Now that I've handed over the production and shipping part of the business to someone else, I've got some time to actually play with developing some new stuff.
Since everyone seems to want these and nobody has them, I'm thinking about designing some custom control arms for the Maxima.

This will allow you guys to actually get decent alignments and get rid of the bumpsteer when you lower the car where you want. This has been a MAJOR issue with the Maxima since they came out, and here's the way to fix it once and for all!

Note that it wont' be cheap! We're looking at an absolute minimum of $500 to make something that'll do the job and it will need to be set up by a proper race setup shop for another $1-200. (Once you get the initial setup done, you will be able to have your regular alignment place do your alignments from then on.)

I'm looking at doing one of two options.
1. completely adjustable control arms. These will allow you to adjust camber, caster, and bumpsteer via the control arms. These will be badass race-spec stuff, but the costs will be the same as badass race-spec parts.

2. bumpsteer-only adjustable arms. These will be basically the same shape as the stock arms, but they will have an adjustable ball joint on the end and come with adjustable tie rod ends as well so that you may get rid of the bumpsteer caused by lowering your car too much.
arm will also be lengthened slightly to give you a bit more negative camber and will prevent the axles from bottoming out in the inner joint under full compression.


Also keep in mind these will not be OEM-style "install it and forget it" parts. with these types of joints, you will need to perform regular cleaning and maintenance of these parts to prevent them from gumming up and failing. I would suggest a monthly cleaning of the heim joints, or even more frequently if you live in the rust belt or take your car off-roading. loading the joints up with mud or sand will ruin them in short time.


so guys, please let me know what your thoughts are about them. If there's enough interest, I'll come up with a prototype and take deposits to make sure I'm not going to wind up losing money on the deal, then I'll get to work on producing a final product.

 

probably a no for me at this point. The Jeep, Triumph, and new daughter are going to be taking up my expenses for the foreseeable future and the max is staying as-is for a while.

I have little to no bumpsteer anyhow with the current setup, so it would be tough to justify for a mild drop like mine.

in the future? who knows!

 

 

i'm in 100%. gives me 1 less thing to work on, and i have more faith in your knowledge of stuff like this than mine. the bumpsteer adjustable is all i see necessary.

 

yup. you gotta pay to play. not gonna be cheap to develop, but I thought I'd throw it out there. If there's enough interest I'll do it. but I have a feeling I'm just going to be building a set for myself.

 

Haha... I'd be really interested in either of the products, but that is a lot of bread. And you know us Maxima folk, we love *****ing and moaning about cost.

 

Yeah.. there's always "interest" in lots of stuff. I'm "interested" in twin turbo RWD goodness and a roll cage.. but I'm not willing to pay to make it happen. just ain't worth it to me when I have a 240SX that will do the job much better.

But if people are willing to pay for them, I'm willing to make them.

 

check pm.

 

Definitely in for option 2 if cost can be kept as close to 500-600 as possible! I just dont feel the need to have fully adjustable ones since I dont track the car much.

Grant

 

Id be in for fully adjustable ones. IMO having the ability to add in more positive caster would help the steering feel on this car. Not to mention the ability to get the alignment specs equal on both sides. One local shop quoted me around $2000 for a custom set of them, so for $1000 I would not hesitate if I like the final design. Funny how this thread came up cause I was close to bringing some OEM LCAs to that shop to start the process.

Granted this is for a Maxima and people tend to be cheap. Just remember these are not cheap for ANY car...

Also id suggest these control arms have clearances for 30 mm brake rotors. Id hate to have to grind these adjustable LCAs to fit thicker rotors like you have to on the OEM LCAs.

 

sounds like a good idea but I really dont think people on this forum will buy them from you due to the price and the lack of people that care that much about lca's.

do you have any prototype diagrams, drawings or cad for the lca's?

 

It's more lack of knowledge about the LCA's role in handling more than anything I'm sure. These guys spend $2000 on a set of wheels and $1000 on tires and $2000 on coilovers and $1500 in chassis bracing, when they're held back by their OEM suspension geometry. DOH!

no diagrams yet. I'm in concept & interest phase. and I won't be posting drawings or anything on the forum. too many slimy people out there. Besides, they'll look just like another iteration of the rest of the FWD Adjustable control arms out there.. there's about 2-3 major design types and I'll pick one when and make something when the time is right. I'll show a prototype when its ready.

