Tubular UCAs

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Raleigh Rocket

Raleigh Rocket

Shake 'n' Bake!
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I'm going to back off of the TB adjusters and get the nose of the Valiant out of the sky.

Should I get tubular upper control arms for the sake of adjustability or should I be ok with the stock control arms?

If I should get 'em, what brand do y'all prefer?
 
If your going to buy them I'm with PBD, RMS is what I have and Bill's customer service is top notch.
 
You can stay with the stockers if you go to the "offset" bushing kit. Moog offers it, I don't know what the part number is. It also depends on how much you're lowering the car, and what you're looking for as far as an alignment. The stock alignment specs are horrible, you're better off running a little negative camber (stock spec is +) and more caster. For a street driven car on modern tires, 0 to -.5 degrees camber is good, with up to +4 degrees caster if you can get it.

RMS makes good UCA's, so does Magnumforce. Not sure about the new RMS arms, the old ones are "U" shaped, vs "V" shaped, so if you have a lot of backspace on your rims you may want to ask as it does make a difference in your clearance vs stock. Magnumforce offers a set of bushed tubular's that help correct for lowering and a more modern alignment, which is nice since you don't have to deal with rod ends. They also offer a "double adjustable" UCA (with rod ends) that you can adjust without taking off the car, like you have to with most of the other rod end style designs, but those are pretty spendy and probably not necessary unless you're in the habit of changing your alignment specs a lot (ie, racing). I'd stay away from CAP UCA's, they're the ones sold by Mancini. I have a set on my Challenger, and while my UCA's have been fine the company has had a couple of failures, and haven't been the best on customer service.
 
72bluNblu said:
You can stay with the stockers if you go to the "offset" bushing kit. Moog offers it, I don't know what the part number is. It also depends on how much you're lowering the car, and what you're looking for as far as an alignment. The stock alignment specs are horrible, you're better off running a little negative camber (stock spec is +) and more caster. For a street driven car on modern tires, 0 to -.5 degrees camber is good, with up to +4 degrees caster if you can get it.

RMS makes good UCA's, so does Magnumforce. Not sure about the new RMS arms, the old ones are "U" shaped, vs "V" shaped, so if you have a lot of backspace on your rims you may want to ask as it does make a difference in your clearance vs stock. Magnumforce offers a set of bushed tubular's that help correct for lowering and a more modern alignment, which is nice since you don't have to deal with rod ends. They also offer a "double adjustable" UCA (with rod ends) that you can adjust without taking off the car, like you have to with most of the other rod end style designs, but those are pretty spendy and probably not necessary unless you're in the habit of changing your alignment specs a lot (ie, racing). I'd stay away from CAP UCA's, they're the ones sold by Mancini. I have a set on my Challenger, and while my UCA's have been fine the company has had a couple of failures, and haven't been the best on customer service.
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If you go with the offset bushings make sure they are oriented the right way. Might want to contact autoxcuda (think that is his name), I now he has posted about them several times....
 
inkjunkie said:
If you go with the offset bushings make sure they are oriented the right way. Might want to contact autoxcuda (think that is his name), I now he has posted about them several times....
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The offset bushing are Moog p/n 7103

DO NOT install them per the instructions that come the box!!
 

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Do they actually make enough difference AutoX?
I had some of those Moog/NAPA bushings. They never came with instructions....seemed mickey mouse to me....
 
ShowAndGoResto said:
Do they actually make enough difference AutoX?
I had some of those Moog/NAPA bushings. They never came with instructions....seemed mickey mouse to me....
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Absolutely!! I could get 5 deg of caster with 1.0 deg negative camber (aggressive camber for handling) with the Moog 7103's. If I only ran 0.5 negative camber (more cruiser friendly) I could get 6 degrees of caster.

I also ran cut/shaved rear poly strut bushings. That helps a little too. Maybe adds 1 degree caster. http://users.erols.com/mathewg/bushings.html

But even without that, you will be able to get some good 3.0 plus caster numbers with them and still run stock UCA's. Looks stock too.

I'd run them in every resto power steering car short of OE concours to make them better driving for thier owners.

This is with moog 7103's and stock UCA's....
 

