Camber kits, is there interest in them?

[truckadsjoe]

I am thinking of producing Camber kits for the NSX . I have a set of them that a machine shop can reproduce if there is a demand for them? So my thoughts are to get a feel for how many would be ordered? If we order a group of ten kits the 4 pcs would be $250.00 per kit. that does not include the bushings. Is there interest? Or am I just chasing a useless idea around and should give it up?

let me know
[email protected]
thanks

 

[Hapa88]

Are these going to be similar to Thom's camber kit?

 

[truckadsjoe]

yes it is his kit recreated. I have asked him and had no response if he has any issues with me recreating this? Your thoughts?

 

[liftnot]

yes it is his kit recreated. I have asked him and had no response if he has any issues with me recreating this? Your thoughts?

i have 20k+ street miles with his aggressive kit. If you gonna make them, I would suggest use the J bearings with the flange, on both sides of the pivot instead of one sleeve and one flange to avoid the clunking sound.

 

[Brylek]

i have 20k+ street miles with his aggressive kit. If you gonna make them, I would suggest use the J bearings with the flange, on both sides of the pivot instead of one sleeve and one flange to avoid the clunking sound.

+1 I had to spend over $2000 for rear control arms...

 

[truckadsjoe]

Why did you have to buy new control arms?

 

[Brylek]

I had the kit on my first NSX, it came with the car when i bought it. I was never happy with the kit, it was squeaking from the beginning and later on it started clunking.

When the bushings were worn out and they were clunking badly. I pm'd "Thom" and after a week he replied that "it's normal during the brake in period". The kit had around 7000 street miles at that time. I had the car sold at this point and the buyer already bought his airplane ticket so I just ordered a set of new control arms. I was lucky the dealer gave me the usual body shop discount of 20% so after tax it was $2050 instead of $2400.

 

[NSXCessive]

Joe would be nice to have someone else to fab these up since it seems that maybe Thom isn't doing them anymore? I also had problems with the aggressive kit between the pivots and arms which resulted in play after a few miles of use. Thinking the bearings were worn out I ordered a brand new Z set but after closer inspection original J bearings were good. So I manage to re-tension them against the plastic bearings based on Thom's recommendations. Put one a few hundred kms since they seem to be holding up fine so far.

 

[Brylek]

This could be the worst idea ever but instead of destroying your oem control arms to keep the moving head further away from the chasse why not use a spacer with extended screws?

 

[angus]

This could be the worst idea ever but instead of destroying your oem control arms to keep the moving head further away from the chasse why not use a spacer with extended screws?

I don't think a spacer would work, what would work better would be to re-design the kit to use an off the shelf bushing that is OEM spec (i.e. a rubber bushing from something very commonly available) or some kind of pivot that will not wear out as fast.

 

[liftnot]

Not to take anything away from Brylek's reasoning, here is my angle if that helps. My would squeek and WD-40/3-in-1 was the answer good for about a month, but recently it developed the clunking noise.

After reading more threads from others who have the similar problem, I bought 8-J flange bearings($45) from igus before I took the camber pivot kit apart thinking the bearings may have worn out and needed replacement.

Upon inspection, all of my bearings looked really good but Thom used one sleeve bearing and one flange bearing for the pivot and the sleeve side was causing the clunking noise. I wasn't able to re-tension the pivot like NSXCessive as they were max-ed out towards each other with no room to move what so ever.

My quick and dirty method/only option w/o pressing out the old bearings to take care the 2mm gap problem was with a hard rubber "JDM" bushing made by Mugen which I found at HomeDepot and after 500 shakedown miles my car is
still quiet as a mouse. If the bushing shall fail in the future, I can replace all of them in about an hour.

I still think Thom's camber kit is a fine product, the only change I would make is to use the flange bearing on both sides of the pivot not just one side. The problem was the ~2mm gap developed over time(not sure how) which is the thickness of the flange on the igus bearing.

