AE86 Lower Control Arm measurements...

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jondee86
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AE86 Lower Control Arm measurements...

Postby jondee86 » Sat Feb 06, 2016 7:00 pm

Trawling the interwebz I find several sites with threads listing dimensions for various
Toyota LCA's. However, the one important dimension is subject to argument and debate
over the correct way to measure to the center of the balljoint. Measuring an arm with
the balljoint installed can easily result in +/- 10mm depending on how the measurement
is made. This is not close enough when looking for that magical 10mm of extra length
that gives 1 deg more negative camber than the stock AE86 arm.

Here is a pic of the arms that I am planning to use. They are Toyota arms but I don't
know what car they came from, only that they are supposed to be 10mm longer than a
stock AE86 arm. Looking under the car I see why accurate measurements are so difficult
to obtain. Short of digging one out of the car, it is near enough impossible to make a
valid comparison.

Image

So I have taken the liberty of showing what I measured, and the measurements I obtained
by eyecrometer (margin of error <+/-1mm). All measurements from the centre of the bush.
Note that the tape measure in the pic does not show the correct measurements due to
parallax error. Rest assured my measurements are actual :)

Overall length = 335
Center of BJ = 300 (measured at the top surface of the arm)
Center tierod = 235
Center of end links = 205

What I would like to ask is... does anyone have a bare (without balljoint) AE86 factory
arm lying about that they can measure ?

The variance between measurements to the centre of the balljoint seems to arise from
the difficulty in estimating where the centre of the balljoint might be, Measuring a bare
arm eliminates that error, and I think an accurate measure would be helpful to anyone
such as myself who is only looking for an arm 10mm longer than stock.

Cheers... jondee86
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.