tubular lower control arms for coilovers

nm9stheham said
BTW for all, I did not realize when I posted above that I could be stepping into the middle of a 'design stealing' controversy. I had honestly not read any of the threads here on the LCA's designs floating around; I have done such tubular LCA designs a few years in the past for another car, and am starting to look into this for the Mopar A's. I just started with this thread and saw what I thought was weak, made a quick, simple analysis, and thought it was worth sharing.

The comparison to the HDK item was made only because that is a well known company here and I thought it would be a comfortable basis for everyone to compare..... never having read the the other LCA discussion that Airwoofer referenced above and seeing the controversy.

So, did I ever step into it! I hope everyone will accept that I am not taking any sides here, just trying to analyze and share. Tubular control arm designs have existed for decades, so it never occurred to me that anyone would even entertain the idea of design stealing....

No big deal on bringing it back up. I'm over it.

For anyone that isn't, I'm not going to sit here and argue about it all again either....

I understand that it could be weaker. The whole reason i even started down this road was because i needed to bring the wheels in. In order to do that i needed to know how far in i could bring the upper as well as the lower before the upper hit the coil over. Seemed easier to me to just make at least the initial set adjustable. In my case the rod end is screwed in as far as it will go which helps. I also don't believe that the rod end alone is taking the sole force of all the energy, a lot of that has to be being transferred through the other contact points etc. I never really showed these as finished with bump stops or the final strut bars and mounts or any of the other things i had planned to add or offer.