Daytona ride-height and shock bushing work | FerrariChat

Daytona ride-height and shock bushing work

Discussion in 'Vintage (thru 365 GTC4)' started by gcalex, Nov 14, 2021.

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  1. gcalex

    gcalex Formula Junior
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    So in the "Official Daytona Pics" thread, Timo commented that the right height of my car seemed to be off (too low), particularly at the front.

    I speculated that the various rubber parts had likely crushed, and were responsible.

    Well yesterday I actually (finally) crawled under the car to check it out. Turns out that all the bushes on the shocks were obviously deformed and the rubber seats of the springs look very compressed at the front (though did not look that bad at the rear).

    I did not see any easy way to measure the compression of the rear springs without a 4-post lift, but at the front, the spring compression measured-out at about the factory-specified 205mm, though the center-to-center of the shock bolts was something like 305mm, so about 15mm short of the factory spec. Losing 4mm at each of the rubber points seems perfectly plausible, and is consistent with every rubber part that I could get a good view of.

    So a couple of questions come to mind.

    1) Does anyone know of a source for polyurethane bushes for the shocks (and for all the other bushes in the Daytona suspension, for that matter)? I used such bushes when I redid my 308, and really liked them. Energy Suspension has replacements for some of the bushes, but not the shocks (nor the majority of the bushes).

    2) Is it possible to get the shock+spring assemblies out of the car without completely dismantling the suspension? While I realize that the other rubber is likely in need of replacement, I'm still uncertain about some of the finishes to use on the various components, and hate to do a complete teardown until I'm confident about what finishes to apply before reassembling.

    All thoughts/experiences/sources are appreciated!
     
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  2. dgunn365

    dgunn365 Formula Junior
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    Our shocks are heading to the Koni people in Sonoma where we understand they will do "everything". That said we are sending along the eight new shock bushes needed as they were with the car as received. They have no markings so I cannot help there. And, they are rubber.
    As you know we are deep in the finishes questions; see Rory's thread. We are doing cad 1 ('silver') on the suspension arms but the calipers are an open question.
    My Australian friend Howard is going to split his calipers to check the finish. As you have probably seen Timo's photos have 'yellow' cad on many of the pieces.
    He does admit that he has not worked a plexi nose car.
    It is unlikely that the suspension needs to come apart to get the coilovers out; but I was not there when ours were done.
     
  3. daytonaman

    daytonaman Formula Junior

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    David my plexi definitely has nickel a arms. you can see it is peeling which cad or zinc does not
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  4. dgunn365

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    Saw that and it is interesting as nickel is not part of our current conversation; yellow cad vs silver cad.
    Can you assume your are in their original coating?
     
  5. daytonaman

    daytonaman Formula Junior

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    Absolutely for my car at least. This was also supported by several other owners in the post about plating recently
     
  6. gcalex

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    One thing I will add to the "nickel" discussion is that nickel is a pretty tough finish; even if the arms have been over-painted, it should be no problem to lightly strip the paint, and find the nickel underneath. Similarly, it would be hard for rust to completely remove all the nickel from all the arms. So..

    ...if the arms are original to the car, and have not been destructively refinished as some point in the past, there is is good chance you can settle the debate, by just carefully examining the arms.

    Of course, if they have been restored aggressively in the past, then you won't be able to trust anything that you find.
     
  7. 1monza

    1monza Formula Junior
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    From my experience, most Daytonas had a dull nickel finish on the A-Arms. For some reason some people have them yellow cadium plated or painted the arms a goldish color. I have seen both yellow cadium and silver cadium finished ATE brake calipers. The suspension hardware has a variety of types of plating. Rebuilding the suspension on a Daytona or similar is quite the job. I photograph and take notes because there are a lot of pieces.
     
  8. gcalex

    gcalex Formula Junior
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    Regarding the finish of the arms, I always go back to this picture (that Steve Hill posted over a decade ago):
    [​IMG]

    While I admit, that it is possible that the gold tint is just a trick of the lighting, my overall sense is that it is gold cad.

    Personally, I'm trending toward copying what is shown here, as Steve claimed that this was from a 2k-mile car, though he did not specify the vintage, so don't know how applicable it is to my car...
     
  9. dgunn365

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    Thanks for your input. We are well down the road with photo records.
    Back in another life I took over 600 poleroids of 12467 as I took it to bare metal.
     
