Reducing caster on lowered 240

jamesinc

My yellow car is quite low, being on DVS special springs, and it has a manual rack. It uses the un-biased lower control arm ball joints for manual rack cars.

However, because it's been lowered, it still has loads of caster and the steering wheel is very heavy in turns at any speed.

So, I was considering installing a pair of the biased ball joints but flipped around to reduce caster, has anyone ever tried something like that?

ljk346

Would LCA spacers help fix the caster like these? https://www.bneshop.com/collections/240/products/240-quick-steer-roll-correction

or would that only be good for bump steer and camber?

jamesinc

ljk346
Would LCA spacers help fix the caster like these? https://www.bneshop.com/collections/240/products/240-quick-steer-roll-correction
or would that only be good for bump steer and camber?

I did ask @AshDVS about this, and he advised me that the DVS springs were set such that LCA spacers shouldn't be required

Spac

“At any speed” makes me wonder if excess castor is the reason for heavy steering.

If it is, then I can’t think of any reason why the reversed PS ball joints wouldn’t work. That said, the ball joints don’t change the castor angle all that much.

jamesinc

@Spac to add more detail, the steering snaps straight with vigour but is heavy to turn. I guess that could be a toe setting also? I'm struggling to recall the setup for this car but I think it's set for zero toe-in.

Spac

Lots of castor often gives a slightly odd feel to the steering - after about half a turn of the steering wheel, if feels like like steering ratio slows down.

Faster/harder turns should remove a fair bit of the weight caused by excess castor. This is particularly true for wheels without a lot of positive offset.

It does sound like you have a lot of castor, but those two things can be used as confirmation.

Adding PS sounds like the real solution to me.

jamesinc

Image description

I bought these, they seem ideal for dialling in my front suspension. Also they look sick, man that is some nice machining 😍