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I want it pretty low. Something like this:

View attachment 6.JPG

I've already got the stock disk brake setup, a sway bar and Energy Suspension's poly kit. Nothing is installed yet, I'm getting it all together and doing it all at once. It's a daily driver and I'm tired of it handling like crap.

I planned on 15" wheels and BFG T/As.

Will I need tubular UCAs if I want the car that low?
 
I don't think so. AutoX's car is pretty low. Something else to consider if you want better handling is a set of 1" torsion bars. The increased spring rate will make a big difference. Although, it might limit how low you'll be able to get the car a little because of that increased rate.
 
72bluNblu said:
I don't think so. AutoX's car is pretty low. Something else to consider if you want better handling is a set of 1" torsion bars. The increased spring rate will make a big difference. Although, it might limit how low you'll be able to get the car a little because of that increased rate.
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I'd think that you'd be able to get the car just as low by backing off of the adjusters. I'd also think that you'd be able to get it even lower because the tension of the thicker bars would prevent the car from bottoming out as quickly as the thinner, softer /6 bars that are in the car now. Am I mistaken?

How difficult are the tubular uppers to adjust? Will they come with instructions for a baseline setting so I don't have to keep pulling them out to get my ride height and suspension geometry synched up?

I really do appreciate y'all's input. Suspensions, beyond nomenclatures, bone stock components, and basic theory is somewhat of a mystery to me.
 
Because of the way the torsion bar suspension works, if you increase the size of the torsion bars you're also increasing the preload. So, by going with larger torsion bars you're losing some ability to lower the car. Now, from a theory standpoint, with the larger bars you can have less travel without bottoming the suspension. The problem is that you may not be able to reduce the amount of travel as much because of the larger bar.

Think of it this way. If you install 1" torsion bars and set your adjusters exactly as they are right now, your car will sit higher in the front. In order to get it back to where it is now, you'll have to use more of the adjustment on the adjusting bolts. That will eventually lead to you not being able to lower the car as much. With 1" bars it shouldn't be a big issue, but with larger bars it can become a problem. With the 1.12" bars I have on my Challenger, even with the adjusters completely backed off, my car wouldn't sit down as far as I wanted it, which is why I have drop spindles. But again, this shouldn't be a big problem because the 1" bars shouldn't rob that much range from your adjusters.

As far as the UCA's, it depends on which type you get. There are tubular UCA's that use bushed ends (FFI, Just Suspension, Magnumforce), they adjust with the camber bolts just like your current UCA's. There are also tubular UCA's that use rod ends (RMS, Hotchkis, Magnumforce, CAP). These have to be adjusted off of the car, and I'm not aware of any that come with generic numbers for set up, including the Hotckis UCA's (I have a set to go on my Challenger). When I set up the CAP uca's that are currently on my Challenger I made 3 trips to the alignment shop to get the rod ends set up right. My alignment shop wouldn't mess with taking the suspension on and off, so I just used their numbers to dial in the adjustment until they could set it with the camber bolts. The only exception to this is Magnumforce's double adjustable UCA's (magnumforce has 3 different designs), which can be adjusted on the car.
 
Tubular UCAs with bushed ends kind of defeats my purpose of getting them in the first place. Now, the ones that adjust while mounted, that seems like the best of both worlds. How are the quality of those pieces? I'd like to have the adjustablility without having to make back and forth trips to the shop. Besides that, there's no shop I know of that I trust to be super thorough. I think I'm dealing with a bunch of oil-changers that know how to operate the alignment machinery on a basic level.
 
Actually, the tubular uca's with bushed ends can be pretty helpful. They aren't just tubular copies of the stock arms, they usually have more caster and camber already built into them. They aren't as adjustable as the other type, but they'll still get the job done.

The Magnumforce double adjustable arms are nice pieces, fully tig welded, and use a "V" shape so they'll have more clearance for larger rims with more backspace. They aren't cheap though. But they are less than the Hotchkis uca's, which are a not double adjustable.
 
They're only $400. I'll get 'em, just for good measure. When you mount them, do they rest directly on the eccentric bolts, metal to metal? I see no room or provisions for bushings of any kind.
 
