[Patrick Olsen]

Over the winter of 2011 I built a SLA for my American Iron racecar, a 88 foxbody. I modeled it using suspension analyzer 2.0, and built it using a MM k-member, forward offset SN95 lower arms, racecraft 2" dropped spindles, factory five spindle adapters for the upper arms, and SLC adjustable upper control arms. The new ruleset for 2012 allowed us to move our track width to 74.5", the width of the s197 chassis. I wanted this width, which meant modifying the lower arms. I cut the bushings off, welded in rod end adapters, and ran heim joints on the lower arms. I had to further modify the LCA's to accept the shock mounts, but that was easy. The only real fabrication involved building the upper control arm mounts and the upper shock mount.

Breakdown of the costs... I already had the lower control arms and the racecraft spindles, so those aren't included. I also had a set of KONI 3012 DA shocks so that cost is not shown either... I had steeda extended lower ball joints, and ran longer ball joints in the upper arms as well. I bought a new K-member so I didn't have to disassemble my car while the new setup was being built.

MM K-member $550
Rod ends x 4 $161
Misalignment spacers $32
Tube weld nuts/Lock nuts $63
Spindle Adapters - Whitby $300
Upper Control Arms $409
Lower shock mounts $15
Upper shock mounts $23
Misc Steel $90
Upper Ball Joint $90

It worked very very well..... :joy:

modified lca's....



Adjustable upper arm...


DIY UCA mount and shock mount..




Installed..

Couple more pics...

Fully dressed... Widebody fox.






Like I said earlier... it worked extremely well. I spent more time moving things around in the software, trying to find the best location for the upper arms and shock mounts, adjusting for anti-dive, roll center migration, camber gain, etc. etc. than I did actually building the stuff.

I won my first AI race the second race weekend I had the car out after the build.






Then I wrecked it the next day trying to repeat...



Currently racing a 2005 chassis with the same pushrod engine and TKO600... and contemplating building a SLA for it! :evilgrin:

Bumping these with the failbucket picture links fixed so they're actually visible.

2000mcr's pictures don't appear to be on failbucket anymore (just a couple of dyno graphs), and 2000mcr hasn't been active on the site since the end of March. Might respond to a PM, though, so one could see the pics of his SLA setup.

 

[Patrick Olsen]

2000mcr's pictures don't appear to be on failbucket anymore (just a couple of dyno graphs), and 2000mcr hasn't been active on the site since the end of March. Might respond to a PM, though, so one could see the pics of his SLA setup.

I PM'd 2000mcr (Paul) and he emailed me his pics. I don't have any details other than what's visible in the pics and what Paul had said in posts 7 & 12. I put them up on my FTP site for posterity, so here they are:

Upper ball joint adapter:

Wow props for doing that. I hope failbucket goes under.

The trick is to add "~original" (without the quotation marks) after ".jpg" in the picture link. If you click to QUOTE my post, you can see what I did. I saw that trick posted somewhere else, and it seems to work about 95% of the time.

 

[Patrick Olsen]

Hey guys, I am strongly considering building something similar for my 94 bondurant car. I am already running griggs adjustable control arms with matching k so I am part of the way there. How did you design the mounting locations for the shock and the upper control arm? We're the dropped spindles from racecraft a must to get the car down low or could sn95 spindles be used?

The setup that 2000mcr built (which I posted pics of) appears to use SN95 spindles. The "base model" Griggs SLA uses SN95 spindles (the higher end version uses their spindles).

The big motivator for me is to get 315s to fit on the front. Would you guys be willing to share some of your design data/methodology? I have tons of questions on this. I think with a little leg work and parts sourcing I could make something very similar to ed's setup for about half the cost of a Griggs conversion!

Doesn't look like edhunter has logged in here for about a year and a half, but you might try shooting him a PM. He is still active on corner-carvers.com if you're a member over there.

I wonder if that set up you built would work on converting my AJE to SLA in my 73 Mach 1. I'm hoping to do a 6.2 swap and, and I want to delete the towers without starting all over. I've already got a set of Factory Five upper ball joint adapters sitting in a box, waiting to be used.

With enough fabrication skill I'm sure it could be done.

 

[Patrick Olsen]

MM kmember, Griggs spindle adapters, SN95 spindles, upper control arms from Summit, MM SN95 lower control arms. Fabricated upper shock mount. Zero scrub using 18x12 rims.

Very cool. Where did you source the Penskes from? Had you been running the car with a normal strut setup (presumably with the MM K-member and A-arms) before going to the SLA?

 

[Patrick Olsen]

Hi, yep this was a strut car that was mostly for street use. I autocrossed it once with the struts and it sucked big time, even with the K-member and A-arms. It wasn't until the SLA that it became a truly competitive autocross car. It's literally a night-and-day difference - so much grip, so solid. The shocks I got directly from Penske Racing with custom valving - these too made a major difference, particularly in quick transitions like slaloms - so much control it's unreal.

Thanks for the details. How does the process work with Penske? I know jack squat about how to spec custom valving, wouldn't even know where to start. Did you have to tell them what you want, or did you contact them and say, "I have a custom SLA. I need a shock that is X" long and is suited for road racing and auto-x use," and then they spec'd everything for you?