The Project Pad

chaloux wrote:I believe he swapped them so the caliper could be at the back. Better weight distribution I don't see why it'd be an issue.

I was planning to do it the same way.

Because the ball joint attachment point (pinch) and driveshaft (hub) are not in the same line, i.e. you swap sides your wheel and driveshaft will end up in the wrong place in the wheel well.

BTDT on quite a few 5-bolt conversions using typ44 struts without issues..
Carry on.

rossschnell wrote:Thanks for the info, Ed. Looks like that's the way to go.

So I've run into another snag, I guess I ordered the wrong ball joints. The 19mm euro B3 balljoints that I ordered, that took forever to arrive from Europe, definitely have the wrong offset. .

Ball joint IS for a B3, however it is a REAR ball joint.

Thanks for the info Martin, I do appreciate it. I am, however, slightly (50%) committed given I've already welded the right side together. The new, correct, TRW 19mm ball joints showed up today. I basically just swapped sides and used the left side balljoint with the left side wheel housing (on the right side). This allows me to run the caliper in the rears of the strut. Its within millimeters of being perfecting centered. Is there something I'm missing here or a reason why I shouldn't do this? It seems to make sense to me and I installed a wheel and lowered it down onto the ground to check the fitment. Seems ok.

Swapping ball joints from right to left and vice versa basically gives it the exact same position as the stock 4000 uprights. Its centered.

Omg, need pics with big brakes and 17" s on!!! Fills the wheel well so much better

The big brakes are still at powdercoat for the next few days. Those Borbet Type T's in the photo are 16x7.5's, exactly the same at what you had on there before with the Type A's. I swapped the tires over to the 5 lug T's and its a nice fit.

Martin, you are correct sir. Those ball joints are for the rear, although RockAuto's description doesn't say a thing about them being rear ball joints, it simply says "saloon." Maybe that mean's rear?. I think I got tricked into ordering those because I saw that they said "AWD" in the description. If anyone has any use for these rear 19mm ball joints just let me know and cover the shipping costs. Right now they're just expensive paperweights and I'm not sure that I can return them because they've technically been installed.

DELPHI Part # TC537 {#893505365C} Thread Size: PINCH BOLT 19mm
Lower | from Chassis No.: 89J 351001 | Left; Saloon; AWD
- Non-stock item--shipping delayed up to 3 business days

DELPHI Part # TC538 {#893505366C} Thread Size: PINCH BOLT 19mm
Lower | from Chassis No.: 89J 351001 | Right; Saloon; AWD
- Non-stock item--shipping delayed up to 3 business days

On that note. If anyone is interested in the Borbet Type A wheels, let me know. They're in great shape I just can't use them now. 4x108, 16" x 7.5", ET35 I believe.

I'm not sure what they're worth.

Et20, I'd try to get around $1k for them. The front tires are in very good shape and are nice tires. The rears will need to be replaced but still. Bare $800. But that's just me

And also lol, I definitely thought those were 17s. Maybe because of the gap at the top.

Saloon is just Euro for sedan, ex Saloon Car Racing.

There was a guy on QuattroWorld looking for 4x108s in Denver.

rossschnell wrote:Thanks for the info Martin, I do appreciate it. I am, however, slightly (50%) committed given I've already welded the right side together. The new, correct, TRW 19mm ball joints showed up today. I basically just swapped sides and used the left side balljoint with the left side wheel housing (on the right side). This allows me to run the caliper in the rears of the strut. Its within millimeters of being perfecting centered. Is there something I'm missing here or a reason why I shouldn't do this? It seems to make sense to me and I installed a wheel and lowered it down onto the ground to check the fitment. Seems ok.

Swapping ball joints from right to left and vice versa basically gives it the exact same position as the stock 4000 uprights. Its centered.

