on August 31, 2010, 9:22 am, Daze wrote:

I absolutely love the clean look and easy install of my bolt in sub frame. I know it has clearance issues and I may still have to ditch it, but at this point I will keep it if I can because of how well the mock up went.   


Second thing I was very happy with was ride height when the wishbones were level. I used some steal tubing in place of the shocks and dialed in the suspension (upper shock mount in stock location relative to the amount the system was narrowed)

All the calculation I had made based on the original live axles location served me well and I was able to get a rear tire ride height just a bit taller than stock. I realize the system need to come forward about 1/2" to center the tires in the wheel well, but that will not be hard to do.

I also got an even better under standing of the systems camber curve and with the LCAs tilted down camber becomes positive so there is a big reason to correctly set the LCA parallel to the ground like Jaguar intended.

Now to the bad.
I still have the clearance issues with my side frames. Looks like there is room for me to modify them to clear the hub if I choose to do that, but it is going to take some more thought and prep before I decide exactly what to do.

The adjustable upper shock mount is a bigger pain in the but than what it is worth. This is due to a couple of things. First with it all put together there is not a lot of room to be moving the upper mount. when I drilled out the adjuster holes I drilled 9 of them but due to clearance issues at the bottom of the car and clearance issues to the half shafts only about 5 of those holes will be usable. I also didn't realize how drastic the camber change was when the LCAs are angling down, at one point I had 3º of positive caster. with this in mind it makes far more sense to adjust the shock mount location to set the proper ride heigt/suspension location from the beginning other wise there will be alignment issues.

The ugly

When I set the system up with the coil over on the car, put the tires on the hubs and then put the weight of the car on the suspension, almost nothing happened. The suspension was very stiff, not to stiff, but stiff enough that I would not want heavier springs, especially with my KYB gas adjusts, which haven't even been installed yet. With the coil overs I had 6" from the top of my tire to the bottom of the fender lip... UGLY and there was so much angle on the wishbones that there was as I said before 3º positive caster on the tires, without any shims between the diff and the half shafts. I even tried it with just one coil over per side to see if that made much of a difference, but it only lowered the gaping opening between my tires and my fender by another inch.

This means in order to have the set up I want with, two shock per side, the correct wishbone orientation and proper ride height I must either find shorter coil overs or move the upper mount. The steel pieces that give me the ideal ride height are 10" center to center on the mounting holes with the current upper mount location. A Jaguar shock s 13.5" center to center when uncompressed, and it looked like my suspension only compressed about 1/2" to 3/4" when I put the weight of the car on the suspension. I need to take the exact measurements of the amount of suspension compression so that I can modify the cross bars and raise the mount. this should get me dialed in for both ride height and a parallel wishbone.

All in all yesterday was a VERY productive "Day" and I am more excited about this install than I was before. I should be able to easily work around the few small issues I have and get things set up just the way I want them.