Building our Lemons/Chumpcar (Page 23/29) DonP OCT 25, 08:37 PM quote Originally posted by kennn: I'm curious what problem you are resolving with the reconstruction of the front suspension or what your design intent is. Ken Hi Ken, That's a legitimate question. If we were doing this for a street machine, I don't think we would have attempted any of this. But for a track machine (well, except for the rare trip around the block to test something out) we had definite goals in mind. First we wanted to increase the camber inherent in the geometry. The stock '88 suspension - cannot speak of earlier cars - just did not allow enough static camber. With the stock components, we were only able to get something less than three degrees of static negative camber. Once we were done here, we could actually get just over six degrees. Admittedly, we aren't going that far, but it is available. We also tweaked the camber gain/loss curve. Typically in a turn, the Fiero will lose camber on the inside wheels in a turn. Our goal was to limit the loss to under 3/4 of a degree with ten degrees of body roll. We missed that and ended up with 7/8 of a degree loss in ten degrees of body roll. Secondly and every bit as importantly, we needed a bigger selection of springs on the front end. It's hard to find more than a few different springs for the Fiero. West Coast Fiero, for example offers a #350 and a #400 spring. That's it. And these are "custom made." By changing to a more common size, we can get springs from several suppliers such as AFCO, QA1, Eibach and a host of others. In addition we can get springs rates from ridiculously weak to absurdly high, in 25 lb increments. Given that we had the same spring availability at the rear, we now have the option of balancing the car. And lord knows, it needed some balancing. At the same time, by converting to coil-overs, we have some adjustability on the ride height. I know that effects the geometry, but it also allows for adjustments using different spring lengths. More selection is a good thing. We also reduced bump steer to .032" through 3 inches of bump and rebound. We made a lot of changes, so I cannot attribute the increased stability through corners to a single factor, but am told this was a big change in the right direction. We also wanted to stabilize the caster. Some of the road racers run as much as 10-12 degrees of caster. We now have some adjustability, but set it for 6 degrees with no change in caster through three inches of bump and rebound. And lastly, because we could. Come on, it's kinda cool and definitely fun. But again, the biggest reasons was the camber curve and spring selection. Don ericjon262 OCT 26, 09:22 AM does your racing class not let you run non-stock spindles? I know 88 wheel bearings are made of hen's teeth these days, so to me it would only make sense to ditch them in favor of something more popular or stronger. DonP OCT 26, 01:19 PM We have , for the last several races, been using Rodney Dickman's '88 tapered roller front hubs. http://rodneydickman.com/ca....php?products_id=318 These have held up through several races. During this same time, the team has gone through three new rear hubs. Admittedly one was probably due to a loose wheel. And the rear hubs have no history of early failure that we have found. So I'm pretty much sold on Rodney's hubs. I can also testify to the warning he posts at the bottom that, if used for racing applications, you need to secure the inner cover plate. We lost one early on and Rodney had a replacement headed our way the next day. Outstanding service, but I wouldn't necessarily hope for the same response now that the warning is clearly posted on his website. Patrick OCT 26, 02:29 PM quote Originally posted by DonP: We have , for the last several races, been using Rodney Dickman's '88 tapered roller front hubs. These have held up through several races... So I'm pretty much sold on Rodney's hubs. I can also testify to the warning he posts at the bottom that, if used for racing applications, you need to secure the inner cover plate. We lost one early on and Rodney had a replacement headed our way the next day. Outstanding service, but I wouldn't necessarily hope for the same response now that the warning is clearly posted on his website. Interesting. I wonder why Steven Snyder's experience with these bearings (as reported HERE) has been so different than yours? quote Originally posted by Steven Snyder: I will report on the third new Rodney bearing once I have a chance to inspect it tonight or tomorrow. It has a little less than one full weekend on it. quote Originally posted by Steven Snyder: The third bearing has enough play in it that I don't trust it for track use anymore. I used it for 120 street miles, and about 65 miles on track, with 200 treadwear 215/45/17 tires. Some of the grease has leaked out from the front seal, and a bit from the rear cap which doesn't have any kind of sealing compound on it like the OE bearing did. With the grease leaking out of the front seal, I imagine the grease is not appropriate for high-temperature use. I haven't seen any leak out from the OE bearings. That doesn't mean better grease would stop the bearing from failing, but it's a weak point at least. Unfortunately, I can't afford to spend $300 per weekend on new bearings, and I only have two OE front bearings left... so it's time to start designing some new knuckles for my track car.. If further development might occur on these bearings I would happily test new ones as well as provide my worn out bearings for post-mortem analysis. DonP OCT 26, 03:55 PM I cannot really say why Steven has had such a different experience. I know he runs on Buttonwillow, so I assume that's where he put in his track time. The back curve that enters onto the drag-strip is very long and very fast and likely puts the longest sustained strain on the suspension. Looking at the dates, the earliest on track experience we had was likely at Sonoma/Sears Point. We only put in a handful of laps before melting down the engine. So that wasn't a real test but did accrue miles. Next we hit Buttonwillow with the extremely high ambient temps. It would take some time to dig out our lap count, but we had to put in a couple hundred miles over two days. We ran a couple test days on the Reno-Fernley track which I think placed more of a load than Buttonwillow onto the bearings. Not as sustained, however. The car then ran ThunderHill, Sears Point, Miller Motorsport Park and the last event was at Thunder Hill once again. That's gotta account for a decades worth of auto-cross competition. Other than the lost cover (I suspect we were the first or second guys to report that) there has been no problem on the front. There was some very slight play from the start as was expected. But I don't see that it has increased at all. Three rear bearings have gone away. Two of which were new. At Miller Motorsport, the driver first commented that he thought the problem was with a front bearing. So they were looked at very closely before declaring them good. The problem turned out to be in the rear. I didn't know that other thread had carried on or I would certainly have posted my experience there. DonP OCT 26, 04:18 PM Just did the search and math, we ran 3,562.65 documented racing miles plus an unknown number of miles at local track test days and autocross events. And several miles of relatively slow but likely faster than street speeds on warm up laps. The bearings are still running strong. All laps on 200 treadwear rated , 225 section width tires. Don Patrick OCT 26, 05:43 PM Don, glad to see that you posted this info in the other thread as well. All of us with 88's are hoping that the front wheel bearing issue can be satisfactorily resolved. kwagner OCT 28, 02:14 PM Wow, there's tons of great info here since I last read Glad to see you guys still representing the fiero out there. Keep it up! katatak OCT 28, 09:37 PM Just got caught up Don. Love the suspension work. Thanks for catching us up. DonP OCT 28, 10:37 PM Thanks Pat. I had noticed that it's bee awhile since you've updated your build thread. I really liked how close you were able to install that hoop. And of course the dimple dies... Don