I just swapped all the springs and shock with the ground control setup. How do you tighten the front shocks. It has a 17mm captive nut and it's spinning when I try to tighten it.

Grabbing the shaft with a pair of vise grips or a pipe wrench would work but somehow I don't think it's real good idea to leave all kinds of burrs and gouges. There has to be a trick, what is it?

 

Air Gun.

 

Careful though, most shock manufacturers warn against using an impact, go very easy.

 

Air gun won't work either (I don't think). The shaft will still spin along with the nut. To get the old ones off I had to use a pipe wrench, vise and lots of sweat. I looked pretty bad after the battle but you should have seen the shocks.

Since they were the old ones I didn't care about messing them up but I don't want to do the same to the brnad new ones.

I have an 80 ft lb air gun, would that be enough torque? I don't have the 600lb version.

 

Impact will work. Just hold the shaft with your hand. Another way to do it is to wrap a rag around the very top of the shaft and lock your vise grips on top of the rag. The very top of the shaft won't make contact with the seals in the shock. So small nicks aren't that big of a deal.

 

Still sounds scary.

My air gun isn't an impact but I'll give it a try.

 

Impact is neccesary for it to work. The short, sharp raps of the impact are what allows it to do what it does. A air ratchet will work the same way as a a regular wrench.

 

Impact gun is the only way I can get it on.

PaulC

 

Paul, that's a damn shame.

 

Vise grips, a rag, and the air rachet worked. The rag didn't look too chewed up so hopefully the shaft is ok.

By the way, what do you guys set your camber at? This will be a daily driver too but I'm not terribly worried about tire longevity as long as teh car is safe at highway speeds going straight.

For autocrossing, you are always in a turn so I would imagine the more the better. Something like 3*?

 

Cwaters, a man can't be perfect


Brewer, dunno for auto-x, but for RR, 3* Neg Cam, 5* Pos Cas, 1/16" Toe out, rear 2* neg Cam, 1/16" Toe in is what I'm using.

PaulC

 

I don't lmpw squat but isn't 5* caster a lot?

I guess a better question would be,..."How have you been finishing?"

 

On caster the general rule is as much as you can get while keeping them equal. This will help the car track straight since you'll want quite a bit of toe-out. I'd say Silkworm is in the ballpark. I like 0 toe in the rear on my roadrace car and would want at least that if not just a hint of toe out for autox. The more toe out you have in the rear the easier the car will turn. The downside is it gets dicey on the road.

 

I've won the last 4 races in my class, with 3-4 cars in class. I think I do ok.

But you know, whatever the hell you want to do is fine with me.

PaulC

 

Easy there, Spanky. Just messing with you.