Relocating shocks to Spring location?

DILYSI Dave

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I'm trying to create room in the rear wheelwells. One thing that looks like a good candidate is the shock. Has anyone relocated the shock to the spring location, with a coilover setup?
 

908ssp

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Are you planing on tubing the car? Otherwise it is a waste of time. The tires hit the tubs before they hit the shocks on my car. Might depend on the tire wheel size of course.
 

DILYSI Dave

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Are you planing on tubing the car? Otherwise it is a waste of time. The tires hit the tubs before they hit the shocks on my car. Might depend on the tire wheel size of course.

Good info. Thanks.

My ruleset allows me to get rid of the sheetmetal wheelhouse, but not the frame rail. So I suspect either tubs or some BFH surgery will be happening. The assembly line bracket is going to go. It looks like the shock would be in the way at that point, but maybe not. I don't have the bigass wheels yet.
 

michael.konor

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My ruleset allows me to get rid of the sheetmetal wheelhouse, but not the frame rail. So I suspect either tubs or some BFH surgery will be happening. The assembly line bracket is going to go. It looks like the shock would be in the way at that point, but maybe not. I don't have the bigass wheels yet.

Though it's not from this board, I have this one saved when I'm ready to move in the same direction:

http://www.modularfords.com/f79/made-some-bumpstop-relocation-brackets-174605/

This and other things were used so he could run widened 18x11 stockers with 8.5" of backspacing and 345-35-18 MT DR's
 
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Back@itagain

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You can make your own bump stop mounts easy enough as long as you can get your hands on some decent gauge sheet metal. Did mine this winter along with removal of the bump stop plate/assembly mount. You can also remove the shock dust cover and play around with the washers where the shock mounts to the axle to gain some more clearance.
 

DILYSI Dave

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Yeah, fabbing the bumpstop mounts is no big deal. Pretty excited to see a 345/35/18 stuffed, as that's what I would like to run. Of course, that looks like a car meant for going straight, not one meant for pulling 1.6 G's give or take, so that needs to be taken into account as well.
 

Scott

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Removed the OEM Bump Stop on the frame rail and re-positioned the Bump Stop on the housing with a plate to fit MT 325/50/15 DR's.

From:

IMG_0924.jpg


To:

IMG_0983.jpg


IMG_0952.jpg
 

Department Of Boost

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Yeah, fabbing the bumpstop mounts is no big deal. Pretty excited to see a 345/35/18 stuffed, as that's what I would like to run. Of course, that looks like a car meant for going straight, not one meant for pulling 1.6 G's give or take, so that needs to be taken into account as well.

The largest tire you can fit under there and still go around corners effectively is a 315. Any wider than that and you are hitting the "frame" or fender lip. You don't need to relocate the shock to do this.
 

DILYSI Dave

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The largest tire you can fit under there and still go around corners effectively is a 315. Any wider than that and you are hitting the "frame" or fender lip. You don't need to relocate the shock to do this.

Not what I want to hear, but thanks. I've seen rubbing on the Vorshlag car, but it looked like it was in the portion that could be cut out. Sounds like you've actually seen it hitting the portion I can't remove.
 

Department Of Boost

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Sounds like you've actually seen it hitting the portion I can't remove.

Yep, unless you tak a big chunk of frame out or have the tires sticking out past the fenders 315's are unfortunately it. If I could stuff 325-345's under mine without having to effectively tub the car I would have done it a long time ago.

You can put a bigger tire on for drag racing but you are dealing with much different ride heights, lateral tire flex and most drag tires are labeled wider than they measure out to.

315 is a lot of tire though. You can go stupid fast on 315's in a "R" compound tire.
 

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The largest tire you can fit under there and still go around corners effectively is a 315. Any wider than that and you are hitting the "frame" or fender lip. You don't need to relocate the shock to do this.

