What the hell are these?

[kwazza11]

have been browsing through the r31 house website and these came up, i've seen them before for other cars but just wondering what the hell they are and what they do?

[SteveL]

have been browsing through the r31 house website and these came up, i've seen them before for other cars but just wondering what the hell they are and what they do?

Amongst other things they're known as bump-steer spacers. Without going into great detail, basically they restore suspension geometry (lower control arm, etc) and particularly it's relationship to stock steering setup (tie-rod end angle) on a car that's lowered substantially by shortening the strut. The spacers put these compenents back to more or less their original configuration when a shortened strut is fitted. Without them the car can have peculiar handling characterstics (eg self steering under certain conditions).

It's a particular problem with cars fitted with MacPherson strut front suspension (R31 Skylines and most Nissan models prior). R32/R33 etc multi-link suspension generally doesn't suffer from the problem.