No, as long as swapping the ball joint fixed the offset issue you should be fine. Only worry I would have is that the bottom pivot for the strut is now in a different spot.. not sure what that will give you in terms of Caster... do the ball joints now angle forward or backwards?
Angled forward is good, you are actually increasing the caster which is better for handling,
Angled backwards you have decreased your caster.. something that will make handling worse.
Just something to keep in mind.

Hope this helps.

Yep, just what I was afraid of.. by swapping your ball joints you have significantly reduced your caster, and that is not good for handling.
I know it is a lot of work, but if at all possible I would get the struts back to their sides and what I have always done is run an extension for the brake line and a new body attachment point.





This one was done so long ago we didn't have digital cameras..

The ball joints are straight out Martin, the caster would only be very minimally affected... As Ross said only a mm or two, which would equal out to a fraction of a degree.

chaloux wrote:The ball joints are straight out Martin, the caster would only be very minimally affected... As Ross said only a mm or two, which would equal out to a fraction of a degree.

Sorry, straight and couple of mm is not the same thing..
FYI they are not straight... control arms are, but the joints are not.



http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.p ... both/page2

I know it is not A LOT... but when you go the other way you are adding the difference, (looks a bit more than couple of mm).

Anyhoo, just trying to be helpful. With everyone trying to get more caster going backwards is probably not what you want.

FYI the forged arms in B3/B4 actually add a bit of caster from factory to improve handling, and no, you can not swap those side to side..

The strut mount will be out a few mm from being on the opposite side of the car if the mount is not perfectly centered. The ball joint is straight though, not curved like the b3+. So it will only be out a few mm from swapping the strut mount to the other side. Know what I'm saying?

chaloux wrote:The strut mount will be out a few mm from being on the opposite side of the car if the mount is not perfectly centered. The ball joint is straight though, not curved like the b3+. So it will only be out a few mm from swapping the strut mount to the other side. Know what I'm saying?

I just measured for shits and giggles.
4000q ball joint is offset 10mm (same as Ur-quattro) from the center line of the mounting slots.
Swapped to the other side that gives 20mm (3/4") difference.
Doing the alignment will show the exact number of degrees out of spec.

This is my last post on the subject, the new owner can take my comments as HE wishes.
I hope he posts some feedback on the alignment results and the feel of the car, for prosperity sake, I am very curious.

Cheers

Why is he swapping the ball joints? Lol, I'm not trying to argue with you, but I think perhaps one of us is missing something (probably me).

He can still use the rhs ball joint on the rhs control arm, but with the lhs strut mount/knuckle. Correct? So the only offset is the difference in the strut mount/knuckle if it's off center. Since I don't have the car I can't check. Ross said it was a mm or two.

Oh I see, swapped the ball joints side to side.

See, told you it was me

Well, I'm still not sure why mine are looking so centered. I actually have positive camber by +5mm. I just ran a level across the wheel well (at the level of the spindle) and made sure my measurement points were perfectly level and equal, and measured the distance from the center of the spindle to each point. Its exactly 350mm to the front leading edge fender measurement point and 355mm to the rear point of measure. That gives me positive caster. Truth be told, I cheated the ball joint a tiny bit forward before tightening the two bolts to achieve that. I angled it forward a few millimeters as you can see in the horrible cell phone picture I've attached. But cheating it forward that much only really relates to a few millimeters difference as well. So, what am I missing? I think I'm just going to put it together and see what the alignment expert says. It seems ok to my novice eye.

The ball joint reversal offset plus the existing offset of the pinch bolt location seems to be working ok. The struts are already welded and installed and its not that much work to remove them (save for another alignment) to revise if I absolutely need to, so I'm going to have it aligned and will report back. Still waiting on brake calipers from powdercoat though.

It could be that when I lower the car, the travel of the strut will cause that measurement to change a bit. I can't imagine it changing much though, that coilover assembly is so low and tight it doesn't hang that much.

Hi Russ, we are talking about CASTER, which is a lot harder to measure without proper equipment.It is the angle between the lower and upper pivot point (ball joint head and upper strut mount center). It is measured by turning the steering wheel side to side on the alignment rack.