 

[Brylek]

I would be willing to buy another kit only if it had a go back to stock option. What if one day you want to sell your car and the potential buyer wants it 100% stock and you have to spend $2k for control arms? I'm not even close to being a mechanical engineer but I have a picture in my head that I will try to put on paper by Monday so you guys could take a look at it <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

 

[truckadsjoe]

I am glad for all of the comments on this idea. Thank you. However I am getting more and more dissuaded from doing this. I do not want to trash my control arms to install this. As obviously one has to press out the perfectly sound factory bushings to install. So is there an alternate way to make the adjustment to the camber that is required to lower the car and use wide wheel tire combination's? Sure am open to other ideas at this point.
thanks to all

 

[liftnot]

I am glad for all of the comments on this idea. Thank you. However I am getting more and more dissuaded from doing this. I do not want to trash my control arms to install this. As obviously one has to press out the perfectly sound factory bushings to install. So is there an alternate way to make the adjustment to the camber that is required to lower the car and use wide wheel tire combination's? Sure am open to other ideas at this point.
thanks to all

I am sure Thom had thought about this long and hard before he went thru all the trouble making his kit. In my case, if he used flange bearings on both sides of the pivot, I would not have any long term problem at all. Then again, it was not a big deal to fix it.

It is, however, not a simple DIY process as you had to separate the ball joint using the proper Honda tool, press out the old pivot and in with the new. The ball joint can be scary stubborn to separate. (there are threads on this) then you need a press and spacers to press the old and new pivots followed by an alignment. Although the camber kit does help a lot as far as tire wear, the process is quite involved and once people realized that, they just realigned the rear with min. toe and be done with it. There are people who have this kit and are happy with it.

Dali sells a similar product and its for the lower control arm instead of Thom's upper. I did not know this prior buying Thom's and have no experience with it.

After all this, I am glad I have this product. There are other solutions like TiDave's monoball$$$$$

 

[jjrho]

hi, have a 95 nsx and just bought someones eibach/dali spring setup and was wondering how much it would affect my alignment...
on stock wheels, it's doing fine/straight/good wear but i read that lowering springs will change the settings...but that camber is beyond adjustability?

i don't understand all this stuff well so....

tnx,

jim R
so calif

 

[liftnot]

You should have the align. cked out so you have a baseline to work with.
Not one can give you good advise here without knowing the numbers of your existing settings. You should have an alignment after the new spring install.

You need to take the car to Darrin at WestEnd alignment in Gardena. He knows NSX very well and will give you sound advise.

If you are in San Diego, take it to Nick at Applied Motorsports in Vista. 760-401-0253

 

[SEEYABOSS]

I also have the aggressive kit on 92 and 04 and it knocks or bangs over bumps in the rt rear only. The bushing you spoke of by mugen ? at HOME DEPOT, do you have the specs and what department did you find it , hardware, plumbing or ? ( thanks for your help , Mark )

 

[liftnot]

Believe or not Boss, given the limited options of not using the new igus J-bearings I bought, I ended up using #18 O-ring from HD made by Danco in a pkg of 10 = $2.00+. p/n #96735 from the isle next to Plumbing.

I have taken on a club drive, a long trip to LA and a few tankful later, its still quiet as a mouse. It worked really well. I am so stoked.

Nick from Applied Motorsports put it on his alignment rack, it cked out perfect @ -1.4 camber on both sides. All the other adjustment in the front did not affect the rear so it tells me the o-rings are properly squeezed but not cracked.

To press out the old J-bearings would take a lot more work and it did not looked worn at all so this was my next option to make up the ~2mm gap. The O-ring must fit over the OD of the pivot very snug so it won't get crushed when you tighten the ends. Make sure you cake them with grease.

All you need to remove are the 4 mounting bolts per side from the pivot and I would use new bolts to prevent cross thread as they were tricky to line-up doing it up-side-down. Tork them to 43 ft/lb. per spec.

The whole process took 3 hrs including running around to HD. I am very happy with the result and wish I did not have to buy the J-bearings. Oh well, spare parts.

I am not sure why Thom did not use flange bearings on both sides thats why the sleeve side eventually "work-it-self" in and caused the ~2mm gap. I can't see any other reason why it was making noise but it took a while like over 10k miles in my case to notice the noise.

Now the 20 cent O-ring fix secret is out. I Hope this helps.