S130 Suspension Tech

[Smokescreen]

If your talking about where the Crossmember mounts to the uni-body I think that would help keep stock alignment.... You will have to adjust rear shock/spring mount to accommodate for the difference in height caused by the crossmember mount. IMHO.... and we all know what opinions are like. You may not be very happy with this car raised up on the rear-end. It is already prone to roll-out due to the trailing arm setup. Elevating your weight may not serve well. unless you want strictly a straight line machine. In that case you will have some room for big rubber out back which is a plus. Again my $.02

Jason

[frank280zx]

I agree completely, Frank. I have looked into the Datsun 510 forums and have found some nice heim joint fabs they are doing. I am collaborating with one of their guys to utilize zedX dimensions and try to put together something for us! Here are some of the datsun 510 pics.

Not zx spec yet... what do you think? Does anyone know the width of the stock rear trailing arm Bushing btw LOL?

Jason

 

Wow that is a nice solution.

however what do extreem loads do to it? would it cause it to go off alighnment? the E30 set up with heim joints has no room for 'sliding'

[260DET]

The book How to Hotrod & Race Your Datsun has mod info on the 510 rear suspension, once race mod back in the day was to make the semi trailing arm inner pivot point adjustable. Which looks like what those gadgets in post #17 are for.

 

The sweep angle of the arm can also be changed, I recall reading about that on a BMW site. As Frank says, BMW is a good one to copy given their race history.

[powershotnt]

If your talking about where the Crossmember mounts to the uni-body I think that would help keep stock alignment.... You will have to adjust rear shock/spring mount to accommodate for the difference in height caused by the crossmember mount. IMHO.... and we all know what opinions are like. You may not be very happy with this car raised up on the rear-end. It is already prone to roll-out due to the trailing arm setup. Elevating your weight may not serve well. unless you want strictly a straight line machine. In that case you will have some room for big rubber out back which is a plus. Again my $.02

Jason

IMHO is exactly what i am looking for..thank you

[Smokescreen]

Wow that is a nice solution.

however what do extreem loads do to it? would it cause it to go off alighnment? the E30 set up with heim joints has no room for 'sliding'

I haven't checked into wether or not it maintains it position during a flogging. I just assumed that since that was what they were running that all was well.

Good point I'll get back to ya.

Jasob

[hunterzed]

I don't see why it would slide or flex any more than the factory mounts. It just moves the mount away from the cross member. It wouldn't be a rigid mount like some cars have for track but in most cases that wouldn't be an ideal solution anyway. From the pics of what this is designed to do you get the benefit of adjustablility and the extra comfort of a normal ride because you're using normal bushes. Best of both worlds as far as I can see.

[Smokescreen]

Yeah, I am really really excited about these brackets,I'm going to pull a crossmember from the local P&P. Completely restore it with this bracket upgrade then I think my car will be exactly where I want it. Gonna need some custom alignment after it's all done, more money please.....lol. I will post up the finished product after the holidays are over. I will be runnin lean until January on the extra scratch for my Z. That doesnt mean we should kill the thread we need to keep the info and opinions coming on our ZedX's. I'm excited about making our cars work. Has everyone been to Xenons page? He has the FSM available for us and lots of good info. his link is in Post#2 I believe.

Jason

[turbobluestreak]

I didn't see this mentioned yet http://www.datsport.com/

If you are willing to swap the rear supsension this guy has a s13 rear suspension under his s130 http://www.takkun.net/dri-z-000.htm

 

 

 

tbs

[frank280zx]

To be honest apart from the more widely available upgrade parts for s13 (so preventing yourself from doing the R&D and fabbing work) I don’t see the point of s13 suspension.

To me the trailing arms never have been a set back, and apparently BMW didn’t seem to bother to change it out either.

The amount of work to fit s13 suspension would be as much, if not more, as adapting the trailing arm to be a perfectly adjustable set up.

[FricFrac]

Subscribed. Interested to see the results. Surprised no adjustable solution has really solidified on this over all these years. We use to slot the mount then use a star washer to hold it in place to adjust the camber. Looking for a better solution for my new 280ZX...

[Jared]

Any good links on the Bmw stuff?

[Jared]

Found this one, a quick interesting read:

http://www.e30m3project.com/e30m3performance/tech_articles/susp-tech/rear_curves/index.htm

[260DET]

its a good site that, note info on the front strut suspension as well. Understand and follow what he says and you can't go far wrong.

[Forcer]

Subscribed. This thread has good timing since I want to redo the suspension on my ZX over the winter. Read that E30 link. To be honest, I'm not mathmatically inclined and I kinda got lost. So please forgive me in advance if/when I ask a "stupid" quiestion.

