LG Motorsports

Hi
It's unusual for the shock to hit the boot. We've seen it happen only when the upper shock mount is on the wrong side there is a left and a right and it moves the upper shock mount toward the rear of the car.

Also from the picture, the lower shock mount should also be offset away from the axle by design.

Send me some pictures of the upper and lower mounts if you would.
Thanks
Sales@lgmotorsports.com

We have not had any issues with the boots so I would like to investigate this problem.

Also, you will not help yourself if you run toe out.

Lou gigliotti.

X25

Hi Lou,

Thank you very much for your interest! I believe the top mounts are indeed installed correctly (check pics below), and I think the issue is that I'm at 0.5" below stock height, yet I believe you guys test your kit at 1" below stock height. The pics below are at full droop, which shows interference on both sides, yet the left side moves away enough to clear it when the car is on the ground, while right hand side doesn't. It's probably a very low amount of interference, which I hope will be fixed by the 0.8 degrees positive rear caster. If I'm right, though, you should keep this in mind for any customer that doesn't want to lower 1+" over stock as you guys normally recommend.



Driver side top. Leaning towards back of the car.


Driver side bottom. It shows a bit of interference at full droop, but has not been an issue during my driving.


Passenger side top, leaning towards back of the car.


The passenger side bottom, showing a bit more interference.



Lou, again thanks for looking into it. Please let me know if you'd like to take it offline, and I will take it to the email. I wish we had 2.1" or so springs available; it would solve all my problems : )

mustclime

wondering if cornering loads are increasing that number.

X25

That's interesting, my fronts seemed to have even wear with -0.05 toe at each front. You don't have high camber up front, either. Perhaps you should try more camber before less toe? Did you tell Greg that you drove to track and back with those R7 fronts? That might be a factor, too.

Well, my case is different. The rear half-axle is on backorder, so the car will be retired for a while. Once it's fixed, I'll get it re-aligned with positive rear caster, and see if it works. I'll also have to figure out what toe to run at the rear by then.

LG Motorsports

I hope I was clear that I meant in the rear we generally run toe out the front and tow in in the rear depending on the track

3/16 toe in for the rear is a good number in almost every track

The short tight track 3/16 to even 1/4 inch toe out in the front but never less than 1/8 inch toe out on the front.

Sorry if I was not clear

Your shock tops and bottoms look to be installed correctly - you are correct that caster needs to be adjusted to move the upper ball joint forward
Important thing on caster is that they be made the same for left and right

and rear caster spec is only there for a baseline bump steer.

Front caster affects camber change in the corners - rear caster just raises and lowers the outer tie rod - so just make sure they're equal then do bumpsteer at the tie rod if you have a heim joint outer tie rod connection

Lou
( note I wrote this with voice recognition on my phone so if any words don't fit blame Siri )

PS great thread !

X25

By the way, a friend of mine has captured me and the car in slow-motion when we were at the track last time with his phone : ))

X25

A few more updates:

Twist that spring!

I realized something very important. The part of the spring where it starts the next coil up was turned towards the axle boot on the passenger side, while it is turned the other way on the driver side. I just turned the passenger side the other way as well, and it already looks to be having less interference.

R7 weights

295/30/18 R7s on 18x10.5 ET51 CCW TS12. 45.4 lbs. The NT01 315/30/18 with the same wheels weigh at 50.7 lbs. 5.3 lbs savings per front corner.


315/30/19 R7 on 19x11.5 ET89 CCW TS12. 50.1 lbs. NT01 325/30/19 with the same wheels weight at 53.9 lbs. 3.8 lbs savings per rear corner.

18" wheel clearance at the rear with coilovers:

I installed my front wheels at the rear, and this is how they looked. It actually looked better than I thought and no clearance issues. I know that wheel companies like CCW, Forgeline, etc. already know what offsets fit, but I don't think their solution is the optimal one for me, since I do have much less droop with my coilovers, giving me more clearance.


There is about 1" space between the control arm and the wheel. Assuming I have that 25mm (1"): if I were to increase the size to 18"x11.5", it would then eat up 12mm more on each side. That would leave me 13mm, which I could use for tucking it back to where it was. The result: 18x11.5 ET63 would barely clear the control arm at full droop, and would have fender clearance as how it looks in pics.

Brakes

I finally changed my brakes, too. Look carefully, and you'll see that worn out brake pad up top : )


And this is the rears. The wear was somewhat even on all corners, with the front passenger side having more wear at outer pad, while all other corners having a little bit more wear at the inside pad, as expected.

Trailer backup camera

One final update, now I have a camera system to see what's behind my trailer during the trips! I spliced it into perimeter lights, and also hooked up a 6000 mAh battery into the line. It charges the battery when the trailer is hooked up to the system, and switches to battery when it is unhooked, so I can easily park it as well with the trailer valet.

dowroa

Can't see any of the images.

mustclime

I wish someone would come up with a 1 1/4 trailer hitch receiver for the c7. Then we could use a small trailer for wheels. I know people are oppressed to trailer hitches on a vette but it makes things so much easier.

X25

These cars are indeed not designed for towing, and the chassis would suffer if they're used for it. Both on Corvettes and Miatas (both built with similar lightweight platform principles), I've seen pics of cars retrofitted with hitches that later developed cracks around the chassis. A 1000 lbs trailer should still not be an issue, but good luck finding a good route out of the busy bottom of C7. The most important place, the center section is also filled with 4 muffles, further complicating it. Why not just buy a trailer and a truck? : P

I have a feeling that you might be overestimating the impact of 0 toe vs. the already-low 0.05 degrees of toe, but I suppose we'll see; it should become obvious from trap speeds. If anything, I'd try more camber at the front if I were you, at the tune of -2.9 or so.

