why pillowball?

[kwazza11]

hey guys,

have noticed alot (if not all) of the japanese aftermarket coilovers have pillowball strut tops fitted, also seen them on castor rods for certain cars and was wondering what the advantages of going to pillowballs or rose joints instead of bushes are? is it simply to stiffen up the pivot points?

cheers

Karlos

[nuffin_werks]

stock suspension is mounted to the shock tower by a preset mounting specification

a pillowball top for your suspension top will allow your to change how the top of your suspension is positioned . will give you a good degree of adjustment , however i cant see any strenth upside though, as it mounts basically the same.

my 2 cents

[Scooby]

stock suspension is mounted to the shock tower by a preset mounting specification  

a pillowball top for your suspension top will allow your to change how the top of your suspension is positioned . will give you a good degree of adjustment , however i cant see any strenth upside though, as it mounts basically the same.

 

my 2 cents

adjustment will only be available if the top mount allows it, many do not and they simply solid mount the shaft to the top mount via a spherical or needle roller bearing. as far as I know the only time you can get adj into your top mount is with struts, you won't find this arrangement on a GTR for example.

the idea of pillow balls/rose joints is to reduce compliance and flexing making the suspension more rigid. i've heard mixed reports on how well they work with shocks on a daily driver road car, needle bearings seem to work better than the more traditional sphericals as the sphericals wear quite rapidly on many road cars. the reason for this is that the bearing experience a sideways force when the spring compresses and places load on the bearing. hence after a while the bearings start to knock like mad. greasable sphericals seem better than plain ones but the needle bearing seems better again.

hope that makes sense

regards

[Sydneykid]

R32/33/34 Skylines are double wishbone so adjustable shock tops are useless.

Spherical bearings are used on race cars to remove the small movement that the rubber top mounts allow. This means the shocks see all of the minute movements up and down and thus can be adjusted to maximise the tyre contact and improve the lap times. Obviously you need at least quad adjustable shocks (bump and rebound + high and low frequency) to take advantage of this.

Spherical bearings wear very quickly, need greasing often and knock like crazy when they do wear. They also add a lot to the NVH as there is no rubber to soak it up. Not a good idea for a road car.

[kwazza11]

cheers for the info guys! answered all my questions and then some :burnout:

reason i asked is im grabbing some bilstien shocks for my car and was thinking of getting some cusco camber tops. sounds like for alittle bit more camber i'm sacrificing alot of ride quality and reliability...

[Ronin 09]

sounds to me from SK's last post that the camber cannot be adjusted by strut tops on double wishbone suspension setups - need to have adjustable upper arms? Correct?

[Roy]

Correct for R32/33/34...only i seem to recall kwazza11 has an animal R31 in which case he has struts:)