88 suspension work (Page 3/6) cartercarbaficionado JUN 11, 10:56 PM quote Originally posted by hunter29: What do you mean TFS ball joints aren't happy ? very difficult to move and wouldn't let the steering return to center at low speeds. also a bit crunchy feeling yes I did grease them infact I probably went overboard but it didn't help any of the joints and I assume they just need time to work in the grease or wear in. or they have an actual brass Insert that needs to wear match like the oem stuff on my blazer Yellow-88 JUN 11, 11:01 PM quote Originally posted by cartercarbaficionado: it got aligned and handles better? still torque steering but now with no reason to do so. since it was on a lift every bushing and joint was checked for play and the fiero store upper balljoints already definitely aren't happy with life but maybe they just have to work the grease in? it's at least not trying to rip the wheel out of my hand over bumps at low speeds and not wandering with little effect from my steering wheel at high speeds and the shop agreed that I probably need a new rack. It handles better? The question mark means you're not sure? If it torque steers, there is a reason. The new ball joints are not happy? No, they don't have to work the grease in. What you seem to be saying is that things are not right. How experienced is the alignment tech with "custom" setups? Your chassis is no longer stock. I try to tell everyone who installs poly bushings that factory alignment specs wont feel right .... because they aren't right. I always suggest zero camber at all four corners, zero toe front and rear and for the 88, 6 degrees positive caster. Factory setting will be toed in to compensate for soft bushings. Rolling on the road, the tires tend to toe out. Toe in with soft bushing equals zero toe on the road. Toe in with poly bushing equals toe in always. The rear end is extremely sensitive to any toe angle. At the rear especially, zero toe means zero, not ... close enough. I assume you know just how accurately the "strings" need to be set up and just how carefully you need to measure. I use strings regularly and can tell you that setting the strings is the really critical part. They must be parallel to each other and parallel to the longitudinal axis of the chassis. Exactly. Measure many times. I'll detail the procedure in a future post if anyone is interested. The "feel" of torque steer can be weight transferring to a toed in tire. Same with the "feel" of bump steer. The chassis fill follow whatever tire is carrying the most weight. And weight is regularly shifting between tires. Uneven road surface, bumps, corners, throttle and brakes all transfer weight, Accurate alignment is absolutely necessary for "comfortable" handling. If your rack is worn and sloppy, you should fix it immediately. That would feel wicked awful. cartercarbaficionado JUN 12, 02:02 AM quote Originally posted by Yellow-88: It handles better? The question mark means you're not sure? If it torque steers, there is a reason. The new ball joints are not happy? No, they don't have to work the grease in. What you seem to be saying is that things are not right. How experienced is the alignment tech with "custom" setups? Your chassis is no longer stock. I try to tell everyone who installs poly bushings that factory alignment specs wont feel right .... because they aren't right. I always suggest zero camber at all four corners, zero toe front and rear and for the 88, 6 degrees positive caster. Factory setting will be toed in to compensate for soft bushings. Rolling on the road, the tires tend to toe out. Toe in with soft bushing equals zero toe on the road. Toe in with poly bushing equals toe in always. The rear end is extremely sensitive to any toe angle. At the rear especially, zero toe means zero, not ... close enough. I assume you know just how accurately the "strings" need to be set up and just how carefully you need to measure. I use strings regularly and can tell you that setting the strings is the really critical part. They must be parallel to each other and parallel to the longitudinal axis of the chassis. Exactly. Measure many times. I'll detail the procedure in a future post if anyone is interested. The "feel" of torque steer can be weight transferring to a toed in tire. Same with the "feel" of bump steer. The chassis fill follow whatever tire is carrying the most weight. And weight is regularly shifting between tires. Uneven road surface, bumps, corners, throttle and brakes all transfer weight, Accurate alignment is absolutely necessary for "comfortable" handling. If your rack is worn and sloppy, you should fix it immediately. That would feel wicked awful. it handles better but not really that much better. it definitely doesn't try to kill me as much but still feels...numb? the road feel is absolutely terrible but only in the front and I'm assuming the rack and shocks are to blame but I'm less and less sure of that since it litterally just did this weird numb feeling one day and then went away a few months ago and it was a "huh