I picked up a set of DP Racing camber plates a year and a half ago through this site. Good deal on what seems to be a good product-- I was happy. Now that I'm finally preparing to use them, though, I discover a problem that's got me stumped.
The spherical bearing in the camber plate is 5/8 ID. That's the only way DPR makes them (http://www.dpracing.co/#!datsun-510-fro ... ion-1/cdht). That's probably why I never thought anything of it when I bought these plates. A 5/8 bearing just seemed to be the normal setup.
It took all of two seconds though when I held them up to my 280ZX strut cartridges the other day (KYB cartridges-- also bought used here, from Norm) (thanks again!) to realize this just ain't gonna work. I haven't done exhaustive research but a bit of poking around suggests that the "standard" Datsun/Nissan strut cartridge threading is 12mm. And further, that 12mm part of the shaft has a "D" profile-- flattened on one side-- in order to hold the shaft from turning when you're threading the nut on or off.
First thought: I'll just change the bearing. According to McMaster Carr, a 12mm ID spherical bearing is readily available. However, that bearing's 30mm OD doesn't fit into the 1 3/16 inch socket in DPR's camber plate. Swapping an ID problem for an OD problem doesn't get me anywhere.
My second idea: A piece of 5/8 OD steel pipe with a wall at least 2mm thick (a bit more than 1/16 inch) could be turned down (or maybe even filed down?) to achieve a 12mm ID. Pop that insert into the current 5/8 bearing and the strut shaft would at least fit snugly in terms of lateral movement.
But I'd still have two remaining problems. (1) No "D" feature to hold the strut shaft from turning. Having fought with Hyundai strut cartridges on my son's car that lacked such a feature, I am convinced that this "D" profile is a Very Good Idea indeed.
(2) Even if I solve that problem, the ball of this 5/8 spherical bearing is so TALL (19mm) that only 6mm of the threaded part of the strut shaft projects above it. The nut that goes onto that shaft requires 10mm of threading to be fully engaged. And that's without the Nyloc portion of the threading, which adds another 2mm or so. Ideally the strut shaft should project at least 12mm above the bearing-- that is, a full 6 mm more than the height of this 5/8 bearing allows for. Because the 12mm ID bearing that McMaster Carr offers is only 16mm tall, going that route would gain me 3mm overall-- which would maybe be minimally acceptable. But then I'd be back to the problem that its OD doesn't work, nor does it have a "D" profile....
Ideas?