72bluNblu said:
You can stay with the stockers if you go to the "offset" bushing kit. Moog offers it, I don't know what the part number is. It also depends on how much you're lowering the car, and what you're looking for as far as an alignment. The stock alignment specs are horrible, you're better off running a little negative camber (stock spec is +) and more caster. For a street driven car on modern tires, 0 to -.5 degrees camber is good, with up to +4 degrees caster if you can get it.

RMS makes good UCA's, so does Magnumforce. Not sure about the new RMS arms, the old ones are "U" shaped, vs "V" shaped, so if you have a lot of backspace on your rims you may want to ask as it does make a difference in your clearance vs stock. Magnumforce offers a set of bushed tubular's that help correct for lowering and a more modern alignment, which is nice since you don't have to deal with rod ends. They also offer a "double adjustable" UCA (with rod ends) that you can adjust without taking off the car, like you have to with most of the other rod end style designs, but those are pretty spendy and probably not necessary unless you're in the habit of changing your alignment specs a lot (ie, racing). I'd stay away from CAP UCA's, they're the ones sold by Mancini. I have a set on my Challenger, and while my UCA's have been fine the company has had a couple of failures, and haven't been the best on customer service.
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I worked with Bill on designing the newer style "V" shaped tubular upper control arms. These new style "V" shaped ones are now the only ones available because the older ones were designed to be used with factory 15" wheels...When you mount a 17" wheel to the older style "U" shaped control arm, at full lock, the 17" wheel would interfere with the control arm. I took note of this and talked with Bill over the phone a few times, and I gave him a few measurements on how they should bend, he applied it, and everything worked fine...So that's why there was the birth of a new control arm. :)
 
mopardude318 said:
I worked with Bill on designing the newer style "V" shaped tubular upper control arms. These new style "V" shaped ones are now the only ones available because the older ones were designed to be used with factory 15" wheels...When you mount a 17" wheel to the older style "U" shaped control arm, at full lock, the 17" wheel would interfere with the control arm. I took note of this and talked with Bill over the phone a few times, and I gave him a few measurements on how they should bend, he applied it, and everything worked fine...So that's why there was the birth of a new control arm. :)
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Now that's the info I was looking for! I knew that RMS came out with a new design, hadn't heard they weren't making the old ones at all anymore though. Last time I looked at the website the pictures still showed the old set.

I bought a set of Hotchkis arms for that exact reason, bought a set of 17's for my challenger and found that they hit the uca's at full lock. I already wanted to take the CAP arms off my challenger though, so it was a good excuse. And the Hotchkis arms have relocated suspension points for the e bodies, so I went with them. The a-body version doesn't, so the RMS arms would be a good choice too.

And raleigh, the double adjustables use rod ends, so there are no bushings. May get a little harsh on a street ride.
 
Raleigh Rocket said:
They're only $400. I'll get 'em, just for good measure. When you mount them, do they rest directly on the eccentric bolts, metal to metal? I see no room or provisions for bushings of any kind.
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You don't need tubular uppers just to run your front end low. Mostly marketing BS from the manufactures. Just put the Moog 7103 offset bushings like the diagram I posted.

Spend that $400 on those $160 or so 1.03" or 1.00" torsion bars that go on sale and some Hotchkis Bistein shocks ($400). That would be a million times more handling improvement than just adding tubular A-arms to your current setup or no doing springs and shocks first.

If you run just 1.00" or 1.03" you shouldn't have problem lowering you car like 72bluNblu did on his E-body with 1.12" t-bars. BTW 1.12" are about 70% higher rate than a 1.00" T-bar.

My car is low. I have stock cast iron exhaust manifolds and headpipes and my exhaust rubs. I've scrapped high centering on some bad driveways.

My K-member and oil pan is 5.0" from the ground. The top arch of my front fender lips measure 24 1/4" from the ground. Just went in the garage and measured that for you.
 
1970Duster said:
Are these bushings Rubber or Poly?
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Just rubber. So they will have some flex. But if your running 60 or 70 series tires, stock t-bars, etc, they will give you nice alignment numbers and save money for other suspension upgrades.
 
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