 

when people start realizing for $500-600 they can get their car lower and retain handling i think they will pay the price.

 

wheels $400 (two sets)
tires $320
suspension $500 (including RSB and one set of koni inserts)
chassis bracing $470 (including installation)

That said, I'd very much like to have a properly set up geometry and I'd definitely like to add some caster etc as well... I am just at the point where I'm contemplating getting some brakes and calling it a day. I'm sure I'll be fickle about it but despite how much I'll drool over proper suspension, you can't count on my $. I am starting to think that the money would be better spent on buying an E30 or S13 as a second car.

I'd definitely like to see some pictures of 'em on your car when you finish 'em though.

 

Does that mean other products are going back into production? If I hadn't put in Nissan arms a few months ago I would throw the extra cash on getting these for sure.

 

ill be down for the non adjustables.....

 

I don't think I could do the adjustables, but I am in for the other ones.

 

Yes. I've turned over "regular production", sales, and shipping to some family, and I'm hanging around as tech support and "playing" with new ideas and whatnot.
I get to do the fun part of the job, and they do the work (and make the money)...

 

Sounds like a win win to me

Very interesting concept, personally if I had the money for them I wouldn't hesitate for a mere 5-600 dollars...Hard to say who will actually buy them though...

 

This will probably turn out to be a dumb question, but why isn't it possible to enclose the parts that are prone to getting clogged/dirty so that the control arms will be "install it and forget it" style.

 

Because the ball joint must be adjustable. The only way to do that is to put a monoball bearing (think heim joint) in there like this:
http://www.racersauction.com/images/...l%20Joints.jpg

You can put the little rubber heim joint "seals" over them, but they don't do a whole helluvalot of good, IMO.

 

but the only issue for me would be timing in terms of cash availability, this year is out for sure due to a significant 3.5 project. Next year would be more likely.

 

Although, I would love to have those, I don't think I will be modding maxima to that extant.

A bit too expansive, and sometimes I need my car to survive a month or two without me spending much time under it.


Edit: It is finally my post number 2000. (sorry Matt, I just had to post this)

 

I don't think these would suit me very well. What would be needed to clean these every month? I would prefer if these were 'set and forget', but I understand that's not possible. I would consider the non-adjustable ones, but the thought of having to disassemble everything every month isn't appealing to me. I think my money would be better spent upgrading to the 97-99 SE steering rack. I'm also not especially low (Eibachs) so I don't think I have as much bump steer problems as others here.

 

The required maintenance would be basically to blow any gunk out of the ball joint with compressed air or a paintbrush and then squirt a light coat of oil on it. You wouldn't have to tear anything apart and mess up the alignment- just clean it up and oil it every month or two...

you wouldn't even have to jack the car up if you had compressed air.. just turn the wheel to one side for access and give it a few blasts of air. Then squirt some light oil on it to lube and protect.

not a lot of maintenance, but this isn't something you can just install and forget.

you could always just install it and forget it and wind up replacing the ball joint every couple of years when they start to get some play in them.. the ball joints are cheaper than OE joints too. I'm planning to use a screw-in joint so you could even replace it without changing the alignment. just unscrew the old one and screw in the new one. since they're all precision machined components, the tolerances will be close enough your alignment will not change.

so it's not as bad as it sounds. but just remember that these aren't your OEM ball joints that go 100000 miles without any maintenance at all.

 

What size drop would compromise the stock suspension in such a way so that these LCAs would lesson or eliminate the problems created by that drop?

 

I would say ANY lowered setup would benefit from this. With my progress springs the LCA's are pretty much parallel to the ground at rest but I'm pretty sure they angle up pretty significantly under compression. In my case it might allow the LCA's to be pointing down a bit at rest and closer to parallel under compression. In that sense, ANY lowering is a compromise of suspension geometry, IMO. Someone please correct me if I'm off base here...

 

Just a thought--if it wouldn't be too much trouble you could include a tab to secure traction bars.