[plexus]

Subscribed. This thread has good timing since I want to redo the suspension on my ZX over the winter. Read that E30 link. To be honest, I'm not mathmatically inclined and I kinda got lost. So please forgive me in advance if/when I ask a "stupid" quiestion.

 

here here ^^, i get what the author states on regards to the toe in/out and camber, dont get the math but do have a grasp of what they are saying. my question is this, how pratical is it? by no means is a e30 suspension a bolt on with a few bangs of a good BFH. wouldnt it be more pratical to fab the e30 suspension in to the zx's bolt postion, but if your going to do this why not utilize a s13, i.e. get some steele and match the deminsions of the e30 to the zx bolt locations. sorta like this guy i saw on here (cant recall his screen name) i think, who shoved (alott of cutting and welding) a c5 vette rearend under his z.

 

doing the front will require alot more finesse but if your going through the trouble of the rear, why not take the front end down as well. when and only when (complete tear down and rebuild) i feel it is time to take this on i plan on getting some thick adjustible four link bars cut, mock and burn them in and make (just need to remember the geometry of the stock parts) my own kit unless arizona z makes one for the zx, i like the one for the z.

 

for now a set of ultra cool coil overs will do.

[Smokescreen]

I don't think you necessarily have to pull an E30 swap to fix your suspension set-up. Essentially our cars and the E30 have the same design(trailing Arm Rear Suspension) What I'm gonna do here is try to copycat some of the E30 upgrades for my ZX. I have found several similar suspension designs and I can see where we could benefit from their ideas. I just gotta find some people who can Fab... There are several setups like the Camber/toe brackets that I linked earlier in this thread and some fully custom rear suspension set-ups from Arizona Z cars, etc.. The swap is cool, but You would still have to do some work to make the E30 setup bad arse when lowered. I have been looking and I think with the Brackets and some bumpsteer spacers up front should put my car well ahead of my driving capabilities at this point.

Jason

My $.02

[FricFrac]

I e-mailed Dave at ArizonaZcar and he says he has a suspension designed for the S130 but hasn't implemented it yet as he's quite busy. It would probably be a good idea if you are interested to let him know. There just isn't anything available for the S130 right now but I think if people see there is a market they are more likely to make something for our cars.

[frank280zx]

I think mister Beta motorsport should be able to do the work on most of our designs.

Like Smokescreen states you need to 'copy' the design as from suspension design it is very similar. Needles to say the e30 M3 was very competitive.

Maybe I need to explain why you would want to modify or not.

Modifying only makes sense when you really lower the car, and/or use it to compete. Mainly do to the camber changes when (extreme) lowering a semi trailing arm design.

You don’t want 3 to 4 degrees camber in the back, (street driven it eats tires, competative it sucks) And you don’t want the fairly extreme toe in like the S130 has stock when you compete.

A heim joint set up doesn’t help comfort and wears out faster than bushings.

So question yourself what you do with the car, if it is mainly spirited street driven action your car sees (as most s130 in the us see) you can get away with mush less invasive modifications like simply slotting the bolt holes.

And that would only be when you go coil-overs as the stock lowering sets don’t really make these modifications necessary.

In my case I’m building a full non street driven race car, and that simply takes a whole different approach, as suspension design and brakes are far more important than heaps of power.

[FricFrac]

My concern is to be able to adjust the camber. I may autocross the car from time to time but its not likely to become a track car. I HATE the stock suspension and I don't like to do stuff half way then wish I'd spent the extra money and done it properly. If I put coil overs in I want to be able to adjust the car back to a stock caster depending on its ride height. From what I can tell the offset bushings don't hold their position especially when used for autoX, etc.

[JMortensen]

From what I can tell the offset bushings don't hold their position especially when used for autoX, etc.

Offset bushings on the Z move pretty regularly. Haven't heard of this on the ZX, and I had a friend who just slotted his crossmember by hand and adjusted it with a prybar, and he never had issues with the alignment changing. I think the problem in the Z is that the suspension loads the camber bushing right in the same plane to get it to move. On the ZX the bushing is off at a weird angle due to the semi-trailing arm, so I think it would be less likely to move. Also the Z camber bushings fit into a clamshell kind of strap in the suspension. The ZX camber bushings are not held in a clamshell, they're held by the bolt that goes through the bushing, which I think is a better way to do it. No direct experience, but my slotted front crossmember on my Z never budged a bit and I did autoxes and track days with big sticky tires and DD the thing for 40K miles.