What are people doing for HCR32 suspension these days?

[GTSBoy]

1 hour ago, Matvei27 said:

Which king springs did you have on your modified Bilsteins?

What I have may not be a good recommendation for other RWD R32s. There is something a bit weird about mine and we have GTR springs to get the ride height right. KDFL-116 and KDRL-87SP. The rears there are specifically for the Aust market GTRs.

The dampers have extra grooves cut on them to expand the ride height adjustability range. The valve stack is set up by SK. I'm not sure what he does - but the fronts replaced otherwise identical B6s that I already had on the car, and they were a very noticeable improvement - and I wasn't upset with the original ones!

[Duncan]

Now it's a bit warmer...and keeping in mind this is GTR not GTST, I run eibach 0800.250.0450 front and 0800.250.0350 rear. 0800 means 8" long, 250 means 2.5" inner diameter and the 0450/0350 is spring rate in lbs/in, so 6.2kg/mm rear and 8kg/mm front. Anyway, point is, with the circlip groove/threaded sleeve, adjustable platform and that style of springs, you can order anything you want from eibach and end up with exactly the rate and height you are after.

[Matvei27]

The standard b6s don't have the additional circlip grooves though, and are valved differently right?

I believe that would be how you guys are getting more than 30mm of lowering out of b6s, is it not?

Since the car is 390/380 standard to get to 350/340 you'd need 40mm of drop which is beyond what a standard b6 can handle at least according to Bilstein (and beyond what my non adjustable links can handle too, but that's a separate issue)

And as far as I can tell Gary isn't doing the modified ones anymore?

So I could make my own monotube s-tunes with some b6s and springs, but I don't think I could go as low as you guys do with the modified ones even if I changed out my links and used even lower springs. To do that I'd need b8s and but it doesn't look like they have them for the r32.

So I'd have to use coilovers IF I wanted to do that, but as far as I can tell the only monotube in production for the 32 gtst is the tein monoflex, or MCA in aus / meister in the UK?

Edited May 30, 2021 by Matvei27

[Matvei27]

Looks like the discussion on the B6 may not be relevant, Bilstein just informed me the rears are NLA.

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Matvei27

[Matvei27]

I ended up buying the Ohlins units after calling Labo Carrozzeria and confirming that they will still repair them.

They answered the phone immediately and said as long as they aren't bent from say, being in an accident, they can still overhaul discontinued models. They will replace the pillow uppers with new ones as well. 

Hope that is useful information for someone out there. 

(oh, and if you don't like pillow uppers, they offer rubber ones now too).

Edited June 2, 2021 by Matvei27

[Matvei27]

We ended up chosing to have the shocks rebuilt with rubber uppers, and with softer springs (minus 2kg front and rear). 

[niZmO_Man]

You should be happy with those Ohlins. Let us know how they are.

[Matvei27]

Well before I put them on since I'm going to need an alignment I was looking at adjustable arms, but I'd really prefer poly bushes to rose joints.

I saw ikeya formula does adjustable front tension rods and rear traction rods with bushes, but it looks like they don't offer front and rear uppers with bushes to match.

Any ideas?

[alexj]

You can get offset poly bushes for the top arms. They can give you a degree or so eitherway. 

[GTSBoy]

Front caster rods are THE first and most important place to consider spherical joints. They hardly have any impact on NVH but they have a massive positive effect on reducing fore-aft movement of the front suspension. This is massively required with the stupidly narrow mounting base of the R32 FUCA.

I also maintain that any poly bush at all (or worse, rubber) in the FUCA is a bad thing. The GK-Tech arms are the only thing  have tried that have been a workable solution to the problems in the R32 FUCAs, short of cutting the car up and fitting R33 style wide base FUCAs, which is simply not an option for most people.

[alexj]

I used the offset poly bushes in my fucas for a couple of years of track days. And they were fine, still good when they came off the car, they didn't go out of adjustment. They do need grease nipples tapping into the fucas to allow them to be regreased. I also had eccentric poly bush cast rods back then. just couldn't get enough camber for serious track business, running all ikeya arms now.

[Matvei27]

How are the ikeyas on the street? You are running the poly front tension rods / rear traction rods or the rose joint versions? And aren't the front uppers from ikeya fixed, so you have to order the right size? I think you have to order the rear upper in a negative or positive version also...

 

GTSboy, what else are you running aside from the gktech front uppers?

I haven't seen poly uppers for the front or rear, but the reason I was considering using the poly bush ikeyas for the front tension rods and rear traction rods was to reduce NVH as this is a street car. Not sure how much more civilized they are compared with the rose joint versions of the same product.

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Matvei27

[GTSBoy]

At the front I have Tein spherical front caster arms, plus the GK-Tech FUCAs. Plus a Whiteline adjustable bar with balljoint droplinks.

At the rear I have Hardrace (hard) rubber bushed adjustable camber and radius arms. Plus a Whiteline adjustable bar with balljoint drops.

The rear is also a non-HICAS subframe (so, equivalent to a HICAS delete kit, but, better). So the toe arms are different to stock.

I chose the hard rubber bushed rear arms for the logical reason. It's a streeter and it's already noisy and harsh enough, plus I didn't want to add to my maintenance load by adding even more spherical joints. All I was really after was the ability to set the camber exactly where I wanted it and dial out bump steer, which is a factor that most people just flat out don't understand and ignore. Anyway, the rubber in the Hardrace bushes is very stiff, so they are at least as good as poly, without the eventual creaks and groans that come from poly bushes, which I have also had in the rear (and the front) in the past.

