And here I was about to install my plates this week I can't remember, was there a reason besides weight for using aluminum?

What do you think the chances are he would be able to make a new set with steel parts to hold the bearings with a radius machined within 2 weeks?

 

So I'm looking at my set and it looks like your aluminum plate sits about 1/2" higher than mine does. Was it that high above the 4 adjusting screws before the accident? Because mine sits just just about flush with the 4 screws....

Oh, is there any word on if Mark tightened up the slop for those 3 M10 bolt sliders?

 

I'm not certain what you mean about the aluminum. It was bent as well as cracked, so now it is no longer flat on the bottom. Maybe that's what you are seeing.

The M10 blot slots in the plate were so tight that I had to open them up with a file to fit the bolts though. It was like 9.5mm in some places.

Here are some more pictures. Hope this clarifies things.

The deformation of the plate


Comparison of the slides


Close up of the slide. Notice how clean the break is along the line where the barrel that contains the spherical bearing meets the flat part of the slide.

 

luckily it held as much as it did. that could've been a really bad day.

 

Ok add me to the list of mounts that are ****!

Did my weekly engine bay check and decided to give the mounts an up close look and what did I find? Some lovely stress cracks are forming around the base of the aluminum mounts.

WTF can I find anyone to make new aftermarket parts for these f#cking cars.

 

Joe,

Try contacting Loren (DMSentra) on G20 again. He responded to my WTB thread over there looking for P11 MEP rear mounts he might be willing to give us another chance but we need to show interest.

 

There is no interest in making a decent suspension product anymore for these cars.

Mark only sold 4 sets including mine. All of which have to be redesigned or there are going to be some seriously pissed off people. The ball is in his court now and we will see what happens. But IMO any dream of these being a cheaper & superior alternative to the discontinued Stillen plates, is just that a dream.

:rant:

We like to on this forum about making this and making that, but when it comes to the company making parts or the people lining up to buy it usually falls through.

I can honestly say that as I've tried to get several new parts made in the last year only to have bad designs, constant delays, or people just taking off with my money. It has really changed my attitude and made me extermely bitter with the whole car modding scene in general.

So sad; as their is alot left on the table with regards to suspension on these cars, but we are conditioned to think otherwise with decade old information or even by vendors still selling obsolete crap. Some people like to think after they have thrown on some Ksports and a FSTB/RSB that their Maxima handles good. With my car and my driving I can honestly say I've made some org people almost vomit or scared the **** out of them, I offer ride alongs to anyone in this area who tell me their Maxima can handle. After people get a ride along in my car I've changed many opinions.

Point being even with my car I can still sense so many faults and shortcomings with this design that can be improved upon. Only because I've gotten scared riding shotgun in 911s, Vipers, Z06s, M3s, etc. on the road course.

:rant over:

Screw this im going to buy an M3.

 

I was just looking at a 325i on auto trader. It's too bad these parts aren't working out.

 

Wow. I just saw this. This is BS. I guess OEM didn't count on the weight of the A32. Aluminum was definitely not the material to use. Too soft, too brittle. Glad I haven't purchased replacement parts yet. It's a shame really. I
m going to email Mark back now.

Oh, and I think the plates should be 3/8. You're strut mount should not be the weak point of the suspension.

 

1. That's why I bought a G35. It handles way better overall than my Maxima did. The Maxima was still fun as hell to drive, but the G holds just as many lateral Gs and is WAY more comfortable. Plus RWD and more power. win win win.

2. Interest/money reasons like the above are why I quit making parts for these cars and got a 'real' job. there weren't enough people paying for the products to make the time and effort worthwhile. It cost me over $10k to develop the rear BBKs and I sold 8 of them in 3 years (for an overall loss of about $600 per set). After I ran out of the first run of parts, I didn't bother with any more.
As a business, I can't make a profit on something selling 4 or 5 of them unless I'm charging flat rate per job for machining and labor times. And that's $500-1000 per part for something like this if you're having to farm out the CNC work.

3. the quality/engineering of those parts leaves some to be desired if you have two mounts failing that quickly. need more cross-sectional area in there to spread the loads out. It's one thing to nail a pothole and break one, but it's another thing to break multiple. looking at those photos, it appears there's only about 1/8" of wall thickness where the bearing presses into place. since the bearing is pressed in there, the aluminum is already under stress. Adding all the weight of the car to it makes it even worse. that section should be considerably thicker. I think they're about 3/16" or 1/4" thick on my 240 plates.

 

Bingo. According to my Mitutoyo calipers, it's around 0.1 inches.

 

eek. WAY too small for aluminum to be supporting that much force.

 

For all that have ordered the OEM camber caster plates please listen up. I will send a set of replacement top plates and we will be making the slides wider and out of steel. I am sorry about the inconvience this has caused. All I ask is that you throw away all old parts. The parts are not strong enough. When we had them first tested on Joe's car they were working good. Its long term use that failed on these. Please understand we will do anything we need to make right.

