Another long day of wrenching it was. I spent the morning at a fellow mr2 owner's house swapping suspension parts. Both our cars had issues the state that they were in. Just happened that we both had something the other needed, so it was fair for trade.
This all came about when the both of us found issues with our suspension. Khoa, who drives a 2001 Veilside widebody mr-s was rear ended a while back and cause the alignment to be distorted. First thought to him was the control arms were bent, which prompted him to purchase Che's track arm set. This set of arms are spherical bearing type as opposed to the bushings that come standard in most cars. They offer easy adjustment of toe, camber, and caster of the rear wheels. Long story short on Khoa's part, it ended up not being the arms being bent, but it was the wheel spindle. Above that, driving with these pieces caused lots of undesired noise.
The problem I had on my car was camber. In order to adjust camber on the rear of the car with factory suspension, Toyota recommends using their "crash bolts". I am cheap, so I bought 3" 1/2" grade 8 bolts instead. Hey cheap! why pay $15 when you can pay $5? I soon learned. These bolts replace the bolts that mount the spindle to the strut. Because the new bolts are a smaller diameter, you can push the hub inwards for negative camber or outwards for positive camber. This setup is good for about 4 degrees of camber. Me being cheap cost me a lot. My preferred camber is -1.7 degrees. At the track I notice that the camber had adjusted itself to almost positive scale. this caused the tires to be wear prematurely at the outer edges. I knew at this point I had to do something.
So at the yearly mr2oc bolsa chica meet, Khoa and I talked about what was new. This was when he mentioned his dissatisfaction with the Che's track arms. Mostly because of the noise and harshness that made his driving unsatisfying. My eyes lit up. I liked the idea of twisting some tie rods to make adjustments. It just seems right, almost like a go-kart. We then agreed we would trade suspension arms.
I then showed up yesterday morning at 11am to his house. I brought all my tools I knew were necessary. I asked Brian to show up as well to give me a helping hand. Brian is always a big help on my projects. About 4 hours in, all the arms were swapped between both our cars. First important matter was to get the cars to drive straight. Brian and I adjusted the toe on Khoa's car to 1/8" toe in. This helps the car maintain stability at high speed. I hear it is like a mr-s suspension rule of thumb. Khoa test drove his car after the adjustments were made. First impression was the noise that isn't there anymore. He really enjoyed driving his car again. He realized the steering wheel aimed left a little bit. Doing calculations in my head, we aligned the wheels again. He drove off once more and was satisfied with the results. I was happy of this.
Next up was the adjustments on my car. First thing was to get the camber set correctly. Using my handy camber gauge, I was able to determine the angle of the wheel while I adjusted the lower control arms. Somewhere here, I lean up and bonk my head on the tow hitch I mounted to the rear of my car. Nothing bad, small pain and no bruising. I then continued forward to adjust the toe angle. This was also a breeze thanks to the track arms.
This is where things got a little bit exciting. I lean back to crawl under the car and then CLONK! Oh the agonizing pain on the back of my head. I leaned my head back onto a jack stand that was sitting around. I laid on the floor for a good minute absorbing the pain. Brian yells "dude, are u bleeding?". First instinctive response that came to my head,"no, not bleeding... just lots of pain". Khoa then yells,"Ken, you're bleeding man". He then rushes inside the house to get some towels and first aid stuff. The gash was probably 1/2" wide, but it's not enough to send me into a hospital or anything. Khoa applied some liquid bandage on the gash. The only thing I didn't like was the aftermath of the application which turned pretty much into super glue. Anyhow, I continued on to complete the alignment on my car.
It took Brian and I a few tries to get the toe correct. 1/8" toe in was what I was shooting for. I then felt confident in the adjustments and tested it out. My first thoughts about the arms was the noise. When you're driving a modified car, you're always listening for odd noises and wonder to yourself "what was that? did something break?". The sound it makes is really scary. You have no idea what it could be. It wasn't a big deal though since the engine definitely drowns out almost all the other noises. I soon got over the noise and started feeling the car's reaction. Over bumps, you can feel the shocks working a bit more. Without the preload tention that bushings have, the arms are moving up and down freely. The feeling is not dramatically different. The alignment adjustment came out spot on. I feel more confident in the car not adjusting itself for the worse anymore.
I've got to thank you, Khoa, for hooking me up with such great parts. They made adjustments a breeze. I'm glad you're happy with the stock arms. I owe you big time. Thanks to Brian too. I hope you're learning a lot from doing our ghetto backyard alignments :p. Good times.
I later ended up at Dirty Monkey.
Kelvin suggested that I should take a picture of our cars. Coincidentally, our cars were parked in generational order. So this one's for you Kelvin.
hmm... The wings get bigger as years go by too :p