Also, nismology is correct, if you're lowered at all then a set of these will improve your car's manners. However these will not change the angle of your LCAs for the better, it will merely allow you to relocate the ball joint so that the tie rods are parallel to the LCAs at normal ride height, fixing the toe curve and getting rid of bump steer (you may not consciously notice it, but it's there, even if you're just on Eibachs--I definitely notice it) and positive steering feedback, which I'll admit I haven't noticed since I don't perform high-speed hard cornering on the street.

The fully adjustable LCAs wouldn't be able to fix the LCA angle either (no LCA design can really, you need to extend the ball joint from the steering knuckle) but they'll give you a great method for adjusting static camber, and more importantly IMO, caster.

Also they will look cool and make you feel l337.

 

Ah ok. Thanks for clearing that up Morf



:Crawls back to all-motor:

 

...And stay down.

 

Actually, these control arms would address exactly that. They will have adjustable, extended ball joints and I will develop a tie rod end to compliment them as well. I actually already have the tie rod end done. that's easy enough.

that's the reason you will need an experienced suspension shop to set them up once installed. you will need to set the ball joint and tie rod heights to compliment each other AND your particular suspension setup. Change the ride height

Also, depending on whether the design uses all heim joints or uses poly bushings, you may or may not need the traction bars.

 

Much as I'd love these $500+ seems steep. I mean why not just raise the ride height and stiffen to compensate? No way to duplicate Kojima's Dog design for less than that? Camber can be worked with various plates and bolts (My Ingalls nor Progress have never slipped). Caster can be tweaked a bit with the rear offset bushings and probably even more by slotting the tops lengthwise.

I'd think a large market for these would be road racers. The A33 is now approved for SCCA ITR competiton but as I read it these wouldn't be legal under 9.1.3.5 of the GCR.
http://www.scca.com/documents/Club%2...vedTouring.pdf

I do love the effort Matt and I will be watching this thread.

P.S. Whom do I contact about a new LTB now?

 

as long as you manage to make this very light yet still strong, I'm in...

 

Bejay, those are initial guesses at price numbers. hopefully they'll be much less, but I don't want to find out after I say they'll be $300 and take deposits that they're going to wind up costing $600 to do them properly.

In order to make them cost-effective and do what they need to do, I'll have to use something other than Kojima's chop-and-weld-a-monoball method. that's only one of the issues we run into with these cars.. Kojima's style works for a cheap-and-dirty method, but I'm going for something a bit more elegant in the long run.

 

god... dammit..

Suddenly these are seeming more worth the money. Why didn't you mention the extended ball joints in the original post?

Also, I was wondering about the necessity of traction bars with these, but if they do not bind the suspension then they couldn't hurt...

 

Was just thinking, you could probably use a gas station air/tire pump as the compressed air for cleaning the heim joints, no?

 

^ good point, would our traction bars be able to mount up to these?

also, with a BBK and a slammed stance, I had my control arm rub on the rotor. To fix this problem I had to grind down my control arm in the front, would these LCA's provide clearance for BBK's

 

I did if you go back and read the post again. The main reason for relocating the ball joint and making it adjustable is specifically to adjust the bumpsteer. fix the bumpsteer issue and everything else on the front suspension is cake.
Adjusting camber and caster are both easy enough with a set of camber plates (which are much smaller and cost roughly the same amount as these will, btw)..

Using gas-station air compressor probably won't work because they don't have a real nozzle- just the tire inflator valve thing. but any Jiffy lube or mechanic shop should have compressed air. You can do a lot of the cleaning with just a brush and maybe a $5 can of air from the electronics store. Again, that's not even going to be completely REQUIRED, but it's recommended to extend the life of the ball joint. the cleaner you keep it, the longer it will last.

 

Second, I will have to do some research on the brake clearance issues. I've heard of them before and will do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen. It may wind up being a difficult process though because the rotor does sit very close to the control arm. I had ordered a used control arm to start trying to make a jig, but I think it would be best to get an entire car here and take some clearance measurements before I go anywhere else. Good thing I've got lots of friends with 4 gens locally.

 

Im down for the fully adjustables if you gonna make em for the 5.5!!!!.........pm me and let me know fam!