Hi to the forum - first post here. I'm working on a coil-over suspension conversion on my '85 Fiero. I bought a kit off a friend, which came with control arms and bushings for the front (stock width) as well as a new front coilovers with rod end mounts fitted to a new upper bracket and lower control arm. New upper control arms provide clearance for the new shocks. The shocks came from QA1.
The kit was originally purchased from Arraut Motorsports / West Shore Fabricating back in early 2013 by the friend I bought it from. He never installed it into his car, he wanted out of the project so that's when i picked it up from him.
UNFORTUNATELY... I got 3/4 of the way through the project and realized that I had TWO OF THE SAME lower front control arms. See picture below...
I'm not a fabricator, so I'm looking for whatever help I could get procuring a modified control arm that will work for this type of setup, or if anybody knows where I might find one of these lowers from this kit - if anybody recognizes it or knows somebody who knows somebody... etc.
I know it's a long shot but I figured I would ask. Thanks for any consideration.
If worse comes to worse, I am considering modifying the original control arms to add a clevis for a shock mount or I will have to find somebody to fabricate new ones. FYI - I'm in the Buffalo NY area. -Svenge
------------------ 1985 Fiero - Silver - GT - V6
[This message has been edited by Svenge (edited 08-06-2019).]
Those are definitely Arraut sport suspension lower contrlol arms. You could call West Shore Fabricators (they used to run Arraut) and see if they have any laying around. As far as I know they do not make them anymore. You could get a set from West Coast Fiero but you would have to buy both of them as they are completely different.
------------------ 86 GT built 2.2 ecotec turbo rear SLA suspension QA1 coilovers on tube arms
I would be very cautious about installing anything from Arraut/WSF on my car. I have had personal experience with their poor quality welds and overall fitment - on many of their products.
As a disclaimer, I do not have experience with their lower control arms.
WSF and Arraut are/were owned and operated by the same person.
[This message has been edited by olejoedad (edited 08-07-2019).]
The Ryane/Held/Arraut sport suspension is what I have on my car and they have been trouble free. I have not heard of any problems with them. Problems reported here on Pennocks have been mostly about the front drop spindles they built. I stayed away from those because I did not like the design. I bought Street Dreams drop spindles and they work great. No longer made either unfortunately.
I do need to mention that without modifying the upper shock mount that comes with the sport suspension kit you will not be able to lower the car very much. There is not enough compression travel to prevent the shock from bottoming out. Hit a bump hard enough and you might break a shock. I raised my upper spring mount and I still went with drop spindles to get the spring travel and ride height I wanted.
Wow, that stinks you got two of the same control arms. Not sure what you can do at this point if the above vendors dont have anything Ethan try to get someone to make one for you. I have this setup on my 87 currently. I had to do a few things and I am continually tweaking it for better ride. Here is my thread about it Front Coilover
No luck contacting anyone from WSF or Arraut. Numbers are disconnected and email doesn't work either (invalid email domain). Right now I'm experimenting with re-using the duplicate by cutting it and rebuilding it for the passenger side by flipping the rear support and the swaybar mount plate accordingly.
Spadesluck - your coilover thread is extremely helpful... I'm super jealous of your setup. Nice job. When I get everything going back together on mine, want me to post into your original thread with questions / results?
If it were me I would start a new thread and label it something to represent what you are going to do. You can always link this thread in the new one for reference. If you have any questions PM and I help through on the thread. Many folks have the same setup and will help out.
[This message has been edited by Spadesluck (edited 08-07-2019).]
Fiero factory/Tffauto bought Arraut. Not sure if they have set up shop yet. Let me know if they can help you I need some custom work done myself that Arraut was supposed to do.
Incase anybody cares, I was able to get one of my two driver side lower control arms refabricated for the passenger side. I was able to fit it into the car with a little elbow grease no problem.
Maybe it is just the picture (and I don't have any 84-87 front a-arm to check), but it doesn't look like the ball joint is centered to the lateral support, maybe 1/8" off-center. If that is the case, then the repaired arm will have this offset in the wrong direction, which will change the wheelbase slightly.
Overall that was a creative solution to the problem!
You can see the flange is hitting the lip in the back of the arm when mounted this way. I decided I'm going to flip over the upper arms tomorrow. There's no other way to fix it. I might have trouble making the stock brake lines fit this way, we'll see.
Also:
quote
Originally posted by fieroguru:
Maybe it is just the picture (and I don't have any 84-87 front a-arm to check), but it doesn't look like the ball joint is centered to the lateral support, maybe 1/8" off-center. If that is the case, then the repaired arm will have this offset in the wrong direction, which will change the wheelbase slightly.
Overall that was a creative solution to the problem!
I looked more closely at that. I have some pictures if you care to see them, but after looking carefully I do think it's just the way the picture was taken. I do believe they are centered. Regardless, measurements were taken to accommodate that anyway when refabricating the arm. We used a jig to locate on the ball mount and the center / main pivot location and mirrored the rearward support pivot relative to those two datums. This could slightly affect the location where the shock is mounted and the swaybar but that should be fine if it's slightly off. The locations of the three main mounting points should all be correct.
Thanks guys you've been very helpful and encouraging.
My upper control arms are flipped over from the way yours are. To flip them you have to change them from side to side as well. Even with hogging all the holes out that mount the ball joints I could still only get about 1/2 degree of negative camber. When I switched to Del a lum bushings I took 1/4" out of the length of the upper control arms. Now I can get a little over 1 degree negative camber. And thats the most I can get with the big shocks on, but on the track it works really well, I find the front end of my car does not lean a lot anyway.
------------------ 86 GT built 2.2 ecotec turbo rear SLA suspension QA1 coilovers on tube arms
Ok everything is making sense now thanks to u 2 guys. Wftb and spades thx mucho.
Ok so I flipped the arms “upside down” and that helped with the camber, but when I tried to put the wheels on I was rather disappointed when they hit the upper arm tubing which was now quite a bit higher up in the wheel well. Yours must fit cuz they not stock / bigger inner clearances. Note: I did flip sides too making sure the caster was correct.
So I ended up flipping them back over such that the plates are up top but before installing them I cut through the flange which was in the way of the ball joint inboard side. This got me to spec camber at least, pretty close to 0 deg, will get measurement at the alignment tomorrow.
It’s pretty much done now so I’ll take a bunch of pics after alignment is done. Overall it looks great despite me scratching up the paint after taking the arms off like 5 times and using channel locks to adjust the height... but i don’t really care that much. Thx again guys.
[This message has been edited by Svenge (edited 08-19-2019).]
Its crazy the amount of tolerance differences there are with these parts. My 15" rims rubbed on the control arms when I did some test fitting. I was not overly upset becasue I knew I was going to go with a 17/18" rim combo. If you go to a bigger rim then you should be able to flip the arms around again. Glad you got it all worked out. Sometimes the hard work pays off in the end.
A thought, my ball-joints are not that far back on mine. When I go to take mine apart again I will snap a picture.
[This message has been edited by Spadesluck (edited 08-22-2019).]
