TCA's

[Adrian Southgate]

So, I have to get new TCA's for one of the cars. Do I get rose jointed inners or bushed inners?

The rose jointed ones come with new bolts, top hat spacers, dust covers. The poly bushed ones come with just bushes and sleeves. I must admit the rose jointed ones look more professional however its a road car, used for touring on mixed road surfaces so the benefits of that inner bush will be noticeable.

[Adrian Southgate]

They are both about the same price, the rose jointed ones work out to about £10 more.

[Paul Sheridan]

Road Car .......... Poly Bushed every time.

[James Doulton]

They both look good, btw, but I'd go for poly bushed too. They should take the roughness out of the road. Alternatively, you get the rose jointed ones and then tell us if they are terrible so that we don't make the same mistake!

[Steve Kerswell]

In the old angle box days, we used to move the pick up point outboard by welding large washers outboard of TCA inner mount and Fredrik, remember that Ade? Negative camber ruled :-)  So will you go compression struts as well, making the whole thing adjustable ?   Good to get back on track (pun) with something interesting.

[Big Vern]

You can make it adjustable without compression struts. If you go comp strut then where do you mount the ARB?

[Steve Kerswell]

Fredrick?? Nothing like redrill, autocorrect gone stupid :-))

[Big Vern]

Bushed ones for road car but how are you mounting the coil over? as you won't be able to put it on the TCA

[Adrian Southgate]

@ Paul - that's what I thought but the rose joints would look so 'pro'

@ James - I slept on that and came to the same conclusion.

@ Steve - I never went that far, even on the rally cars we tried to keep them straight. Compression struts are a no go as the kit available retail is silly money and as as BV points out, where do you put the ARB. The legerra chassis rail is in a different place to the escort so the compression struts go at an odd angle too. If the new mountings for the ARB are right then it should fix the alignment issue.

@BV - lowered and correctly located ARB mounts are a 'work in progress' The legerra 'normally' has a turret and the shock mounts on the outboard extremity of the upper wishbone like this.

The only problem that creates is fouling on the tyre if you have too much rim inboard.

I have removed my 15's and dropped to 14's. The 15's were 7 inch rims and consequently caused fouling. The 14's are 6's and although they still need spacers to 'fit' upto the edge of the wheel arch they don't hit the shock any more.

The white one is getting 13's, bit old school I know but I have rims and tyres to 'use up' before they degrade into powder...

[Paul Sheridan]

If I were to do my set up again I would not rose joint the chassis ends of the links, its not the road noise you have to worry about (although that will be elevated)  but you tend to feel the rumbling of all the bearings through the chassis, no matter how good they are.  My car wont be for touring, its just a toy so I can put up with a bit o rumble :-))) 

[Adrian Southgate]

I'm going with poly bushed ones as mine is used for 'long haul' work (or would be if fully functional)

[Steve Kerswell]

Anti roll bar is scrapped if you use compression struts, they replace anti roll bar. You can get adaptor to use both, but I believe the rally guy's reckon that it's sh#t, technical term for not very good. Of course then we go trailing strut, adjustable of course :-))

[Adrian Southgate]

I like what Nick has done to his and I am waiting to see how it pans out. I will be needing new TCA's anyway.

@ Steve - As you know I suggested a variation on that design about six months or more ago. I think Ford spent a long time working out how the escort was supposed to function correctly, the ARB is one item I'm in two minds about. I know what it does, how it works etc and I'm still not totally convinced that something this light needs one, certainly not a stiffer one than standard. I had a 22mm on the Legerra to start and if one wheel went over a speed bump then the other would come off the floor, that's bad...I dropped to the smaller one as an experiment and kept it.  I still get lift on the 'other' wheel over speed humps. That's part of the reason why i'm in two minds about it, Its too light to twist the ARB like an escort would but do I want completely independent front suspension?