I have somewhat of a crazy question to ask. Well, first off im looking to put BMR lower control arms on my vehicle with the brackets. The Bmr brackets have the two bolt hole settings for traction when lowering your vehicle. So my question to all of you are, would it be ok when i add these lower arms if it would be safe to have them bolted to the bottom setting of the bracket to give the lower arms more of an angle IF i have NO plans of lowering my vehicle. I have no set plans as of now to lower my vehicle but i i am wondering if these brackets would work or be "safe" on non lowered vehicles. Or should i just settle for the CHE brackets that only have one setting? what do you guys think?

 

Seems to me if you're not lowered, you don't need relo brackets.....

 

If your car isn't lowered the brackets will still fit. They aren't needed if the car isn't lowered because you don't need to adjust your instant center. If you are planning on doing any drag racing without the car lowered it will help with traction.

I will try to explain without sounding stupid. From the factory the LCA are level or the same height from front to back. When you lower the rear of the LCA and you drop the pedal the torque force the tires to dig in more.

When you lower your car, the rear of the LCA is higher than the front. So when you drop the pedal the torque actually pushes the car down and takes weight off the tires loosing traction. So by using the relocation brackets you can bring the LCA back to level.

If you like to road race or just normal performance you want your LCA level or maybe slightly lower in the rear. If you plan on drag racing you want the rear of the LCA to be a little lower than the front. How much I don't know. The problem I see is that the relocation brackets available don't have enough adjustment. It's like a one size fit all. Even the ones that do have extra mounting holes don't take into account how much beefier aftermarket LCA are. I have been looking and I think CHE makes the best ones. I am thinking about getting those to use as a template to give me the adjustments I would like to see.

 

I went with the CHE brackets in conjunction with Steeda Ultralite springs. I used J&M LCA's and I just had my pinion angle measured. The pinion angle was perfect and the CHE brackets only have one setting. Personally, I wouldn't try and play with different LCA settings to get the pinion angle right, I'd go with adjustable UCA's myself for pinion angle issues. If the results of measuring my pinion angle would have resulted in a need for adjustment, I would have then most likely have chosen the Steeda adjustable UCA to correct the angle. For LCA leveling, the Steeda LCA bracket has several settings, and others like the BMR have two settings. Personally, I can't see that much of a need for adjustablility in the LCA but somebody with more calculatory experience on angles and ratios can chime in on that one. As long as the front of the LCA is not lower than the rear of the LCA, then I wouldn't think it would be a problem. Level or slightly lower in the rear is the preferred setup as Chuckieduck said.

 

I think adjustable LCA are too much trouble. I agree with 07 GT/CS. If you need to adjust pinion angle just go with an adjustable UCA. Unless you are going with an agressive drop or switching to a one piece drive shaft your pinion angle will not be too bad. I also agree that level or slightly lower in the rear on the LCA is the way to go. If I had a ton of horse power and running slicks I would research how much lower to drop the rear of the LCA. There is some point where your torque is lifting the body of the car more than it;s pushing it forward.

07 GT/CS: have you seen the axle truss that CHE makes? I am thinking about getting that and the relocation brackets. The truss bolts to the factory control arms brackets on the axle housing. I would cut the mounting points off the axle truss where they bolt onto the factory LCA brackets, use the CHE relocation brackets as a template to make new ones that cover all of the factory bracket and weld them to the axle truss where they would gave been. Then weld the whole thing in as one whole piece. Don't know if that's all confusing or not. If you look at the pic you can see where the gray axle brace meets the black relocation brackets. Just imagine that where the two but together they were actually one piece. After seeing pictures of some of the relocation brackets that have bent under hard dumps of the clutch, I think the beefier the better. Overkill is better than repairing something if it does give way.

Sorry to highjack the thread. Just trying to improve on what I think is still a weak link.

 

Perhaps my car is different, but at stock ride height, the LCA is actually lower in the front. I measured a while ago, but seem to recall it was on the order of 1/2" or so. There would be benefit in lowering the rear mount, but most likely all available brackets would probably lower it too much. Horiz is somewhat ideal, but the UCA angle comes into play on establishing the 'instant center' as well , which usually means getting it angled down towards the front. In any event you are trying to reduce the squat, and drag racers like to reduce it a lot to keep the CG high and maximize front to rear weight transfer.

 

Forgot to attach pictures. One picture shows the relocation brackets and the axle truss as two different pieces. The other picture shows how I want both pieces combined and even extended orpund the stock piece even more.

 

The Steeda bracket is just about the only one I've seen that has so many holes that you could probably just move it one or two down and reduce that drop in the front to level or slightly lower in the rear. Others are going to drop you down quite a bit without a lowered vehicle.

 

Chuckieduck, I did see that setup on the CHE website. The only thing I'm not fond of is bolting stuff to my diff cover. I do a lot of off-roading and there are numerous diff skid covers that either bolt to the outside of the diff cover, or even have a complete ring that goes around inside and underneath the edge of the diff cover. I just worry that eventually any twisting at all is going to cause a diff cover leak problem. If I was going to go with an axle truss, I'd be inclined to find one that bolts on either side of the axle tube right against the pumpkin with collars or go underneath the pumpkin without bolting to the diff cover and attach on each side as the CHE one does.

 

+1 on the Steeda anti-squat brackets. My car is NOT lowered, but still the LCAs were angled incorrectly down towards the front of the car. With Steeda brackets -- which have three different mounting locations -- I was able to dial in the angle that I needed for launches. On the top hole, I was still getting too much squat. On the bottom hole, I wasn't getting all of the weight transfer I wanted. The middle hole worked out good for my set-up.

And having adjustable LCAs enables you to change their length ever so slightly which helps get them lined up perfectly on the holes on the brackets.