Lower arms and bushes are stock, for the purposes of not making the NVH situation hugely worse for a small/medium gain in arm control. I am prepared to go poly on all of those ifnwhen they age out.

[Matvei27]

So the only arms you have with rose joints are the front uppers and front tension rods?

Does anyone make front uppers with poly or rubber bushes (aside from Nismo which isn't adjustable and only comes in a single size?) 

And is the hardrace the only rear upper with bushes? 

[GTSBoy]

13 minutes ago, Matvei27 said:

So the only arms you have with rose joints are the front uppers and front tension rods?

Yes. The ones that really matter.

13 minutes ago, Matvei27 said:

Does anyone make front uppers with poly or rubber bushes (aside from Nismo which isn't adjustable and only comes in a single size?)

Not ones that are adjustable for camber. There are a number of designs.

• Some look a bit like the stock arms but have lots of locking screws on a sliding section in the middle, allowing you to change the length. These invariably have bearings in the ends, rather than bushes, and I am fine with that. There is no need for bushes in the FUCAs to make the NVH situation "nicer". Bushes up there are the enemy of good suspension location, because the narrow base of the FUCA mount in particular. Stupid design by Nissan that was fixed in the 33s.
• Some look like a capital I (with the cross serifs at top and bottom, not this non-serif bullshit that I'm typing with). Steer clear of all of these. They are all shit. Even the best ones (the UAS ones) have unavoidable weakness in the design.
• All the fixed length ones might as well be stock from my point of view. Doesn't matter if they are a different length to stock and correct a camber issue that results from lowering. If they're not adjustable, they're not worth paying for. That's Nismo, Cusco, etc.

The GK-Tech ones are a lot of work to set up and they make your wheel aligner cry. But they are the only ones that I've found that do what they say on the box (which is to allow for a swivel articulation to remove the loading that the stock design forces into the bushes as the arm goes up and down. Again, stupid design by Nissan).

17 minutes ago, Matvei27 said:

And is the hardrace the only rear upper with bushes?

I'm sure that there are others from the various brands sold in the UK and US (Driftworks as a potential example). The bushed Hardrace arms are not particularly different to ones with spherical joints. I'd be reasonably sure that you could actually swap back and forth between a bushed outer end and a spherical outer end on the rear arms if you had the parts.

As much as Hardrace stuff looks likes any of the hooflungdung Taiwanese/Chinese/eBay brands, they have established themselves and seem to have earned a decent rep. So I am happy to use them and don't shy from recommending them.

[alexj]

Ah bugger just remembered we are talking gtst here. My ikeya arms are on my gtr; all rose jointed. The fucas you do need to calculate the length you need and then use the lower arm to set the camber precisely, so the ikeya fucas only really work if you have adjustable lower arms. Nvh isn't something i can comment on, it is a track car, high spring rates, with no interior. Regardless of nvh, just because of the maintenance effort i wouldn't go rose joints on a road car tbh.

Superpro make adjustable inner and outer fucas bushes and that's what i had. And they do adjustable upper rear inner bushes and that's what i have on the gtst and had on the gtr until very recently.

The gtst has nismo fucas bushes and whiteline tension rod bushes. Standard arms and bushes everywhere else. Hicas is locked with big thick washers on the inner ends of the tie rods.

I have whiteline arbs front and rear on the gtst and they are great. On the gtr i had them too, but I went back to a standard front arb just because that worked better on most tracks for me on the gtr. 

Edited June 28, 2021 by alexj

[alexj]

And just to concur with what gtsboy say about the capital I style adjustable fucas. They are not great. I tried these style on the gtr to replace the superpro polybushes, when i wanted more camber. They kept going loose and out of adjustment (because the clamps on the centre threaded section have to fight the twisting forces and eventually lose) and then after a year or two the ball bearings wore out. I actually put a second set on after that which faired a bit better tbh but that was just a stop gap, that was back when gktech were developing their arms which i was hoping to use but when i saw there were some teething issues with the gktechs i went with ikeya.

[Matvei27]

So how is the maintenance on the gktech uppers, are they better being Teflon coated or is it still a pain on a road car?

[GTSBoy]

1 hour ago, alexj said:

Ah bugger just remembered we are talking gtst here.

Not that there's any difference. It's all the same parts up the top.

1 hour ago, alexj said:

Superpro make adjustable inner and outer fucas bushes and that's what i had. And they do adjustable upper rear inner bushes and that's what i have on the gtst and had on the gtr until very recently.

I had many sets of these in my car over a 15 year period. They flog out, especially at the front. Not really suitable for long term use on the road either. I had the first available type (from Whiteline) at the turn of the century. My experience, and that of everyone else with them led to Whiteline redesigning with a solid metal outer insert to reduce the amount of urethane, because the thick section of the original design collapsed in only a few thousand kms. But even the new design and all the copies (ie Superpro) do exactly the same thing. I was probably the first person to put grease nipples on them, before they even came in the kits - that's how beige their performance was.

[GTSBoy]

10 minutes ago, Matvei27 said:

So how is the maintenance on the gktech uppers, are they better being Teflon coated or is it still a pain on a road car?

The GK-Tech guys will tell you that the teflon lined joints are manna from heaven, and they will tell you not to put any grease on them. But my experience with grease has been much much better than my experience without grease.

See this thread

which was a general thread about the arms and sort of became my diary thread.

I have since made some PVC sheet nappies to go around them to keep the water and dirt away and this seems to have been a very worthwhile effort. The entire upper arms is wrapped up in plastic. I'd take some photos, but they're 2000km away.