Phaeton Series 3 Anti Roll bar removal?

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

It seems completely unnecessary and the mounting points stop the front from tipping up properly

I'm also interested in castor adjustment

So, has anyone done the removal of the Escort Mk 2 thing?

I can see you can get a thing called a compression strut for Escorts that replaces it and faces backwards - might not fit a phaeton chassis...

Otherwise it's custom lower wishbones I guess......

If anyone has done this I'd be most interested.....

Thanks

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

Another step forward:

According to thie website http://spareautoparts.eu/autoparts/search/QR1774RHT/QUINTON-HAZELL/

The thread on this ball joint is 3/4x16 UNF. I said it was big!

And I've found just such a threaded tube here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/270639423023

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

The winter project has begun...

Lower wishbone being fabricated. 3/4" UNF threaded boss being welded to round tube for bottom wishbone. 

Not bad welding...

Sleeved for extra strength

We figured that the important factor for caster is the difference in distance to the top and bottom ball joints to any fixed point on the car.

Current set up showing unnecessarily large anti role bar and lower tca.

Disassembled...

Measuring lower tca to help design new wishbone arm.

Back out tomorrow......

[Steve Kerswell]

Good work, very interesting.

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

Update...

Both side dissasembled

Half of left wishbone

Ready for first fitment test

and here it is fitted to the car

We now start looking at the second half of the wishbone

Had lunch and back out there!

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

Continued...

Welding on wishbone arm bracket

Mock up of the wishbone arm ready for welding

Tacked on ready for some measurements 

Rough measurements of new caster. We also did this more accurately with the wheel on and the car lowered to normal ride height. We now have about 5 degrees of caster with room for more by adjusting the upper wishbone. Hoping to finalize with 6-7 degrees. 

Mostly welded up. Now for fabricating lower coilover mount.

New spring mount. All welded and painted up ready for final installation another day. Then on to the next side! 

[Paul Thomas]

looking at your pictures you are mesureing the camber not the caster

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

yes i see it looks like that, but we are using a camber/caster magnetic gauge, along with turn tables (with the wheel on) to measure the caster. No pics of this unfortunately

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

Caster is usually measured from the change in camber when changing from 20 degrees left steering to 20 right.
Seems an odd measurement but hard to think of another way to measure since you can't get a protractor onto the centres of the ball joints.
I actually wonder if the 20 degrees thing is built into the definition of caster angle. If so, the true caster angle if you could measure it, could be a different number.

[James Doulton]

I assume that when you measure the castor, you measure the camber at +/- 20 degrees and then look up the castor in a table or on a graph. If so then the graph/table will have been computed based on the 20 degrees. I think that you could use any angle, within reason, but you'd need a different graph/table.

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

No there is no table to look up on.

The change in camber +/- 20deg is the caster.

However I do wonder if the 'recommended' figures are really based on the 20degs camber change. If that is true then they could be regarded as pre-looked-up.

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

BTW why all the interest in caster?
We'll as we understand it, it's responsible for steering self centring, straight line stability, steering feel and steering effort (esp when parking). On our car steering is very light and self centring quite weak. Since we also have power steering we figured more caster would be good. Initially we had about 1.5 degrees, adjustable top arms brought this to about 3 before they maxxed out. It currently seems we have about 5 with the new lower arms (that bring the lower ball joint forward) and there is probably enough adjustment to get this to 7 if needed.
Losing the ARB should be good also.

[Roy Kemp]

Interesting stuff, and fabrication / solution looks neat. Just wondered what sent you down the route of custom wishbones as opposed to simply using compression struts? Also, do you think it would be worth retaining the ARB to use only as an anti-roll bar (as opposed to axle location) using drop-links to your bottom wishbone?

I'm currently sorting out my front end - using the magnetic camber gauge and a rough estimation of 20 degrees, it would appear that my castor is off the chart, i.e. way way too much, i.e. more than 10 degrees As castor also changes the camber of the wheel when steering lock is applied, this may explain the understeer that I've been experiencing even at low amounts of lock.