Front ARB Position

[Ed Doe]

Morning boys and girls,

One of the thing's I've been looking to sort out over the winter period is my ARB droplinks.

I've muddled along with standard droplinks up to now, but these will definitely be affecting the arb angle (the car is lower than standard), and with the car being corner-weighted the droplinks are not quite right, so there is some pre-load of the arb going on (linked to this I seem to have somehow managed to bend a Meyle HD Droplink over the course of the last year!).

I've got hold of some adjustable droplinks now, so my question;

1. Does anyone have any information/pictures of the ARB position/angle on a standard car when on it's wheels and on the ground?

As a follow-up question, does anyone have any advice on setting the adjustable droplinks up? I had thought initially of doing the following;

1. Confirm how much lower from standard my car is
2. Shorten the first adjustable droplink so it is the length of the OE Droplink, less the ride height change of my car vs oem (my thinking being this will get me in the ballpark for the right length and therefore ARB angle???)
3. Fit the first adjustable droplink completley, tighten/torque etc and whack the wheel back on.
4. Fit the second adjustable droplink top bolt, tighten/torque etc, and leave the bottom dangling loose
5. Whack the wheels on and get it on the ground (probably on some wood so I can flippin fit under it
6. Adjust the second partially-fitted droplink length until the bottom fixing can slot into the ARB with no interference, then lock it off and tighten everything up.

Advice welcome by return!

Cheers,

Ed

[Spriteracer]

Hi Ed. I think your method would work however from my own experience with the sprite I don't think the angle of the bar is critical other than it having enough space not to catch anything when it twists with roll. In my case I moved the location of the bar to get more ground clearance, and the drop links go up rather than down as the original BMC design. The critical thing is that the bar is unstressed at rest, loaded as it will be on track - i.e. with driver weight, fuel etc. in place. I would also suggest that equal length droplinks would be a good idea if you can.

[Ed Doe]

Thanks for the advice Spriteracer

I'll make sure to chuck some weight plates into the drivers seat when I set them up

[1536Z4]

I've got hold of some adjustable droplinks

Hi Ed,

There are some you tube videos on setting up front anti roll bars and adjustable drop links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR765KCsLoU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKQn-hf3Os . I only have some photos of my H&R arb after fitting adjustable links . I had to higher the drop links afterwards as they were a bit low as shown on these photos . Hope that helps.

[Ed Doe]

Hi Ed,

There are some you tube videos on setting up front anti roll bars and adjustable drop links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR765KCsLoU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKQn-hf3Os . I only have some photos of my H&R arb after fitting adjustable links . I had to higher the drop links afterwards as they were a bit low as shown on these photos . Hope that helps.

Magic thanks chap that's really helpful

[Beedub]

hi ED,

when i installed my CS the drop links supplied offered little to no preload on the ARB....... it was something that i was concerned about at the time but then again my ride height is very conservative compared to even stock 3.0si with the sport suspension which always seem way lower. You could always try the KW drop link as it seems pretty much perfect when i installed the CS.

[Ed Doe]

Hi Mate,

There should definitely be no pre-load on the ARB through the droplinks. The thing is that when you corner-weight a car you do end up with minor variations in ride height, and therefore without either adjustable droplink tabs on the damper body, or adjustable droplinks, you can't dial out the pre-load. If you're setting the ride height up by eye then you'll more likely get an equal length each corner so to some extent non-adjustable droplinks should be fine.

There is also an impact from running a different ARB angle (as a consequence of the lowered ride height but OE-length droplinks), where the effective length from the pivot point of the ARB is shorter, meaning a greater resistive moment to the roll load. So basically it's a bit like fitting a thicker ARB at the front in some respects...

Anyway, I'm just trying to get the ARB angle as close to OE as possible and with no preload

[Ed Doe]

PXL_20240127_165511858.MP.jpg (221.62 KiB) Viewed 203 times

I need to go on a post-Christmas diet!

Droplinks all setup now, thanks chaps

[1536Z4]

Droplinks all setup now
[/quote