Front upper perches and mounts
Hi folks. Sorry that it has been so long since I updated. Been busy with work and making the euro bumper brackets.
Anyway, back one step to the upper spring perches. I had difficulty finding a proper sized tube, so I simply just laid down 4 beads of weld on the cut off stub and ground them till the spring was a nice fit. Not really necessary as the spring doesn't locate anything but it seemed like the right thing to do.
Continuing, above the front bearing (or Plaia pivot) there is a thin metal washer and then an aluminum cone. You could use them as is. BUT, to achieve the maximum possible lowering and/or stiffening, we will modify them very cleverly as follows.
Enlarge the centre of the washer to 20mm ID and counterbore the cone (from the bottom) to 20mm ID, 10mm deep. This simple - well almost simple - mod will lower the car about 1/2" all by itself. By the way, this mod would even work on a totally stock suspension !
Now you would think that counterboring is for sure a lathe job, and indeed you could have it done at a machine shop, but I promised you we could do all this with no lathe or mill, so believe it or not, you can buy a "metric cap screw counterbore" bit with a 14mm pilot and a 20mm cutter with a 1/2" shank.Available at any machine shop supply place. I got mine at
www.kbctools.com Locations thoughout Canada and U.S. Part # 5-614-012
http://www.kbctools.com/can/Navigation/NavPDF.cfm?PDFPage=0064
About $25. Now I realize that you probably don't possess one of these and after using it here you probably will never use it again. Maybe split the cost with another local Xweb member or sell yours here after you've used it, or simply mail me your washer and cone with a little folding money and I'll bore them and mail them back to you.Even at worst, lowering the front of your X about 1/2" for only $25 isn't too bad.
I found it easiest to just clamp the washer to the cone with a couple sets of vise grips as shown, hold it in a vise, and bore them both together. The washer is pretty thin to try to drill out on its own. Carefully drill through the washer and counterbore the cone ONLY to a depth of 10 to 11mm. The cone is aluminum so it bores pretty easily.
Before and after
On top of that simply use a stock X1/9 rubber mount. Unmodified.
If yours are original, they are probably hard and distorted and worn. New ones are still easily available from your favorite Fiat parts supplier. Luckily for us,
www.fiatplus.com recently developed a nice heavy duty reproduction with somewhat firmer rubber. Ideal for our purposes. But watch out, he sells a set of 4 cheaper than 4 individually, under a different part #
http://www.fiatplus.com/set-of-four-4337710-pr-301797.html.
Now some people use a solid upper mount with a spherical bearing instead of the rubber one. But certainly - for street use - I think the rubber one is best. It adds some compliance and isolation.
On top of the rubber mount is a cupped washer. The stock one has a 12mm slotted hole. But this part of the VW insert needs a 14mm round hole, so drill out the stock one to 14mm (or 9/16"). Strangely enough, I found this aspect of the project to be much more difficult than it appears. Fiat must have made this part out of kryponite or something. In fact I think it is just case hardened from the stamping process. I ended up grinding and drilling to enlarge the hole.
Note that, strangely enough, on the used struts I obtained, that the front and rear cupped washers were slightly different. The rears had an extra washer spot welded onto the inside of it. Look carefully at yours.
Now after enlarging the cupped washer and trial fitting everything, you will notice 2 problems. The top nut for the VW insert is 14mm thread with a 22mm wrench size. This nut is too large to seat inside the cupped washer. In addition, you will notice that even if it did, the threaded portion of the VW shaft is not long enough. Part of the unthreaded portion of the shaft extends taller than the seat portion of the cupped washer.
These 2 problems can be solved with 1 simple step. You have 3 options :
1) Find some washers 14mm ID 22mm OD (9/16"-7/8") and stack them about 1/2" high. Simple but too mickey mouse for me.
2) Buy a standard 7/16" bearing collar. This should measure 7/16" ID, 7/8" OD, 7/16" thick. Available from KBC Tools and Princess Auto up here. Should be found at Harbour Freight or most hardware stores. If you live in a metric land a 12mm collar should work fine.
You WILL have to drill out the inside to 14mm (or 9/16"). Remove and discard the set screw. Then install with the chamfer down.
Pic shows drilled out 7/16" collar on left and chamferred 9/16" collar on right.
3) Buy a 9/16" bearing collar. Should be 9/16" ID, 1" OD, 7/16" thick. This has the right ID but the OD is too large to fit inside the the cupped washer. You WILL have to enlarge the chamfer considerably so that it will seat. Maybe use the set screw to secure it to a 9/16" rod or bolt and enlarge the chamfer on a bench grinder until it seats properly. The ground chamfer will not be visible when installed so your grinding job doesn't have to be perfect.
On top of that goes a 14mm x 1.5mm nyloc. Your new VW insert should come with a new one.
Pics of front upper mounts in order
Now there are only 2 things missing, but both are very important.
First, we need a bump stop. You will have noticed that earlier we chopped off the original Fiat one. IT MUST BE REPLACED by an alternative. DO NOT RUN WITHOUT ONE. It's purpose is to limit the compression travel of the shock BEFORE the shock bottoms out, OR the tire hits the fender.If the shock is allowed to bottom out, IT WILL damage and destroy itself !!! And the abrubt stoppge of suspension movement will cause an abrubt loss of tire adhesion. Luckily for us, many cars use a bump stop that is simply a chunk of rubber slid over the shaft of the shock. We can do the same. Just find a bump stop that is 20mm ID, and no bigger than 2" OD. As for length, well...we must choose a length that is a happy balance between:
1) Not allowing the shock to bottom out
2) Not allowing the tire to hit the fender under full compression AND
full steering lock to lock
3) Maximizing suspension travel
4) Remembering that the bump stop is rubber and wil compress
under load.
You have many choices of bump stops from other cars. I chose a later VW one, and trimmed the length. The length was carefully determined by intalling the new struts on the car WITHOUT springs and checking everything carefully. There can be so many variables in tire size, shocks, etc. that I hesitate to give you a length.
Next (and finally ! ) we need a proper dust boot to protect our fancy new shocks. Without one, sand and road grit WILL shorten the life of the shock seals. It took me a long time, but I finally found the perfect one. Pics and part # later.
Next, rear upper perches and mounts. Stay tuned.....Doug
). One post stated that the Mitsubishi 3000GT front struts were thought to be very close in dimension to the X's, and another said the same about the 3rd generation Toyota MR2 struts. So I Google'd both to see images and purely from a visual glance they are very similar looking. While I do realize that does not mean much, it did provoke further interest. Based on Doug's idea of modifying a complete strut assembly from another vehicle (VW Rabbit in his case) to fit the X1/9, could there indeed be yet another candidate to use as a donor strut that comes even closer to the desired outcome? Some things of interest might be: finding one that has lower carrier mounts close enough to the Fiat's to allow modification to fit rather than complete replacement, an overall length that is shorter than the X's to allow lowering the ride height without loss of travel, and something that has lots of insert options available? The decision to convert them to coil-overs might even be independent to this, because if a good fit was found it could allow the use of 'stock' type springs while still providing the above mentioned benefits, or it could be modified to allow coil-overs as Doug as done.