Also the headache of relocating the shock. Since you would be changing the moment arm locating for the shock. You would need either re-valving of shocks or specialized adjustable shocks to handle the different loads. You would be surprised how the loads change even when you move a shock only a few mm along the levered axis.

Gmitch is right relocating the shock is unnecessary. If you want to run ungodly large tires (larger than 315's) then you will need to look into tubing and restructuring the entire rear frame and at the point is it even worth it? Especially if you road race this could get even more insane.

Look at this way the FR500's and Boss 302(R's and S's) don't run these modifications and still perform tremendously. BUT if it is a look thing for you then that's a different story.
 

908ssp

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Honestly flared wheel wells are cheaper and more effective for road course work if they are rules legal of course. The wider track is an added benefit of flares verses tubing. The only negative to flares is aero they increase drag but that is usually not a major issue.

Bill1.jpg
 

DILYSI Dave

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Revalving the shocks is no biggie. Relocating isn't much of a headache. If it would allow me to stuff more tire, I'd be more than willing. Sounds like that's irrelevant though.

I can tub the sheetmetal wheelhouse, but I can't go into the frame rail. Rules...

I could flare it, and were it a road race car, that would be the answer. But this is an autox car. In autox, narrow is good.
 

Whiskey11

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Look at this way the FR500's and Boss 302(R's and S's) don't run these modifications and still perform tremendously. BUT if it is a look thing for you then that's a different story.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the Boss 302S in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge is on 285/xx/18's right? Isn't that the same as what the 302R is running in World Challenge? I'm not overly familiar with the rules but I know in CTSCC they are mandated by the rules to a certain tire size. I assumed the World Challenge cars are running basically under a similar set of rules.

908ssp I think the point being made about width is that 2" wider (basically the difference between a C6 Z06 and a 2005-2009 Mustang GT) translates to time lost in the transition portions of an autocross course.

Jason Rhoades had an amazing article on transitions in his Comparative Vehicle Dynamics pages on his website:
http://www.rhoadescamaro.com/build/?page_id=939

Using his math, this is what I get as the difference 2" makes in a slalom situation. Assuming (and this is a bad assumption) that both cars have a 1.3g lateral limit (I have no idea what this would be on R-Comps, on my car 1.28g was the highest lateral g recorded by me and it occurred in a slalom FWIW), the difference between a 76" wide Z06 and a 74" wide 2009 Mustang GT is .0107 seconds PER CONE in the slalom. That is .0533 seconds after 5 cones. Over the course of a full fledged autocross course that could easily be a couple tenths of a second depending on how transition heavy it is. From the data I have on that run, there were 26 transitions and the time lost in transitions from 2" of added width is over a quarter of a second (.2771). That is assuming that the edge of the tire is basically running over the outer edge of the cone, every cone in the slalom or transition. That difference gets larger the more distance you add between your tire and the cones.

For my car, to cover the added width on the car I would have to be able to pull 1/3rd of a g more to compensate for the width difference. I have no doubt I could achieve that from going from 245/45/18 Star Specs to 265/40/18 in RS-3's, but what about from going from 315 wide A6's to 335 A6's? What does that nearly 2" translate to in lateral g's? I honestly don't know. I am curious to find out!
 
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Correct me if I'm wrong but the Boss 302S in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge is on 285/xx/18's right? Isn't that the same as what the 302R is running in World Challenge? I'm not overly familiar with the rules but I know in CTSCC they are mandated by the rules to a certain tire size. I assumed the World Challenge cars are running basically under a similar set of rules.

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to prove. All I was saying is you don't need a huge tire size to perform very well (like the 302S and 302R).
 

Department Of Boost

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I’m no AutoX expert, I’m not even a beginner. I watched about 10min of one once though.

But I would think that unless I was playing with a MASSIVE amount of power (500+) stuffing 315’s on the rear would get the job done and I would be focusing on how I was going to get some 315’s on the front. It looks like AutoX is real “Front Endy” to me???
 

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