Hey guys, this is a concept I'm new with. I know that others have thought about doing it but I wanted to start a thread on this topic. I was hoping people would post info regarding this subject as well as products available for other cars that lower the roll center of that vehicle.

Again, I'm pretty new to this subject. But from what I've heard it sounds like a good way to increase handling limits, and the cars ability to make quick transitions with less body roll without sacrificing ride quality. Which is what we are all looking for.

 

In theory, you can just use the nuts as spacers above the ball joints. But the problem is, that it will result in more stress on ball joints and they might fail much earlier than they would otherwise.

BTW: original idea belongs to d00df00d
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=473873

 

Hmm interesting, so what do they do on other cars to allieviate that problem,(if its a prob in other cars) and how much of a difference does it make on other cars in real general terms.

Do other cars lower the roll center by means of new lower control arms?

 

horrible idea (the link above).

The Balljoint is tapered and sits on that taper for a very good reason. the balljoint is an extremely abused part on the car and needs all the help it can get.

there are aftermarket companies out there that have made adjustable joints for the Sentra and some other cars, and you should look into that before trying anything else. this is not a bolt you want to fail in the middle of a high speed corner.

fortunately for the 3rd gen, the ball joint unbolts from the end of the control arm and it IS possible to replace the bolts holding it to the control arm. I can just use longer ones there with spacers between the arm and ball joint, and the ball joint will still attach to the spindle at the same location witht he same hardware.

 

Yeah, I was gonna say that. Hence the last post in the thread. Boy, what a n00b I felt like by the end of that...

Yes, roll center correction is important. How you go about it depends on your suspension; lowering the point where the control arm attaches to the knuckle is what you do when you have MacPherson struts. The cool thing about that is that it also helps ensure negative camber gain on compression. But there's no way to do that on a 4th or 5th gen without new, longer balljoints. That means you'd have to find a shop that would be willing to take your LCAs (or a set of new ones), press out the existing balljoints, and press in the new one ones. They would have to be custom unless someone somehow figures out that aftermarket balljoints for another application will fit...

IIRC, Bejay1 has been working with SPL on this and other related projects, and it's been costing him quite a sum of money. Maybe he can chime in here.

 

This is very interesting to me. Lowered Maximas need all the help they can get and this sounds good. Custom designed replacement ball joints or other parts would be excellent.

Having replaced my ball joints with new stock ones, it's kind of a b!tch but just takes patience and a ball-joint press, which Autozones and some other auto parts stores loan out for free.

 

I wonder if we could modify our existing LCAs to fit ball joints from another car that are more capable of taking punishment. Or I was thinking, its deff possible that someone could fabricate custom LCAs.

 

It's possible, but nobody wants to pay that kind of money for it.

pressing in an adjustable ball joint would be much more cost-effective. look around for ones from the SE-R and others like that for ideas on what they've done.

 

hey matt i was thinking about doing this but when i actually thought about it, i realized it would not make any difference since the ball joint is still connected to the control arm at the same point, you are only making the control arm kind of like an L instad of an I (looking at it from the front of the car). this makes the working control arm the diagonal distance on the L which is exactly what it was before. also id think that putting spacers in there would weaken the lateral strength of that connection

and to the thread topic, i thought lowered cars usually need to raise their roll centers not lower them since lowering many cars can actually make the roll centers negative or below the ground