that was weird. let's check everything out" and everything was fine. heck if I know why the new ball joints I litterally took out of the package feel so bad. they are doing better now so I can only assume they needed to be worn in or needed to move the grease around. alignment guy just set everything but caster and chamber to 0 and gave it all the positive he could since he owns a fiero and figured that would work well. also gave it just a bit of negative chamber so the chamber gain through cornering force would help the outside tire grip a bit better since he has seen us drive that thing. rear end checked out completely perfect which makes it baffling as to why it still torque steers so bad. maybe I'm just having a weird rebound issue or something. it's probably worth checking out at this point hunter29 JUN 12, 08:13 AM quote Originally posted by cartercarbaficionado: very difficult to move and wouldn't let the steering return to center at low speeds. also a bit crunchy feeling yes I did grease them infact I probably went overboard but it didn't help any of the joints and I assume they just need time to work in the grease or wear in. or they have an actual brass Insert that needs to wear match like the oem stuff on my blazer Thank you, hope I have better luck with mine. Maybe you got a bad pair, or maybe it's just one ? Yellow-88 JUN 12, 11:28 AM quote Originally posted by cartercarbaficionado: it handles better but not really that much better. it definitely doesn't try to kill me as much but still feels...numb? the road feel is absolutely terrible but only in the front and I'm assuming the rack and shocks are to blame but I'm less and less sure of that since it litterally just did this weird numb feeling one day and then went away a few months ago and it was a "huh that was weird. let's check everything out" and everything was fine. heck if I know why the new ball joints I litterally took out of the package feel so bad. they are doing better now so I can only assume they needed to be worn in or needed to move the grease around. alignment guy just set everything but caster and chamber to 0 and gave it all the positive he could since he owns a fiero and figured that would work well. also gave it just a bit of negative chamber so the chamber gain through cornering force would help the outside tire grip a bit better since he has seen us drive that thing. rear end checked out completely perfect which makes it baffling as to why it still torque steers so bad. maybe I'm just having a weird rebound issue or something. it's probably worth checking out at this point By "road feel" do you mean feed back through the steering wheel? Transmitted road noise? Please define "road feel". Stiff bushings amplify both. What is intermittent "numb"? Gloves and a hat might do that because cars don't actually have "feelings" but you do. A "bad" ball joint is one you can easily move by hand. New out of the box feels really tight. Negative camber is for autocross cars. On regular road cars it just costs tires. Mixed with a bit of toe in, you'll need a tire dealer on speed dial. Rear-end checked out perfect? Please define. Assume nothing. It appears that you tend to do that. That's what "chasing your tail" is. If your rack and or shocks are bad, you need to address that first before any chassis work. Otherwise you're just ..... chasing your tail. If I sound "nit picky" or "clinical" or "pointed" it's because I'm a retired engineer/scientist . We never really grow out of that. cartercarbaficionado JUN 12, 11:28 AM quote Originally posted by hunter29: Thank you, hope I have better luck with mine. Maybe you got a bad pair, or maybe it's just one ? I got em as part of the front end kit to save some money but maybe it was a mistake. I was trying to have qa1 make the fiero ones but it's hard without just ripping the old ones apart which I'll be doing soon to provide the best measurements possible so they can try. at least if they make some ill know for sure they are operating correctly and I can tune them in easing up the steering effort but yeah hopefully I just got a bad set cartercarbaficionado JUN 12, 11:43 AM quote Originally posted by Yellow-88: By "road feel" do you mean feed back through the steering wheel? Transmitted road noise? Please define "road feel". Stiff bushings amplify both. What is intermittent "numb"? Gloves and a hat might do that because cars don't actually have "feelings" but you do. A "bad" ball joint is one you can easily move by hand. New out of the box feels really tight. Negative camber is for autocross cars. On regular road cars it just costs tires. Mixed with a bit of toe in, you'll need a tire dealer on speed dial. Rear-end checked out perfect? Please define. Assume nothing. It appears that you tend to do that. That's what "chasing your tail" is. If your rack and or shocks are bad, you need to address that first before any chassis work. Otherwise you're just ..... chasing your tail. If I sound "nit picky" or "clinical" or "pointed" it's because I'm a retired engineer/scientist . We never really