280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

View and post your Nissan/Datsun project(s)
Post Reply
User avatar
Byron510
Moderator
Posts: 12658
Joined: 01 Jul 2003 23:06
Location: Maple Ridge, BC

280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

Post by Byron510 »

My latest side track project;

I have been asked by a good friend for the past year if I could make the rear PL510 camber toe brackets work on the 79-82 280ZX. In principal, the suspension systems are nearly identical and so is the correction method: see my PL510 application here;

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6946


Over the Christmas holidays I finally got under a ZX for a good look. And it wasn't all that good. 510 guys better be happy with all that room under your suspension, the ZX guys don't have 1/2 the room to play with.
Adapting the PL510 brackets is out the window for sure, there is no way that my design will come anywhere close to fitting.
But I'm not throwing in the towel, I'm going to make it work. Not only will it be a total redesign for the 280ZX application, but I'll need to make new tooling to form up the parts as well adding to time and cost.
Today I spent another day finishing V2 of the design (already!), and I'm only a week into the project. I hope to have a CAD drawing and a sample cut and formed to mount on a cross member soon.

When I have something to to feast your eyes upon, I'll be sure to post it. But for now we can expect to see a solution soon for the 280ZX guys shortly. I'll likely do only a short run of these, if you are interested, let me know.

Byron
Love people and use things,
because the opposite never works.
User avatar
510wizard
Supporter
Posts: 1031
Joined: 12 Sep 2005 09:50
Location: Reno, Nevada

Re: 280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

Post by 510wizard »

Looking forward to some fabrication eye candy.
User avatar
Byron510
Moderator
Posts: 12658
Joined: 01 Jul 2003 23:06
Location: Maple Ridge, BC

Re: 280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

Post by Byron510 »

Well Monty, I could have updated sooner - much has happened in the past few weeks, including engineering and cutting of V1, which needed some tweaking as I failed to realize just what angle the axis of rotation of the 280ZX LCA really runs at.
So last week a re-engineer of the inner bracket was necessary. With the help of Richard's extensive and rather quick CAD drawing and Rich's contact at the laser cutting shop, V2 of the brackets were made this past week and below are the results.

I may be premature here as I have not yet mounted this bracket set in the car, but that's coming tomorrow.
One thing I can yell you - the 280ZX has about 1/4 the room that the 510 has around this area of the cross member - this was a seriously tight squeeze to get this design in there. And there will be a minor modification made to the location of fuel line on the pass side. I'll address this in the kit as basically a bracket will be required to relocate the lines over about 30 mm's.

Pics so far - the first two of the brackets tacked in place, the 3rd of the bracket assembled.

Byron
Attachments
DSC08371 (Small).JPG
DSC08371 (Small).JPG (40.82 KiB) Viewed 5025 times
DSC08373 (Small).JPG
DSC08373 (Small).JPG (45.26 KiB) Viewed 5025 times
DSC08379 (Small).JPG
DSC08379 (Small).JPG (39.56 KiB) Viewed 5025 times
Love people and use things,
because the opposite never works.
User avatar
Grinder
Posts: 144
Joined: 20 Jan 2009 21:09

Re: 280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

Post by Grinder »

Woohoo! (says the 280ZX guy ;) )
User avatar
Byron510
Moderator
Posts: 12658
Joined: 01 Jul 2003 23:06
Location: Maple Ridge, BC

Re: 280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

Post by Byron510 »

I completely back burner’d this project. But last week I pushed the 82 ZXT back in the garage and following true to form, got back to work in the shed. Now working on Version 7! And it’s a clean sheet of paper. I’ll keep you posted, I should have something to report by weekends end.

Byron
Love people and use things,
because the opposite never works.
User avatar
Byron510
Moderator
Posts: 12658
Joined: 01 Jul 2003 23:06
Location: Maple Ridge, BC

Re: 280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

Post by Byron510 »

Totally not 510 related- I know. If it’s a project and at least Datsun.

With the help of my good friend Rich, these got cut out Saturday. Welded and mount to the car by midnight and a string alignment by today’s end.

Verdict - we’ll there are finally decent results without hacking the car up! Had to revert to modifying the outboard mount on the 280ZX, and it hangs down below the crossmember. But it’s amazingly still 1” higher than the frame rails under the car. The design still needs some tweaking as the camber slot is not as vertical as I’d like, and there’s far too much toe adjustment as it goes to 1/2” toe out which no one in their right mind would ever use.
It’s as a design project, it’s going in the right direction and soon the ZX guys will have as good of an option as I designed for the PL510 for simplicity of installation and adjustment range on lowered cars.

Byron
Love people and use things,
because the opposite never works.
User avatar
Byron510
Moderator
Posts: 12658
Joined: 01 Jul 2003 23:06
Location: Maple Ridge, BC

Re: 280ZX Rear Camber/Toe adjusters

Post by Byron510 »

So just to bring this project up to date - I'll post some photos of the progress.

After a trial fitment, and more time actually spend making an alignment jig that hangs off the car opposed to sitting on the ground - I got the results I needed.

So I ended up scrapping all the work on the previous 6 versions trying my best to make the inboard bracket design work. But without structurally hacking the hell out of the stock X member - which isn't half as strong as our 510 one in the first place - that project was abandoned last year.

So on with making the outer bracket adjustable to compensate for the 'Toe In' problem that the 280ZX experiences when it's lowered - unlike the 510 which "toes out' when lowered. And the same negative camber issue is present - and is actually worse in many cases for a comparable height ZX compared to a 510.

I found that the latest design is certainly going in the right direction. At the end of Sunday I realized that I just need to take out more negative camber, but I have fixed the toe alignment issue in the adjustment range from stock down to street low.
Slammed, crazy, ground scraping low hasn't been dealt with totally - but is a more common ride height for this crowd - so.... I make a few more adjustments and I may yet have a product that covers pretty much the whole range.
IMG_1102 (Medium).JPG
IMG_1102 (Medium).JPG (124.77 KiB) Viewed 3122 times
IMG_1101 (Medium).JPG
IMG_1101 (Medium).JPG (105.7 KiB) Viewed 3122 times
IMG_1085 (Medium).JPG
IMG_1085 (Medium).JPG (117.37 KiB) Viewed 3122 times
And here are some photos of my alignment jig which saved a pile of time in the end as resetting was extremely easy after jacking up the car and making adjustments and settling the car back down by rolling it back and forth. I can't claim the design of my own, but it incorporated two you tube videos that stood out;
1) a drifters idea of using conduit perfectly measured in standard increments - but he used this idea on jack stands which still would have in itself saved significant time over the four independent jack stands that I had been using.
2) a Porsche 911 guy who hung a very elaborate And complicated) jig from his car. The idea was great, but his method of having one end of the car in the air seemed flawed.

At any rate - I took the best of both ideas an amalgamated them. What I did find (and you'll note that the center grease caps are missing off the front struts) is that camber and toe adjustments when made to only one side actually shift the thrust angle of the car! This meant that I had to re-center the rear bar holding the string each time I made a camber and toe adjustment. But it does make sense when you think of the arc that this trailing arm would pivot. I was just surprised at how noticeable it really was.
IMG_1081 (Medium).JPG
IMG_1081 (Medium).JPG (132.02 KiB) Viewed 3122 times
IMG_1080 (Medium).JPG
IMG_1080 (Medium).JPG (120.22 KiB) Viewed 3122 times
This is mostly just a technical thread since I'm sure there are no other 280ZX owners out there on the 510Realm! If you think I should stop posting and quite wasting our 510 bandwidth - let me know 8)

Byron
Love people and use things,
because the opposite never works.
Post Reply