Here's the whole lot with captions...
Time for a mini project! A while back during the MOT test I was slightly concerned with how much the wheels moved about when the tester spread the front axle on the pads. Having seen a few designs of A arms at Spa and online on the boxergasse forum I've decided to give it a go myself! I wanted to do it as a completely bolt on swap. Part of this change is to de-couple the stock anti-roll bar from the geometry so this will be spaced down underneath the A arm. I've seen people put it above but my radiator is in the way and I have plenty of ground clearance.
The inner spherical joint will be M10 and the forward tension link section will be M14, I will also be using sealed boots to keep them weather tight. At the spindle I'm using the original design ball joint. Some people re-position the lower axis as they run very low.
Before I took the stock suspension off, I put the car on stands and with the steering dead ahead and a vertical level marked up the position to the floor. This is obviously just to get the geometry about right, I can fine tune it afterwards.
The key part to the swap is creating a forward bracket, this aluminium block spaces the anti-roll bar downwards with the stock saddle clamp and gives plenty of meat to mount the forward joint.
The block fitted, not how it is fitted to the chassis form. My mate, Seb, machined up some tube end fittings for it.
The first lateral link tacked together
and fitted to the car, now to align the hub and measure up for the tension link. The last bit will be to work out how to connect the anti-roll bar.
Tension link tacked in at nominal geometry position. Some people will fit a clevis type joint to the lateral part but I only wanted minimal adjustment. Welded will give better stiffness.
I trawled ebay for a nice short anti-roll bar that I thought I could adapt and ended up with this from a Mk2 Ford Mondeo, less than £5 delivered for the pair! It was a case of making up some fairly simple adapters to bolt on to the standard 1303 anti-roll bar ends.
Brackets to weld on to the new A arms
Finished A arm ready for paint
Finished 'kit' ready to be fitted! Note I did machine down the blocks some more compared to earlier pictures to maintain the stock pick up position heights and maximise ground clearance.
Ball joint pressed in and rod ends adjusted with their rubber boots to give them a bit more life
All done!
Closer view of one side..
So, the verdict: in summary well worth it! The front end feels so much more alive and communicative but NVH is hardly affected at all. The tyres seem to work a lot better as they are not moving around so much and the steering is even a bit lighter too. Even on motorways you can feel what's going on with the most subtle of movements. Overall it just gives so much more confidence in what the car i doing and that means a lot!
For anybody else that wants to try something similar this is what I used:
Inner joints: M10 male rod ends with high misalignment spacers
Forward joints: M14 rod ends with standard misalignment spacer, additional 18mm spacer inboard
Stock lower strut ball joints
1 1/2" diameter 0.1" wall thickness CDS tubing
Mk 2 Ford Mondeo/Cougar rear anti-roll bar links
If you can't work out the rest then frankly you probably shouldn't be trying to copy it!!