Spherical top mounts (rally)

[MD323]

i cant find it now, but i had a link to an aussie article on sema welding where they took an old EVO 3 and put the front left tire on a ramp and opened the door. the door was totally miss aligned and had to be lifted to close it.


afterwards the car was stripped and put on a rotisserie and seem welded, afterwards and before the cage install they repeated the door test and the door (though still slightly miss aligned due to the hindges) wasable to shut with minimum effort due the the lack of the unibody frame movedment

think of it this way: staple 2 pieces of paper together with a slight overlap and only use 3 staples, can you still twist and move the paper enough to cause a lip at the edge?

[smoke187]

240 owners use that method also when building a drift car

[steeb]

can these readily available or do we need to send our stock pieces in like you did?

also, whats the price range and wait time on these? i need to pick up a set but im not sure i wanna wait 3 months for cusco pieces.

[jrally]

They were about $175 per pair. It took about 2 months to get mine built, but they also had to engineer them, so turn around should be a bit lower now. As for working with other struts would go, I'm not 100% sure of that, the rears where designed around the spring top for my set-up. But, then again, the struts were designed to work with the factory top mounts... I still haven't fitted them to my car yet, so, might want to see if they even work out first.

-Jon R.

[SgtRauksauff]

I like them, nice!! It would be nice to have the rears adjustable too, that would open up the market for the tarmac/non-rally group more, on down the road.

--sarge

[projectmx]

hey what suspension are you running you have full coilovers? i'm pretty interested in this cause i have nothing for suspension for my mx-3 yet and need to start making plans

[Hadoken]

What are you going to be using for strut bearings in the front? I'm going to try and install my Cusco plates this weekend and I don't have a lot of faith in the plastic bearings that I have taking much abuse. The ZX2 ones are good, but still plastic on the inside so I'd like something more durable than those even, if I can find something.

[SgtRauksauff]

the ones that come stock with the ZX2 struts are plastic, but there are separate ones, about 18 bucks and change each, that are all 100% metal.





the one thing that concerns me with the Cusco set up is this:



The cone on top sits against the spherical bearing on the mount, and the bottom part sits against the thrust bearing. Seems almost too little actual contact area....



--sarge

[Clean 4WD]

With the cusco or any other pillow ball top mount you should not need the thrust bearing at all... It is only there to eliminate bind between the spring seat and top plate in a stock application... In a pillow ball set up you should not even use it.. That is what the pillow ball is for...

[1967cutlass]

Sarge I don't think the contact area matters since the whole thing is tight, and the damper is absorbing a lot of the shock anyway. Either way all of the stress is ultimately transferred into the pillowball.

[FE3-323]

coilovers VS stock is totally different anyhows, you do keep the thrust bearing.

[Hadoken]

With the cusco or any other pillow ball top mount you should not need the thrust bearing at all... It is only there to eliminate bind between the spring seat and top plate in a stock application... In a pillow ball set up you should not even use it.. That is what the pillow ball is for...

That's the impression I've been under since I got them, but just wasn't sure.

[jrally]

Once HotBits finally sends me the right spring top hats, I'll know for sure. But, I'm with Scott, I'm under the impression that with apillow mount, a thrust bearing isn't needed. What I would like is to find a seal to shroud my bearing from dust. I know I've seen them somewhere, heim joint dust boots...

-Jon R.

[Clean 4WD]

What I would like is to find a seal to shroud my bearing from dust. I know I've seen them somewhere, heim joint dust boots...

-Jon R.

I been know to use the blown up mountain bike inner tubes for such a thing... It works on the Evo..

[therieldeal]

this makes me feel better about ditching my thrust bearings the other day . i had some beefy ass ballbearing ones in there but they were eating up half of my suspension travel.