  10. dgunn365

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    The 'nickel thing got to us and we are considering that for the calipers. As I had done cad 1 on 12467's arms I am not yet sure we should do nickel there.
    We also note that the sway bar is black; but the bush bracket seems unpainted; the suspension attachments are 'silver; cad 1?? and the caliper does look gold. Cannot quite see what the swaybar link is, nor the suspension arm 'spreader. It is interesting to compare this to the front Timo did in post #1714.
     
  11. daytonaman

    daytonaman Formula Junior

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    Dave Nickel is not suitable for calipers --- check with your vintage porsche guys
     
  12. gcalex

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    I've looked at a lot of pictures, and I feel like it is quite possible that the sway-bar brackets might have come in both gold and silver cad, but it seems unlikely that they were ever painted. Very early cars I know little about, but whenever those brackets are painted, there always seems to be plenty of evidence that the suspension had significant work done on them.

    The suspension-attachments and drop-links seem generally to be silver cad, though I think some rare gold ones are not impossible. Again, painted examples always seem to look like they have been worked/redone.

    The arm spreaders are a tough one; somehow the color of those guys never seems to be that clear in pics. One thing I've noted in that pic from Steve Hill, however, is that the end of it does not look to be black ox (compared to the ends of the other bolts), so that would seem to leave silver cad, or maybe nickel?

    This nickel thing is really interesting, because nickel might well look tangibly different from silver cad in pictures, and maybe a nickel finish would explain the very obvious difference between the arms and the suspension mounts.

    Perhaps while this is really on my mind, I should tear apart my suspension this winter, and find-out what is under all the black paint on my suspension. My guess is that I can find a stripper that will let me see what is under the paint, and with so many bits to work with I can try a lot of different types of strippers... :)
     
  13. gcalex

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    So since no-one chimed-in about the above, I thought I would post my findings for future DIYers...

    The answer is "only mild disassembly is needed, and you don't need to touch anything that would impact alignment".

    Regarding the fronts, you can't get the shocks out, unless you disconnect the upper A-arm from the hub:
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    Note that I had trouble with the cross brace of the lower A-arm sitting between two turns of the coil, and preventing the assembly from coming out, but by turning the whole assembly like a screw, I was able to shift the position of the brace relative to the coil turns, and free the assembly.

    Situation was kindred at the rear, accept here, one could not get at the low bolts of the shock mounting because they were literally trapped between the upper arms. The solution was again to detach the upper arms from the hub, and raise them up enough to get to the bolts. Note that the upper arms will not raise sufficiently, unless you first detach the upper shock-mounting bolt, and tilt the shock so that it pulled forward a little past vertical:
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    Note: Considerable lifting and pushing-down of the hubs was needed to get the assemblies to come-out, and if I had it to do again, I probably would have detached the anti-sway-bars to make these manipulations a little easier. That said, I was able to get everything out even with the anti-sway-bars still attached.

    BTW: The standard Eastwood coil remover worked easily to get the springs off; plenty of travel available to release the springs:
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    The right-hand shots show the initial positions that I put the tool at. From these points, the amount of compression needed to release the holding plates as not too scary (as shown in lower left pic).
     
  14. TTR

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    Alex, would I be correct to assume you measured (as I’ve previously explained somewhere here) & recorded the “ride height” specs of all four corners prior to disassembly ?

    It's just that I went through all this (again) about a week ago with a +/-20K mile (unrestored) example and even did a full alignment with subsequent test drives right before correcting the ride height to factory specs and then did the alignment again, just to have more back-to-back data (I've done similar corrections to few Daytonas already).

    Results/transformation of (improved) handling is noticeable, although technical proof could probably be achieved only with timed track testing or something similar.

    Also, the “stance”, whether empty or fully loaded car, ended up looking much more appropriate than in majority of examples out there.

    Another interesting observation with this (and all others I’ve done this to) was that accurate alignment specs weren’t really achievable without correctly set ride height.
     
  15. gcalex

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    Hi Timo,

    I sent you all the "before" measurements some time ago in another thread...

    To me, the car handled better than most (that I have driven), just as it was.

    The main reason I'm pulling the shocks is because one of the front shock bushes was crushed to the point that it looked to me in danger of allowing metal-to-metal contact. The rears were actually in pretty good shape, but I figured I might as well do all four corners at once.

