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Howe extended ball joints ???

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Mad Hatter

Gotta go Faster
5,237
4,227
Santiago, Chile
The P springs do lower your car a fair bit, its an inch on the GT and a little less on the Boss. Had a failure of a BMR A-arm that BMR blamed on the long ball joints (they sent me new ones under warranty). Do not think you would want them.

Watch the angle on the rear LCA... With the P springs I needed a relo bracket to get the angle back to specs .
 

Grant 302

basic and well known psychic
I have a 2012 Boss 302 that is basically at stock ride height, Ford "P" springs. I now have access to a welder. Would extended ball joints be of any benefit to me? As is the car handles perfect for me.....
P springs are about half inch lower than stock Boss geometry. I’d put them in if I were running that low or lower.

Makes for better camber gain properties. If you care about that.
 

Norm Peterson

Corner Barstool Sitter
939
712
Exp. Type
HPDE
Exp. Level
5-10 Years
a few miles east of Philly
I would not do tall balljoints without also getting a kit to correct the bumpsteer that results from changing only the control arm front view inclination.

Geometrically, you want a line through the axis of the control arm (front view), the axis of the tierod (ditto), and a line through the upper strut mount drawn perpendicular to the strut axis to all meet at the same point.

The heavy red line is the control arm axis, the dot-dash line is the tierod axis, and the thin red line is the construction line for the strut top. The dashed circle is what the tierod forces, which isn't going to be consistent with what the control arm wants to do once it no longer intersects with the other two lines simultaneously.

FVIC - Tierod - Bumpsteer arcs.jpg

Norm
 

Norm Peterson

Corner Barstool Sitter
939
712
Exp. Type
HPDE
Exp. Level
5-10 Years
a few miles east of Philly
Thanks, guys.

It's the engineer that's [still] in me. If I can plot something up or at least take a reasonable shot at mathematically modeling it, it helps my own understanding. A lot. Used to be that techniques I learned on my own for the car stuff sometimes transferred back to the day job, and sometimes the tech transfer went the other way.

I probably should have explained that last sketch a bit further. It's from a roll center and front view instant center plot that I put together based on measurements I made off my '08 at OE ride height. The tierods, tierod axis, and the circle were added later, exaggerated in position so you could actually distinguish the tierods from the control arms.


Norm
 

Norm Peterson

Corner Barstool Sitter
939
712
Exp. Type
HPDE
Exp. Level
5-10 Years
a few miles east of Philly
When you move the geometric roll center upward, it not only changes the static front-rear roll stiffness balance (moves it forward), it also affects how much LLT happens up front initially (as in, before the car has finished rolling over to where it's going to go). This would go at least to subjective transient cornering 'feel' and would affect how much progression the elastic roll stiffness balance(springs, bars, dampers) would shift the total LLT distribution. It's a time-history sort of thing.


Norm
 

Norm Peterson

Corner Barstool Sitter
939
712
Exp. Type
HPDE
Exp. Level
5-10 Years
a few miles east of Philly
....so more understeer???
Multiple effects, I think. Outside front gets planted a little sooner and roll is reduced slightly (less understeer) at the expense of LLT through the roll centers being more front-biased. But the progressively understeerish nature of the springs/bars/dampers contribution to LLT as roll develops becomes less so. Less roll also means less outside-front camber loss. All together, not more understeer, or at worst not enough more to notice.


Norm
 

xr7

TMO Addict?
706
821
Exp. Type
Autocross
Exp. Level
10-20 Years
Minnesota
Last question, maybe. Who here is using the Howe extended ball joint??

What kind of life expectancy do they have??

My car is 60% street driven so take that into account.....
I'm going to be installing mine soon. The joint is rebuildable, adjustable, easily replaced and you can grease it!
 

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