H2

That's a beatiful brake/wheel set up. Wow! What are you trying to do? Make the rest of us look bad? I'm tempted....

Harvey

Imo000

I you need any parts let me know, my parts car is an 86.5 and I'm only keeping the suspesion and breaks and not the ABS.

slate blue

GregBBRD is correct, this is dangerous, the stub axles should be the early type on this car,(with an adaptor for the brakes) it is still using the early ball joints, the later ones are angled and as such allow full suspension movement, this mod makes the limiting factor in suspension travel the jamming of the balljoint. So it will want to pull the ball out of the socket.

To fix it you will need to change the lower ball joints and top control arms to the later style , also what tie rods ends were used early or late, there is a difference there too. I wouldn't drive the car how it is.

If you value your life I would fix it up pronto.

Greg

RDS928S

Greg G.

the ball joints are new oem units for the 85/86 model year car.
Also the tie rods are stock oem 86 units.
The brake adapter brackets are from 928 Specialist. The only part changed out is the early spindle from 78-81 model year vs. my early 86 spindle.

Rich

GregBBRD

As the car goes into compression, the ball joint body must rotate outwards towards the rotor, since the shaft is captive in the spindle. The body sits really close to the rotor and hits the rotor. I've only seen 3-4 cars with this conversion in my shop, but each and every one hits. The harder the car is driven (the more suspension travel) the harder it hits. Since the top of the ball joint shaft is captive in the spindle and the lower part is captive in the ball joint, the force of the body hitting the rotor is attempting to break the ball joint shaft in the middle. This sucks and is very dangerous. I have extemsive digital pictures of the problem. If I had made this conversion, I'd call everyone that had ever bought a conversion and buy it back. The lawsuit for the first broken ball joint will break almost anyone.

I tried to fix two of these cars. There is a part of the rotor that the brake pads don't hit on the inner edge. I chucked the rotor up in the lathe and removed this area. I smoothed down the galled and torn ball joint body and gently radiused the area out. This fixed one car that was not driven very hard, but the other still hits....although not very hard.

This is the typical aftermarket thing. The rotors have the wrong offset. The correct way to do this conversion is to use a custom made brake hat with the "turbo" rotors that unbolt from the hats. Remove the stock hat, bolt on the custom hat with the correct offset. Make a slightly different offset adaptor for the calipers and you would have a proper conversion kit.

greg brown

slate blue

I'll stand corrected on the balljoint fronts, I must admit on first look it seemed that you had a late type spindle, I have done this conversion myself but with the kit, I did use 993 twin turbo discs, these have reduced hat height as such they don't hit the balljoint regardless of the travel in the suspension, unfortunately I don't have the time to get a pic for you except from the below photo you may notice that the hat height or depth is much less than the GTS discs. It won't hit with these but it still come close, about 3 to 4 mm at its worst.

Hope the photos help.







Greg

RDS928S

Here is my clearence between ball joint and rotor.
Pretty dam close.
The piece of cardboard is held in place by the tight tolerance.
Again ball joint is newer steel unit 85/86 and spindles are early units 78-81 model year.

Rich

GregBBRD

Yup. Now go hit a bump or corner the car and see where the ball joint hits. You will quickly understand the problem.

greg brown

Fabio421

Greg Brwon...what about what Greg Grey is saying? Would his setup be the safe way to do the conversion?

GregBBRD

Fabio421:

Sounds and looks like it clears fine. Haven't seen it up close or seen one done this way.

greg brown

Pfunde

I'll go for that too, as I did !

RDS928S

Gregg/Gregg,

Can anyone clarify which model year balljoint is the "safe" or correct unit for this conversion with the early spindle stub?
Which one is the non- angled unit ?.

Thanks Rich

GregBBRD

I don't think there is a "correct" ball joint. I think you have the only one that you could use, right now. The problem is that the rotor sits too close to the ball joint. It's another crappy aftermarket thing that has the ability to hurt someone.

greg brown

BC

Rich - the Larger hat idea can be solved possibly with the hats required to put BB on the S4 cars. They are a bit deeper. Then you would need to put the caliper out a bit as well - but that would require a new bracket dimension.

RDS928S

Gregg,

ok then which rotor will solve the problem and will fit to the hub on my early 86?.

Rich