    Best for the Holidays!
    Alex
     
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  16. Edward 96GTS

    Edward 96GTS F1 Veteran
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    timo
    do you have before and after pix of the ride height?
     
  17. TTR

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    Alex, I found them and comparing to my notes, as I noted on that other thread, your cars front ride height seems quite (significantly) off, even without additional 300-400 lbs of ballast weight it appeared to be lacking at the time of measuring.
    The rear seems fairly close to expected, but adding aforementioned ballast would likely bring it considerably lower.
     
  18. TTR

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    Absolutely, along with a lot of other "before/after" data and documentation on all cars I've sorted and/or worked on.
     
  19. Edward 96GTS

    Edward 96GTS F1 Veteran
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    care to post them. would be interesting to see the difference.
     
  20. gcalex

    gcalex Formula Junior
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    The fronts were about an inch low, if I recall. By my estimation I might have been about 200lb light in absolute terms, but I was properly weighted on the side that I was measuring.

    Looking at the rubber bits, it looks likely to me that almost all of that inch was lost in the crushed rubber.

    If I am still a little low after the rebuild, I'm not inclined to worry about it.

    Like I said, most Daytonas that I've test driven handled worse than mine; and I've given mine more "stick" than I ever risked with other people's cars... :)
     
  21. TTR

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    Sorry, but for privacy & proprietary concerns, can’t/won’t at this time. Maybe in the future.

    OTOH, if seriously interested, you (or anyone else) could see the difference by performing corrections to your (their) own car or temporarily mocking it up for (factory) given specs.
     
  22. gcalex

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    So having gotten "crickets" regarding my query about the availability of polyurethane bushes for Daytonas, I looked into it myself.

    Compared to what I am used to (308 GTS), the Daytona does not have much rubber in the suspension (impressively little, actually). All the the sway-bar linkages are full of the stuff, but in the grand scheme of suspension geometry, those are not of great consequence; also the sway-bar stuff is easy to get to if it deteriorates, so I ultimately decided to use rubber for that stuff.

    Much to my surprise, no one has polyurethane shock bushes. Since a lot of Ferraris could take a common bush, I would have thought that someone would make one. Also, much to my dismay the bushes that Performance Shock put on during my shock rebuild look nothing like the originals. I had Performance Shock save the old bushing shells, however, so I may cast my own polyurethanes when it comes time to replace those bushes again.

    Regarding the rear-inner bushes, Energy Suspension and PowerFlex make polyurethanes, and DinoParts sells a bush with hard (and I do mean *hard*) plastic inserts. Unfortunately, the Energy Suspension and PowerFlex bushes use plastic or polyurethane washers on the ends of the bushes, so they look quite different than the stock items. I considered trying to replace the washers with metal ones, but looking at how the bushes work, I can see why they used plastic; metal could potentially start to wear into the mounting forks.

    The DinoParts bushes go from Teflon (hard) to Delrin (super hard), and I had my doubts that it was really a good idea to "firm up" the suspension quite that much. Fortunately, the inserts are made to be easily swapped in/out, so the solution was simply to cast some new ones from polyurethane. Energy Suspension sells a liquid polyurethane (meant for casting random types of motor mounts) in various harnesses, so all one needs is the original inserts (as patterns), some casting rubber (available from many sources), and the liquid polyurethane. Some "mold dam/frame" pieces make things easier, and generally speaking, it is a good idea to use either petroleum-jelly, or "cooking spray" to coat various things (like patterns and mold interiors) so that everything comes apart as easy as possible.

    Note: You want to use a big syringe to inject the liquid-poly into the bottom of the mold, so that bubbles don't form. But...

    ...the liquid-poly hardens fast; in less than 10 minutes, it is too hard to push through a syringe. So one has no time to be careful/dainty; once you mix, you have to move fast to get a complete set of bush inserts. I've done a lot of this sort of casting before, and I have never really found that it was critical to use a vacuum chamber to get all the air out of stuff (either the mold rubber, or the liquid material being molded), and I'm not even sure that would be practical for the liquid-poly (because it hardens so fast). In any case except for a few "pin bubbles", my inserts came-out fine without needing a trip to a vacuum chamber.

