What Lower Ball Joints?


A

Ashy C

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Jan 26, 2010
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What do people recommend for the ball joints? I'm currently replacing all the bushes, camber arms, toe arms, drop links and springs, BUT i havent got any lower ball joints for the front? Do Blueprint do them? Are local motor factors ok?

Is the EK9 ball joint same as the rest of the EK range?

I have had a quick search but oppions on which would be best.

Cheers
Ash
 
I have just bouht the meister r ones
Not fitted them yet and tried them, but they seem good quality !
 
I would advise against RCAs personally unless you have a race car with very low, very stiff suspension.

I would weigh up between the cost of brand new Honda OEM joints (expensive but good) and blueprint items, (much cheaper but more likely to fail). IIRC you can buy two blueprints for the price of one OEM one.

I would say BPs are OK for normal road use, if you do a lot of track driving then just get the OEM stuff.
 
They can negatively affect bump steer in stock or mildly lowered vehicles.
 
I'm stying standard height so just bog standard ball joints, it does get light track use 4-5 days a year, with around 5000 road miles. Will get on the phone tomorrow or Tues and enquire :-D

Thanks for the speedy replies guys! !!!!
 
Kozy said:
They can negatively affect bump steer in stock or mildly lowered vehicles.
Click to expand...

See now i have the Buddy club RCA's fitted on mine and i have little to no bump steer with them, im not sure if this is because my car is not as low as some but my front lower arms are just pointing down so not horizontal/ pointing up but my toe arms are pointing up a lot so you would think i would have really bad bump steer but i don't ?

but still i don't like the arms pointing up like they are so having some inserts made for the knuckle so i can switch the toe arms from side to side and flip them upside down so that they are more horizontal.
 
R11CH said:
See now i have the Buddy club RCA's fitted on mine and i have little to no bump steer with them, im not sure if this is because my car is not as low as some but my front lower arms are just pointing down so not horizontal/ pointing up but my toe arms are pointing up a lot so you would think i would have really bad bump steer but i don't ?

but still i don't like the arms pointing up like they are so having some inserts made for the knuckle so i can switch the toe arms from side to side and flip them upside down so that they are more horizontal.
Click to expand...

Now that will **** with your bump steer. Horrendously.

The angle of the arms is largely irrelevant, it's where they are pointing that matters. If it is at the intersection of the force lines from the upper and lower arms (the instant center) then you have no bump steer. If it aims above or below this, you have bump steer.

Some light reading on the subject here. Only theory, but might be interesting none the less.
 
Kozy said:
Now that will **** with your bump steer. Horrendously.

The angle of the arms is largely irrelevant, it's where they are pointing that matters. If it is at the intersection of the force lines from the upper and lower arms (the instant center) then you have no bump steer. If it aims above or below this, you have bump steer.

Some light reading on the subject here. Only theory, but might be interesting none the less.
Click to expand...


Cheers for that link :nice: makes total sense and doing what i said above would indeed make bump steer a lot worse !

Just need to work out a way of checking my intersection point but it cant be far out due to having hardly any bump steer at all which would come down to the ride height of the car and the position of the arms.

EDIT: after reading a lot more into that link why do i not research more into things before buying them :(
 
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That thread has made me very angry, ( http://honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=3009020 ) Had those parts (Buddyclub RCA's & Hardrace inverted track rod ends) sat around for ages after having read the product's description they seemed like a great purchase that could only help! so I Bought them, and after a long time finally got them fitted!

Just spent my last bit of "spare money", (Having just bought a house I kept this aside to get my car set up so i could use it this year) Got the car set up and corner weighted Only to find that the bump-steer is now Horrendous. So now I need New OEM track rod ends. Unless I can fit the hardrace ones Upside down (on-top of the knuckle) And then pay for a set up all over again. (at least its only alignment not full geo it will change)

Pain in the arse. Should of just re-freshed everything with OEM parts.
 
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my car is very low and i run the buddyclub RCAs, noticeable flatter front end on turn in, fitted these 2 years ago before the first nurburgring trip and as far as i'm concerned are an awesome addition

as for the inverted tie rod ends, i fitted these when the car was off the road building the B18, so not had a chance to test them that much

as far as i can see the rod ends do improve how sharp the steering is, car seems more keen to turn in, although as i say these have only seen minimal road use and it's hard to tell how bad or not my bump steer is with 22k/20k spring rates!

will pay a bit more attention once i'm back on the road this week and report back
 
Your car is a bit of a special case in that it is ridiculously stiff, very low and probably bordering on a zero droop setup. Obviously to have bump steer, there needs to be suspension travel and there isn't going to be much there on yours.
 
very true Kozy

the RCAs were ran when i had buddyclub N+ dampers with more sensible rates and again, i thought they were awesome

i think Neil's troubles may just be the rod ends - i know with my ride height that if i look under the car the lower arms are bang on horzontal (the EK9 setup was, be interesting to see if there is any difference running DC2 stuff) and as are the steering arms :)
 
Yeah My steering arms & Lower arms are bang on horizontal also, And It does feel very keen to turn in, With the rod ends how they are as i turn in the inside wheel will actually turn slightly tighter due to it lifting, Which isn't really a massive issue?! As surely having your arms at stock angles (horizontal) is a good thing? Its hard not having a stock ek9 to compare it with on and off the ground.

Ill take a video to demonstrate what I mean tonight, As i think you will be shocked!

A much harder set up would definitely benefit me but I really can't afford new suspension with the new house, Car has to take the back foot for now!
 
You don't want the arms horizontal, you want them pointing at where the upper and lower control arm projection lines meet. You cannot judge this by eye unfortunately, the angle of the lower arms is misleading because they sit at a different angle to the line joining the ball joint and inner pickup which is the one that matters.
 
Yeah I saw the deceiving lower arms on your link you posted previously as its measured from where the balljoint bolts on, not the arm itself. Was a good little read! As much as it interests me. This stuff is a pain in the arse! But thanks for the help Kozy / Steven as allways :nice:
 
The stock geometry should look something like this:
RCAd1.jpg


Those three grey lines going off to the left are the projection lines and although they meet well off the screen some 200" away, they are all pointing in the same direction to some degree.

If I zero the toe on this and sweep the suspension from 1/2" rebound to 1/2" compression there is .25° of toe change across the axle.

This is how the geometry looks lowered 1.5" (40mm).

RCAd2.jpg


Looks bad but the track rod projection line only moves below the instant centre by .36" over stock which isn't going to affect bump steer that much. The toe change for the same 1" sweep through rebound and compression is only .09°. Strange, but it appears to have improved if anything. I'm not going to pretend I understand that.

Here's how it looks if we then add a 3/4" extended balljoint which seems to be the most common size, add readjust the ride height back to the 1.5" lowered.

RCAd3.jpg


Oh dear, starting to look properly wonky now. The TRPL is now 3.1" below the IC. 1" travel gives 1.1° of toe change but in the opposite direction.

Finally, lets flip the track rod. I haven't done this before so this is new to me, I don't have any data on how much it is relocated by either so have simply moved the outboard joint 1" lower. By eyeballing it that has to be the minimum it moves.

RCAd4.jpg


That's now punted the TRPL off in the other direction, it's now 2.76" above the IC.
1" travel gives 1.39° toe change, but back in the original direction.

RCAd5.jpg


Make of it what you will, it's by no means conclusive evidence but to me that tells me I shouldn't be bothering with either of those parts. There's nothing to fix, a lot to **** up.
 
I'll check the effects on steering response later on. I expect the flipped track rods generate dynamic toe out far quicker than the stock rods if the bump steer is anything to go by.
 
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