The Project Pad

Okay so in the interest of bringing some life to this place a bit more I feel like we should discuss subframes, and the terrible subframe that is included in our beloved T44.

If one were to swap a subframe in from a Small chassis car and reap the benefits of a proper A-arm design and swaybar what might the issues be? I do not believe they are a direct swap.
Okay I know the are not a direct swap, But if one were to cut, weld, and modify a small chasis SF the potential for errors is somewhat high, correct?

The benefits to this would be a control arm that has parts more readily available, like bushings and being able to run a different swaybar. One other thing is subframe bushings are also available compared to non existant. Castor can be changed with billet/steel control arms and camber can be changed a bit from the ball joints being adjustable.


Is this a pipe dream?

I did a subframe swap on my RX-7, which also entailed an uprights and steering swap, so much more involved.

I'm REALLY unfamiliar with the T44, so I'll just lay out what I was involved with in the RX-7 swap. In my case, since I was swapping knuckles, it didn't matter that the ball joints were different styles (thread-and-taper vs. 17mm stud and pinch bolt). Next is framerail width. Again I was fortunate since the framerails were almost exactly the same width and two of the mounting studs were in almost the same spot, so I just had to fabricate two boxes for the other two subframe bolts. I ended up shifting my axle centerline an inch forward which gave me more caster (good) but I had to f around with the motor mounts.

One place where I kinda screwed up. I chose the simple path and bolted it up to the existing rails. In actuality doing this moved the roll center down because the body rails were slightly different chassis to chassis. What I should have done was cut and notched and re-studded the body rail to mount the subframe an inch higher in the chassis. So that will have to go for the next chassis if I manage to find an FB that isn't Evo money. So what YOU should do is see where the control arm bushings are height-wise relative to where the body rails are to ensure that they are roughly going to be the same height. Higher will be slightly better because that increases roll center height.

Which brings me to my biggest (relevant) issue - motor mounts. In my case I had to change engines in order to be able to mount the engine to the new subframe. Again since i don't know T44s I don't know how they mount the engine or the trans relative to the small chassis cars but it might make things "simpler" to mount the trans to the BODY and ignore the subframe mounts altogether.

I have a gut feeling that it might be as simple as widening the subframe to fit the T44 body rail width and then mucking with ball joints.

Maybe we change this to fabricating a custom subframe, both the type44 and type89/B4 could benefit from a better design. For me I want a higher roll center by moving the control arm mounting points up.

On my Quantum, I plan on shimming the rear subframe mount down an inch. This will drop the roll center but it will also drastically affect the instant center and should greatly help front-end grip on acceleration. Same effect as the "anti lift kit" (Outback control arm bushing) for Subarus.

I figure that it should be doable with a set of angled washers (do the trig to figure what the angle change will be, get leaf spring angle shims of correct angle, apply drill and saw to suit) and something or other to space the trans mounts up.

My goal is to make the front tires work 100% of the time. Right now it feels like a rear-driver how the front tires don't do anything under acceleration, and this is with maybe a third to a quarter of the power I'm going to have when I am done with the engine. (I figure that I have 60-70hp at this point. JT is tired!) Does not feel like an AWD car at all.

audifreakjim wrote:Maybe we change this to fabricating a custom subframe, both the type44 and type89/B4 could benefit from a better design. For me I want a higher roll center by moving the control arm mounting points up.

working on that^^^

ill get a bunch of pics up this weekend, but im reducing the offset in my kingpin (outer bj, relocated lower) because I don't need it bahahahahaha, longer arms with raised pickups on SF have done wonders for rollcenter

Exactly, looking forward to pics!

pilihp2 wrote:Okay so in the interest of bringing some life to this place a bit more I feel like we should discuss subframes, and the terrible subframe that is included in our beloved T44.

If one were to swap a subframe in from a Small chassis car and reap the benefits of a proper A-arm design and swaybar what might the issues be? I do not believe they are a direct swap.
Okay I know the are not a direct swap, But if one were to cut, weld, and modify a small chasis SF the potential for errors is somewhat high, correct?

The benefits to this would be a control arm that has parts more readily available, like bushings and being able to run a different swaybar. One other thing is subframe bushings are also available compared to non existant. Castor can be changed with billet/steel control arms and camber can be changed a bit from the ball joints being adjustable.


Is this a pipe dream?

I would venture a guess that you'd have to fab control arms too, it would probably be easier to make everything tubular...


Old and grumpy.

You don't think you could just use Small chassis control arms with the modified small chassis sub frame?

I'd guess the track is much greater on a big body car...just a guess tho...I guess anything is possible, if I was looking to do something like this I think I'd be looking at more modern parts like c5/b5/b6 parts...


Old and grumpy.

Aren't newer c5/b5/b6 parts Dual A-Arm so not nearly as easy of a swap?
I'll have to check with the spare parts I have and see how different the dimensions are on this stuff