    Since "a picture is worth a thousand words":
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    Tip: Use double-sided tape to hold the patterns to the hard surface that defines (what will become) the top surface of the mold; you don't want to glue the patterns down, because it will be really hard to pull off the rubber mold (pulling out a single pattern is easy, but pulling out a bunch all at once is a lot harder).

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    Tip: It is important to over-fill the mold, so that you get full-dimension parts. Once the parts are out of the mold, you just use the side of a grinding wheel to remove the excess material. Note that the liquid-poly does shrink a bit, but the inserts still fit well, because they are not that thick (shrinkage does not amount to very much in absolute terms). If I had it all to do over, I might have coated the patters with a little paint to increase their dimension a miniscule amount.

    In the upper-left above, you can see some examples of what happens once the liquid-poly gets too hard to push through a syringe, or if you don't use a syringe, or if you fail to over-fill the mold.

    And here is the final outcome:
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    Yes, I know that it does not look exactly like an OEM part; shells are stainless, and thickness of various things are a little different here-and-there.

    Still, I think it is close enough to not be obvious, and now, one can trivially experiment with different hardness bushes without even having to pull the a-arms from the car. Who knows, maybe someday I will even try those crazy-hard green plastic inserts... :)
     
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  23. turbo-joe

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  24. TTR

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    Great work Alex, my hat’s off to your effort.

    Do you have any plans for technical (road or track) testing between OEM and yours to see what performance improvements can or might be achieved ?
    Also, once these are in use, please keep notes of dates & mileage to record for their longevity.

    Years ago, I, or more specifically a client who wanted to help with his car’s restoration, did some semi-hard urethane casting for the car (a Daytona), but the final product, while it served some mechanical/technical purpose, it is/was more about aesthetics (read authenticity) and not a performance or safety related as your project.
    The original item had broken off year or decades before and gone missing (with no exact* replacements available), but I had couple of other Daytonas in the shop from which he/we were able to use same parts for mold pattern, but I do recall it taking multiple attempts to get it “just right” (he’s an artist and a bit of perfectionist when it comes to aesthetic details).
    When all said and done, I told him that based on the hours he spent on it, this small detail was one of the more expensive to achieve in that restoration or could’ve been, had it been hired out.
    He “volunteered” with few other small (non-casting) detail projects and while most turned out great, all took fair amount of time & effort, one came out “just OK”.

    *Ironically, couple of years later I found some NOS components, which the aforementioned casting is part of and bought them for little over $100.- each, but will I ever encounter or hear about another broken one ?
     
  25. gcalex

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    Hi Timo,

    My OEMs were decades old, so I'm actually in no position to do any sort of fair comparison; also, I'm not enough of a "hot shoe" to provide any solid subjective judgements.

    As I've stated in the past, my car actually handled better than "average" (I've probably done at least a dozen Daytona test drives over the years) when I got it. But after having gone through the renewal process, I now put that down to (1) the fact that it had new tires, (2) the rear was actually in pretty solid shape (so inclined to "stay put"), and (3) I've mostly test-driven "driver" cars that likely were suffering from some neglect (though I will say that the best cars that I've driven previously were not ones that seemed particularly doted upon).

    The inserts I made are not massively stiffer than rubber, so I don't expect there would be much difference. The main reasons that I did the polyurethane was longevity (the bushes on my 308 look no different than they did 20 years ago when they were put on), and the ease of renewal (I never want to ever have to push those bushing-shells out of my a-arms again).

    That said, once I get the car really sorted, and put a few k-miles on it (to build-up a mental reference), I might go ahead and swap-in some harder inserts to see if anything noticeable happens.

    It's always hard to know if "harder is better"; if you are racing a hot-hatch there is some argument, because the factory is likely to have tuned the bushes for a less aggressive driving style, and the suspension geometry might very well be a little off if you are really pushing. On my 308, I did notice better steering response, but the Daytona has no rubber up-front, so I don't expect anything like that. Oh, and I've subsequently found that tire type make way more difference in steering than the bushes do.

    Regarding casting, if you want good cosmetics, then a vacuum-chamber is the way to go, and it is still a real pain; Verell at Unobtainium definitely earns his money; I'd never break-out the mold rubber, unless there were no choice...

    It is funny how things often turn-up more after you don't need them anymore, but I've had my car for a couple of years now, and I still have a substantial list of things that I'm contemplating trying to fabricate/reproduce... :)

    Cheers,
    Alex
     
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