Global West front and none ever caused issues such as these...

 

Do this...as fast as you can. Aside from your noted fitment problems, Aldan shocks are made for drag racing and they are terrible for any other purpose. Even the QA shocks that come with the Van Steel coilover kit are better than Aldans, and that kit seems to fit just fine. Short of the mega-bucks After Dark Speed coilover setup (which uses JRi shocks), the Ridetech coilovers are the ones to get right now IMO. Their shocks are proper Fox monotube units and the single-adjustables adjust the rebound damping only, which is the right way to do single adjustability (the Aldans either just adjust compression or both, I can't recall).

I don't think the washers being removed from between the control arms and the bracket is a problem. The control arm "body" that houses the bushing should never contact the bracket and therefore should never rub on it. The part that's supposed to contact the bracket (or washer) is the bushing's inner sleeve. That sleeve is captured between the knuckle and the bracket or washer and rotates inside the bushing.* I believe this is the way Ridetech kit says to assemble their rear bracket (see page 34, Step 14).

Regardless of the washer and bracket arrangement, the spring should not be contacting anything. It sounds like they simply haven't made the lower shock mount ears long enough on their bracket. And I agree, you should have received proper instructions - again, reference the Ridetech instructions to see what good instructions look like. It looks like Aldan basically copied the Ridetech design and didn't get the dimensions correct. I suppose they could be using some non-standard spring diameter, but that would be even more absurd. Whatever - just send that crap back.


Caution here. I think the picture on their website is of some generic kit. It's missing the lower bolt hole that fastens the bracket directly to the knuckle's original shock mount location. Maybe it's just an unfinished bracket, but then if so the space between the bracket's two shock mount tabs is really narrow compared to stock or the Ridetech bracket. So it's hard to tell what the hell we're looking at on their site (and it sounds like they don't know, either).

*BTW, it looks like your friend is using the stock rubber trailing arm bushings, which is fine. But do make sure not to tighten those bolts until the car is sitting at static ride height. Otherwise, the bonded rubber bushings will always be getting twisted at stock ride height, and they will get twisted beyond their designed flex when the suspension compresses lower than static ride height. Also, don't use urethan for these rear bushings, just in case you/he were tempted. Spherical joints are fine, of course.

 

Wow. That would suck ***** big time if the photo shown doesn't actually represent the correct kit. I know about product development lead times, changes while in production, etc., but still - if you're advertising something for people to buy costing over $1K, the photo should be right dammit....

 

Now the company sent the front kit and forgot to send the mounting hardware....