Have those that bought the plates shoot me a e-mail to and I will have a set of plates shipped out with slides in 2 weeks or less.

Happy Friday for all us who bought these plates!



If you have a good design change to make these stronger suggest it to Mark before he makes the replacement sets for us.

The downside is that I put my car away for the winter soon, so one of you guys is going to have to use these and get some long term use to verify they are better.

 

Impressive

 

I have received and installed the next version of the front mounts for testing. These mounts differ from the originals in two main ways. First, the plates are 0.250 instead of 0.200 inches in thickness. Second, the barrel of the slide that house the spherical bearing is 5 mm larger in diameter. Check out some pictures below.


Left is old.


Left is old.


Old.


New.


Old.


New.

The reason for the continued use of Aluminum is that "[s]teel slides are 4x more expensive," according to Mark. The new slides also have a small radius where the flat part meets the barrel to reduce the stress at that location.

Mark wants me to drive around on them for about 1000 miles and he feels that will be enough time to determine if they are strong enough for this application. We will see.

Oh, and I forgot; there was not one square cut on these plates. I do not know what process is used to cut them, but nothing was square. It took about an hour of filing to get every one of the slots square. I couldn't even put any of the bolts through the slots initially. The large center slot in the plates was not wide enough for the slides to move easily though the adjustment range. That's kind of lame if you ask me. The parts should at least fit together when I receive them.

 

I talked with Mark today via email and he seems pleased so far at the performance of the beefier mounts. He said he was going to start working on replacements for everyone who bought a set.

 

Well are you pleased? Have you put 1000 miles on them yet? Hit any big potholes?

Is he going to machine them properly so we don't have to grind them down like you had to?

Do you have a better picture of the radius'ed slides? It appears to be so small as to be non-existent in those pictures....

 

Yeah I am hoping these work better than the last ones. If these 2nd ones crack I am going to machine the old Stillen plates to be caster adjustable and make an OEM/Stillen hybrid plate.

 

Yeah, I'm pleased so far. The steering feels awesome. They mounts have about 1500 miles on them now. Now I'll be the first to say that an arbitrary number of miles is in no way a definitive test for a suspension component. Repeated loading would be a better test, either on a rig or via some sort of rough test track. But I think that is a bit beyond the scope of this project. R&D like that cost big bucks.

I don't go looking for potholes and because its only December they will be in short supply until February or March. That radius isn't large, but it's there. Anything is better than the 90 degree angle from before. I can't take a picture because they are installed currently.

As for the grinding your guess is as good as mine. I'll send him an email about it but that's all I can do.

As far as I am concerned I don't think aluminum is a good material choice here. Period. He said AL was used because its cheaper. I guess he means to machine? Personally I'd like to have strong mounts, not cheap ones. But I don't want to spend 1000 dollars and I don't have a CNC machine. We'll just have to see how these aluminum pieces hold up long term.

 

What material are the slide pieces on the Stillen mounts made from?

 

The parts on my KTS coilovers are made from aluminum and haven't failed with lots of abuse- potholes on the street, plus bouncing off FIA curbing and being airborne several times when I screw up at the race track.

IIRC the base plate (the part that bolts to the chassis) is aluminum, and then the part that holds the bearing and upper strut mount is steel.

Aluminum is about twice the price of steel for the material, but it's about 1/2 the price to machine due to the softer material. the cost of the material is small in comparison to the machining for a part like that.

Unfortunately, material strengths need to be considered before making the parts, not just the overall cost to produce. If the softer material isn't strong enough, then you need to use a stonger material or change your design. If that increases costs, then you need to raise the sale price to account for that. proper engineering AND price projections are a key part of product design. You can't make a profit or a quality product without both.

 

So true Matt.

I took a hell of a hit when I cracked that mount. I think (read: hope) now that Mark has made the material substantially thicker they will hold up to all but the most extreme abuse.

On another note, I did remind Mark that the plates needed filed to fit. Not just on the slots that bolt them to the chassis, but also on the slots that hold the slides. We'll see if he address that when some of you guys get you replacements.

 

To answer your question 95maxrider, I just heard back from Mark:

"I will make sure they slide perfect. The slides are being made."

 

I'm curious about how/why the steering feels awesome. Is it just because of the increased camber/caster? Any idea what you're running? Did you have Stillen mounts before that you're comparing these to?

 

Going from stock upper mounts to any spherical bearing upper makes the car respond a bit better when turning at the expensive of increased ride harshness. I noticed that it was better when I switched to the Stillen mounts a few years ago.

Also for those asking about the Stillen mounts, the plates themselves were made out of aluminum and powder coated blue. The part that held the bearings were made out of some kind of steel, with a slight radiused edge.

OEM decided to do the opposite and I am having my doubts these will work for us long term. I already had camber plates on my car. The reason I signed onto this project was to provide the Maxima crowd with an improved alternative to the discontinued Stillen plates.