grow out of that. feedback through the wheel and seat. just doesn't have any at the moment and feels like your driving a broken arcade machine but has been handling much better out of nowhere until it tries to tramline on a few quite bad roads so it may have just really wanted to settle in. the numbness is as seen above just no road feel and disconnected but has kind of stopped after the alignment. every input actually does something now no toe in at all so should be fine. the added chamber does help the high speed cornering immensely and did a decent amount with general tracking through narrow corners i.e. mountain pass nearby rear end has 0 camber and 0 toe and has no bushing play or anything. hence the checked out perfect the shocks likely are not bad at least not in a normal way. they are definitely doing their job at dampening rebound and keeping the suspension stable over bumps but maybe one is a little weak on its side because of a weak spring or nothing is wrong there at all and for whatever reason a new mount I installed is already bad which is highly possible hunter29 JUN 12, 07:22 PM quote Originally posted by cartercarbaficionado: I got em as part of the front end kit to save some money but maybe it was a mistake. I was trying to have qa1 make the fiero ones but it's hard without just ripping the old ones apart which I'll be doing soon to provide the best measurements possible so they can try. at least if they make some ill know for sure they are operating correctly and I can tune them in easing up the steering effort but yeah hopefully I just got a bad set I have ball joints that look just like what TFS sells. I will start putting the front end back together tomorrow, need new bolts thou, what's up with the huge bolts that come with the joints.. lol cartercarbaficionado JUN 12, 07:42 PM quote Originally posted by hunter29: I have ball joints that look just like what TFS sells. I will start putting the front end back together tomorrow, need new bolts thou, what's up with the huge bolts that come with the joints.. lol maybe 88 stuff is smaller since my bolts were 10 mm head size or you got the wrong bolts Yellow-88 JUN 12, 09:25 PM quote Originally posted by cartercarbaficionado: feedback through the wheel and seat. just doesn't have any at the moment and feels like your driving a broken arcade machine but has been handling much better out of nowhere until it tries to tramline on a few quite bad roads so it may have just really wanted to settle in. the numbness is as seen above just no road feel and disconnected but has kind of stopped after the alignment. every input actually does something now no toe in at all so should be fine. the added chamber does help the high speed cornering immensely and did a decent amount with general tracking through narrow corners i.e. mountain pass nearby rear end has 0 camber and 0 toe and has no bushing play or anything. hence the checked out perfect the shocks likely are not bad at least not in a normal way. they are definitely doing their job at dampening rebound and keeping the suspension stable over bumps but maybe one is a little weak on its side because of a weak spring or nothing is wrong there at all and for whatever reason a new mount I installed is already bad which is highly possible It sounds like things have improved dramatically since the start of this thread. Somewhere in my vintage files I have an article I wrote on the subject of "Handling". In it there is nothing about lateral Gs on the skid pad, and not even a lot about understeer and oversteer let alone bump steer or torque steer. Handling is about feeling and that's something you seem to understand. To be frank and honest, I have always considered GM cars to feel "numb" and even clumsy. Pre-88 Fierro's fall solidly in that category, mostly because I compare them to the fully alive, almost intimate relationship one "feels" with a vintage British sports car. Yellow is my attempt to create that feeling in a Fiero. The 88 is worthy of my ambitious effort. Unfortunately, I'll may never finish it. I'm back on this forum because Yellow is being "refreshed" and I'm feeling a shot of sports car high. If the rear end is as "perfect as you say, than you have no torque steer. Not to repeat but ...... rear alignment is VERY critical. If your shocks effectively control the springs, they're fine. You have a weak spring? What is "tramline"? Since you don't have any thing to compare too, how do you know that a bit of negative camber has improved your cornering? You made a lot of changes at the same time. There is no baseline data. What are you using for wheels and tires? Suspensions are designed around tire diameter and its contact patch. The 88 has different wheels front and rear for that reason. Screw with the design offset or tire diameter and you loose the excellent geometry of that serious front end. A 25.5" diameter tire on an 88 stock wheel has nearly zero scrub radius. Lotus involved? No, they just used the same text book. It must have gotten secretly smuggled into the design studio.