Cheers

Ya ok, got it. Thx for the explanation, Martin. I am not and have not been disagreeing with you in the least, I fab'd it up that way to begin with and will just have to see how bad it is when I align/drive the thing. There's a good chance I may not even notice the change in caster? I'll report back on it when the car is off the lift and aligned. Now I'm just curious. This is a toy and a project and as you guys know, its all about the process and learning how to do stuff. Once the cars are done they aren't as much fun! So, this is a good lesson in suspension geometry.

So has anybody else that has done this hybrid swap made the same mistake? Seems like there are guys on here that have done this and have the calipers positioned rear of the strut. What did you guys do?

rossschnell wrote:Ya ok, got it. Thx for the explanation, Martin. I am not and have not been disagreeing with you in the least, I fab'd it up that way to begin with and will just have to see how bad it is when I align/drive the thing. There's a good chance I may not even notice the change in caster? I'll report back on it when the car is off the lift and aligned. Now I'm just curious. This is a toy and a project and as you guys know, its all about the process and learning how to do stuff. Once the cars are done they aren't as much fun! So, this is a good lesson in suspension geometry.

So has anybody else that has done this hybrid swap made the same mistake? Seems like there are guys on here that have done this and have the calipers positioned rear of the strut. What did you guys do?

As long as the car "feels" good and inspires confidence, that is all that matters.
I am assuming you have driven the car in version 1.0.. if it "feels" worse you know what has probably caused it.

Most choose the B3/B4 2 piece strut combo with 5-bolt hubs. Hence the rear facing calipers.. I think only myself and handful of people out there choose the Typ44/C4 strut route. In the past it was hard to get Ur-q ball joints and it kept people from choosing that option.
For me it it basically copying the Ur-quattro setup and I love the way they drive and feel so no brainer for me.
Always managed to find the parts I needed.

This is the first time I've seen anyone do a hybrid version.

I can't not post this... There are quite a few important goodies Ross has been working on... We've been talking quite a bit lately

Damn! Looks good!

So far I spy different wheels, Porsche brakes, and possibly different suspension.

5 lug!

Yeah ok, seems like a good time to do an update. Its only been like 5 months.. I suck.

So Martin was right. The caster was all effed up after I incorrectly swapped housings (rt to left) on my 5lug swap/BBK upgrade. For some reason I wanted that darn caliper on the trailing side. Whatever. The car failed the first alignment and recorded -.3 degree caster, "Specified Range" is 0.9-1.9. Aside from it being a pain in the ass to rebuild and swap housings, it was kinda cool to experience the difference between proper and improper caster. A good lesson in steering geometry. Having negative caster actually made the car feel like I had power steering, bonus. It wasn't all that bad unless I was driving at highway speeds above 75mph, then it got a bit twitchy. Otherwise it was a dream to parking lot drive

Ok, so I fixed that and rebuilt it. I'll post up alignment specs later.

For now, I'll play catch up on the last 5 or whatever months of silence.

I replaced the leaky proportioning valve when I rebuilt the front end again because I had to pull the calipers and 'break' the brake system anyway. So replacing that before I rebled the system was easy.

On the lines of braking , I happen to have a spare set of E30 M3 front brakes that from when I went BBK on that car. They've just been sitting in my garage for 2yrs so I decided to put them to use. I built custom brake caliper adaptors in order to run them on the back of the 4kq. I'm pretty happy about more braking on Chaloux's car. I read Ben's post and love looking at his Porsche BBK, front and rear, but I just can't justify the expense right now given that I have a pseudo BBK sitting in my garage. So now I have budget big brakes all around and the car has, lets just say, ample braking power. With R compound slicks it locks up all four tires without much work (not that I want to do that), but still has damn good modulation with hiperf pads all around.

The adaptors should be plenty strong, I started with 1/2" steel and and the secondary plate is 7/16". Plus welded and bolted.