Strut Rod FIX

alber1x wrote: Control Freak Suspensions has adjustable strut rod kits for all of the cars, from 1964 American all the way to the latest Spirit.  Just saying.

I'm definitely not a fan of those for a street driven car.  That's a solid connection so if you think poly bushings make transfer the road into the car, these will make it even worse. Just saying.....

Based on my measurements, the ball diameter they are using is 2.000" diameter, just for reference.

The OD of the shoulder in the Opentracker ball is 1.435", and the hole in my 1968 strut rod bracket is 1.375. So I made up a little tapered jig to hold the ball segment in my drill and applied a file as it was turning in order to reduce the OD of the shoulder until it fit in the AMC hole. 

The thickness of the AMC strut rod bracket measured 0.350", and the gap between the ball segments of the Opentracker ball was 0.375", so I printed a 0.025" thick spacer washer to make up the difference. But when I assembled everything I found the sleeve was too long for that to work, and was holding the metal caps too far from the ball segments. I made up two 0.050" thick spacers to make it fit without the ball slopping all over, but after thinking about it I realized that would make the ball into an ellipse really, so it would probably bind and wear out faster.

This morning I spent some time taking dimensions of all of the parts in the kit, and am pretty confident that the sleeves in my kit were too long. From Opentracker they measured 2.112" long. When I assembled the two metal caps with the sleeve between them, the gap between the caps was measuring 1.075", and it should have been 1.000" for it all to fit up perfectly.

So my next step is to cut the sleeves down to 2.037" long and that should make it all stack up correctly.

Here's it is with the two 0.050" spacers. I'll work on shortening the sleeves and see how that helps.