Adjustable Strut Rods

Just finished making a set of strut rods for my Maverick, I wanted to get rid of the rubber bushings at the front of the arms, because they do flex quite a bit while stopping and starting. My plan is to get them installed in the next day or so, and when I drive it, I will give a report, good or bad, just thought this might be of interest to some here. I have seen these advertised for between 3 and 4 hundred bucks, did mine for around $80 each.
Also have set of roller spring perches that I am installing tomorrow(hopefully, weather permitting), will report on those as well. I think they will be a good improvement over the stock VERY stiff rubber perches.

 

Be very interested to see how well these work!

 

They look great, cant see why they would not help. Nothing like the feeling of making something yourself and you have done a lot of that on your car. Kudos to you

 

NICE!

 

Nice work! Very interested in these. Are you going to make them for sale?

 

I installed roller spring perches on my car and really can't tell much, if any, difference in the way the car rides. I am sure it has to be an improvement, I just have not been able to really feel it. I had to cut a small amount of metal of the stock a-rms to keep the perches from binding on the arm. The center section "bearing section", is much larger on the rollers than the OE perches. When I had the SPC arms on the car, I had to grind some of the metal where the a-arm mounted to the arm for the perch to sit flat on the arm. The arms I had were from Tommy Zee; maybe there are some different one's w/ smaller bearing sections.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251350683460?item=251350683460&viewitem=&vxp=mtr

 

They look nice. My biggest question is, what's gonna cushion the impact when hitting bumps and things?
Seems like there would be increased noise & harshness, and even maybe greater chance of breakage do to increased stress (I really have no idea). I have heard of cases where stock strut rods broke after replacing the stock rubber bushings with polyurethane.

 

Okay, finished installing my new goodies and have driven the car. First thing I did was to change the stock spring perches to roller perches and then drive the car. I thought there was a huge difference for the better, at least in MY car, the bumps were much easier on the car, and the ride was nice and smooth, very impressed. Then I changed out my strut rods to these solid mounted(no rubber)adjustable ones. Right off the bat I could feel every little seem in the road, everything is now transferred to the body where as before with the stock rods the ride was not bad, so YES there is increased road noise and sensitivity to bumps in the road. Overall the car drove really nice, just need to drive it some more and see if I want to keep these new strut rods. I might try and install a thin piece of rubber between the mounting surfaces and see if that improves anything, but I really doubt that will do any good. Just am glad I didnt get the $400 units. I dont mind spending a little time making stuff to save a buck.

 

Did u have any issues w/ the perch bearing housing hitting the up-arms? Do u run OE type arm? Were the bearing housing much larger than originals?

 

they bolted right on to the stock arm, and yes they were a larger size, look like yours, just from a different guy on ebay,

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271069161589?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

The global west arms didn't make anymore noise for me , very smooth and increased caster , car is more stable.

 

Arms? or Strut rods?

 

Strut rods, they didn't make any noise, I thought there would be some noise, I was surprised, where the front of the arms mount it fit very tight in the frame , no way for it to move or vibrate everything worked smooth with no binding. I also used the roller perches , felt like everything worked smoother in the front , noticeably better then stock !

 

hmmmm, thats interesting.

 

thats the bushing that fit tight in the frame mount , only had them on one summer .