Rear 18" wheel fitment:
I think static droop is actually more than the dynamic droop, since it takes a little while for the suspension to complete its droop. I wish there was a company that could design a control arm with an indent right where it hits, so we would not need to worry about this anymore. Take a look at my pics above from when I tried my front wheels at the rear. As you can see, I could likely fit 11.5" with no outwards increase. Add another inch for your wide body, and you could probably fit 18"x12.5" ~ET50 (if you also had coilovers) with zero interaction at full droop. If you lowered the car full 1" like LG recommends for coilovers, then you could probably even put in 18"x13", but judging from the clearances based on my own car's, I don't think you can fit 18"x13" on your car without running into this issue.

X25

UPDATE: Ordered Pirelli DH scrubs!
I have the following that I'll experiment with:

• 2x 305/645/18
• 2x 305/660/18
• 2x 315/680/18

If the 315s fit at the rear with no rubbing issues, then I'll use 305/660s up front, which will be almost same setup as my Nittos in terms of diameter and width. If the 315s rub at the rear, I'll use 305/660s at the rear instead, and use 305/645s at the front.

I decided to take more precise measurements. I was able to get as much as 30mm of clearance when I installed the front wheels (18x10.5 ET51) at the rear. That means, for a 18x11 wheel, I could only push it in as much as 24mm (6mm used for the increase in width), making it 18x11 ET75. When I talked to CCW, they recommended going with 18x11 ET76, which would probably barely touch at full droop. Considering my droop is much less than stock suspension's, they must be OK with a bit of intereference at full droop.

I'm in the process of ordering 18" rear wheels from CCW; we'll see.

X25

I had a huge mess yesterday.

I changed the transmission fluid, and would then run the engine to start the transmission oil pump and prime it to recheck the transmission oil level. I wanted to check the engine oil level first, and the dip stick was DRY. This is a dry sump engine, and it needs to be checked only when hot. The question became: do I have enough or not? Or is it full, and just misleading? So I decided to fill to mid-level, and started the engine, but let the oil fill plug a bit loose in case it overflows. After about 5 seconds, big whoosh! I shut it down immediately.

Oil was everywhere around the fill plug! I checked the breather line. It dumped some oil to the air intake tube, but it collected at the lower elbow, and I was able to shut it down before it ever got ingested. So, no long term damage; that's the good news.

The bad news, while checking on the air intake plumbing, I broke a tab on the intake (or perhaps it was broken already? I don't know), that connects to valve-train breather. I had to order a replacement part. http://www.ebay.com/itm/162195168078 ($65).

OK the other bad news, the oil was all over the place by the filler tank, and some even on the header's heat shield and on the fuse box cover. In the end, I cleared up everything on the ground, increased the temp of our house's hot water tank, filled a few gallons of hot water into a container, and dumped it all over that area. Then I mopped the floor. Man, I worked on cleaning up this mess until 2 AM. I'm just thankful that nothing was ingested..


The tab on the right lower section broke when I was checking for trace of oil in a haste.

Moral of the story: With dry sump, I already knew that I had to check it when hot. What I learned is: no, not just a bit wrong, it might not even register to the dipstick when cold!!!!! If in doubt, just crank the engine (by fully pressing the clutch and gas pedal, which automatically prevents ignition) a few times, and check the level again.

village idiot

I'm confused. Why were you in doubt about engine oil level if you're changing transmission fluid?

X25

I run the engine to start the transmission to pump its oil. I just wanted to check the engine oil level before I started it, and the dip stick was completely dry (the car has been on the lift for about a month now). This started the events that followed : (

village idiot

No, I got that- but what made you want to check the oil level? I'd assume it was fine unless I had a reason to think it wasn't. I don't check my engine oil level at every start.

X25

I changed it when I put it up the lift a month ago, yet I couldn't remember if I put all the oil it needs. If only I could trust myself more that I must've filled it properly : )

village idiot

Got ya. That makes sense.

When I was a kid I drained the oil out of my car, went off, worked on some other stuff and forgot to refill. I started it up, for about 4 seconds, realized it was dry and shut it off.

No damage, but I learned I'm too absent minded to do too many important things at once.

X25

My replacement axle will finally be shipped on Friday, so I wanted to finish up the rest of the work.



The new bolts from the AMT camber kit felt lighter, and indeed they're. Total weight: 4.4 lbs vs. 5.2 lbs stock.


This is the lower control arm at the front passenger side. It's awful how much damage was made by the alignment technician. The only work I leave to someone else, and this is what I get. Anyway, this was the only one damaged. This camber kit will fortunately preserve these tabs, and stop any further damage. So far so good, I highly recommend it!


I mimicked the current alignment settings by using the numbers closest to what the original bolts set to. The alignment should hopefully not be too hard.


Then I moved on to the carnage. It took me at least an hour just to clean this mess.


All cleaned, the offender mess-maker bagged, and waiting to be popped once the new axle comes in. By the way, we just pry it from the differential, right? That was the case in my previous cars...


I am trying my best to get it ready for Portland International Raceway track day on 3rd Aug. We'll see...

Mark@AMT Motorsport

Looks like our plates installed in your cradle with no issue? Sometimes they abuse the cradle by wrenching on the stock eccentrics so much that they screw up the cradle and the parts don't fit. I've only heard that reported on one install however. Looks like that wasn't the case here. Thanks for the business. Good luck with the rest of the build!

X25

Thanks Mark!

The bruise was only on one tab, and it's not too bad. Hopefully, from now on, the new washers will preserve the tabs. At this point, my only concern is that I might not get precise settings at the front side without the UCA studs. We'll see next week : )