Build quality and long term use aside the OEM design is better in regards to them being coaxial, I found the car seems to steer easier on tight turns and parking lots even though my caster is higher than what I had with the Stillen plates.

 

I would guess it has something to do with the positive caster. Positive caster increases negative dynamic camber. More negative camber helps the front wheels grip, to a point. The static camber is also more negative than stock. The car feels more reactive with these mounts, but that might be a product of the fixed mounting point, like Joe said.

I am only comparing them to stock mounts.

 

From Mark:

"Anthony, I have the 3 more sets of slides and plates ready to ship. Can you please have the 3 members e-mail me today so I can ship"

 

I'm lazy....what's his email again?

 

Hey how did the plates work out so far on your car?

 

I haven't given them a once over for a while but I don't hear any strange noises and nothing has broken yet. I have stock suspension and very soft and mushy snow tires on my car for winter, so I can't give my opinion about driving the plates hard.

The only thing I can say is be careful when you tighten the four cap screws that secure the slide to the plate. It's very easy to over-torque these because there are not many threads in the slides, and the slides are made of aluminum. I would think 20-30 ft. lbs. would be good (that sounds low, but remember there are four of them). I should really take my junk slides and see how much torque I can apply to the cap screws before the threads strip. From my reading the torque spec is around 65-70% of the failure torque rate.

Maybe someone with more mechanical engineering experience can offer a better value.

As for the email address, check the website, I don't know it off-hand.

 

Just found this handy calculator : http://www.futek.com/boltcalc.aspx?mode=metric

For an M8-1.25 class 12.9 bolt threaded 8mm (this is a guess, I don't have the slides in front of me) into 6061-T6 aluminum (also a guess, but it was one of the options and is probably close; also it's the softest so the torque ratings will be lowest) the recommended value is 11.0 ft. lbs. and the max is 14.6 rounded to one decimal. This equates to 950 and 1265 kg of clamping force respectively (aren't Newtons SI force?). Considering that there are four bolts, that's over four tons of clamping force.

 

What is Mark's email addy?

 

info@overkillengineeringmotorsports.com

 

You guys are freakin awesome for doing this!
Any update on these? I'm doing a gc/ koni setup sometime this month and would love to try these out. What are they running now?

 

I still did not get the new set of plates yet. Emailed Mark a couple of times and no response.

However some people who have gotten the new plates have said they are not so good.

 

Questions? why is the base plate for the bearing shaped like an eye? why is the bearing offset to one side of that eye? why is there so little material around the bearing? this part is essentially the part that holds the load, yet it's small and aluminum, and off center. and why is the caster adjustable? we are all goona use the max available caster so why no just drill the holes on the plate for max caster? it simplifies the plate fabrication and prevents clearance issues with a larger bearing retainer plate. i get the cost thing, but if OEM was willing to use steel and beef up the plate common to the bearing, i would be willing to throw down more money. hell, if someone offered a used Stillen plate, i'd pay $400+ if it were in good shape. any takers out there with Stillen Plates?

edit:

photo courtesy of "Nyarlathotep"


if it were flipped we could see alot better but can you see how much more material was used for the bearing retaining plate? and that's steel mind you. until the design get closer to Stillen's, i won't be purchasing these. the b14 pillowball rears are a different story though

 

I'm on D2 coilovers on my A33 Maxima and I'm interested in caster adjustment. Would the 4th gen caster plate setup work?

Edited. I read the thread, interested in caster plates.

 

here's a lower pic of the Stillen bearing retainer plate courtesy of BEJAY1 (hope you don't mind BEJAY). Besides the fact that these are steel, they are way beefier than the OEM design.

 

I sent Mark an extra broken Stillen plate (they are not invincible) to copy when this project started and this is what we ended up with. Am I pissed? Without a doubt. This is why Sergofast left early on and avoided this thread ever since.

If you can find someone willing to make a few low volume parts for a car made in the 90s and barely make money go right ahead. Cost is ultimately what caused these plates to suck. If they were an improved Stillen copy they would be over $500 a set, most likely the front struts would have to be modified to work, existing FSTBs would not fit, and maybe 2~3 people would buy them.

There are better designs out there for adjustable camber/caster plates for McStruts but no one with a Maxima would be willing to pay that kind of money. There is also very limited room to work with in the upper mount area and most likely Stillen made these plates non coaxial as a trade off for a stronger plate that still worked with the aftermarket springs & coil overs available at the time.

The only way to do this right is to make a top mount design with a thicker & stronger bearing plate made of steel. But you can't use existing FSTBs and possibly none of the struts available would work without having to be made longer.

 

ALright Ill make a comeback....stay away from OEM at all cost. you would not believe the CRAP he sent me and called parts.

To top it off I had a wonderful time battling it out with him and paypal....in the end my credit card company sided with me and I got my money back....but I did lose about $70 shipping and re shipping his parts back to him over and over again....

Im sorry that I even started the first thread...