[Garyalpusa]

I was looking to upgrade the ball joints on the front suspension because I do some open track and have read that the stockers are a bit suspect for that kind of abuse. After going thru the option of taking off my stock arms and having to press out the original and then press in new ones, I decided to go with motorsport cobra lower front arms. They come with the GT500 ball joints that are stronger then the stock GTs and are used on all the turn key race cars you can buy from Motorsport. Got them new on Ebay for a decent price.

The install was a bit of a PIA because I also put the steeda front relocation kit on that I had sitting on a shelf for about a year. The relo kit raises the 14mm bolt that the arm pivots on about 3/4 of an inch and has 3/4 inch blocks of aluminun to raise the rear of the arm the same amount. This helps the instant roll center geometry which is off after you lower the car more than an inch or so. The steeda kit comes with a template that has the stock location hole and the new location hole. You bolt the plate on the bracket thru the stock hole and drill thru the new hole location. The plate has room to move and there is nothing in the directions that says excatly where to place the new hole. I put it directly above the stock hole. The plate can rotate and the new hole will move on an arc left and right of the stock location. This will change the camber a bit if you get it off. The directions do say to plumb bob the stock location of the arm before you take it off so you can measure when you put the arm back on. There is a slot on the mounting bracket on the rear of the arm that gives some adjustment.

The biggest problem I had was drilling the new 14mm hole. 14mm is just a bit smaller than 9/16 so it is a pretty big hole. My drill with a 1/2" chuck was too long to fit in the space in front of the suspension bracket. I cut the drill bit about 3 inches shorter and then I had room to drill. The metal is pretty thick on the bracket so it took a long time and alot of oil to drill the holes. I also had to take the bit off and sharpen it on my grinding wheel after each hole. I tacked the new plate on the bracket as suggested by Steeda and then put the new arms back on.

One other part of the install that is not mentioned in steedas direction is that you really need to remove the tie rod ends from the front hub. They are directly in front of the bracket that holds the lower arm and block access. You can move them out of the way when disconnected.

There are aluminum heat shields on the rear of the arms that protect the rear hydo bushings from heat generated by the exhaust down pipes that are almost directly above. After you raise the rear of the arm with the provided spacers there is no room for the heat shields. The top of the housing that holds the large round hydro bushing just about hits the frame rail above it. The heat shields also wrap around the rear of the bushing so I trimmed them with snips and protected the bushings as much as possible from my long tube headers that are only inches away.

I used the string method to measure the toe on the front tires when I got everything reassembled. I had to adjust the toe "in" about 1/4 inch on each side to get a "0" measurment. I ususally set it at 1/16 out for the track which gives a better turn in, but leave it straight ahead for the street. I cant really say if I feel any difference with the way the car drives, buts its hard to duplicate the same forces on the street that you do on the track...

If you are going to just change the front arms, I would say the job is moderate in difficulty. The Steeda relo kit requires patience and tools. GA

[travelers]

Good write up. keep us informed on how it works out and can you post the link.