ive been doing some research on the spohn torque arm. its my understanding that they are the best. but just bolting it in? im sure theres someone out there thats welded it in. anybody with pictures? id like to hear some feedback about them. it sounds pretty good but just bolting it on sounds kinda sketchy.

 

what? Why would you bolt it in? Sketchy? That's how your car came from the factory. Trust me, you want the ability to remove the rear and and transmission.

 

Its just bolts right in.. There is no need to weld it at all. If you do, and say your trans blows, how are you going to remove the x-member to remove the tranny? When Steve desinged the setup, he designed it with it being 100% bolt in. About the only thing he sells that have to be welded are the SFC's and relocation brackets. Thats about all I can think of at the moement.

I'm actually going to be putting his one for a t56 with a rod end in my iroc this weekend. If ya want I can snap a few pics.

Kat

 

lots of pictures

 

it's a bolt-in, but those are pretty beefy bolts

 

Yup, big beefy bolts. Here's the mounting setup on my Currie 9" with Spohn's torque arm. Big bolts all around

 

yeah i love the big bolts, someone put the rear bolt in upside down(after some rearend work i suppose) so now i can't get my torque arm off without cutting the bolt

 

Kretos, You life depends on those "so called" upside down bolts. They are in fact NOT upside down. They are intended to slip in from the top so they will not fall out if the nuts come off. You loose those nuts off those bolts doing freeway speeds and you can kiss you butt gonight (and everyone in the lane next to you.)

 

yeah having my edlebrock snap on me even going slow was an uncomfortable experience, i couldn't imagine one letting go on the freeway.

 

try this:


take the jackstands from under the rear.
stick them under the chassis of the car...


TADA! the rear is at the bottom of its travel, and you can slide the bolt out the top.... and up and up..... as theres LOTS of room... lol.

 

LOL that's what I did when I installed my Spohn TQ ARM. But I put the bolt in that way for another reason... I was to lazy to try to spin the nut on from the topside.

As for welding the TQ Arm I'll mention the point that the arm is designed to pivot as the rear end adjusts for weight load or road conditions so it wouldn't be smart to weld the front, the crossmember has already been mentioned. Else you're going to end up with some major binding. As for welding the backs that's also not a good idea for the same reason... the back bracket wouldn't work out well welded either just for the fact thirdgen guys like swapping out rear ends from time to time.

 

umm for those of us that have the McLeod T56 (which if you dont know requires to take 1" out of the drive shaft and 1" out of the torque arm) what options are there for us other than completely fabricating a new one from scratch?

Dont Worry Dean, Don reinforced it pretty well but i was wondering if there were options in the aftermarket arena.

 

E-mail Steve. He can make what ya want.

Kat

 

do the bolts loosen often?

 

Not that I know of, I checked them about 1.5 years back and they were tight still. I did notice my adjustable LCAs were starting to get loose on the adjustor part but once I put my gorrilla grip on it with a massive wrench it's been tight since. Guess I didn't tq them down hard enough to begin with. I would check them all again but since I haven't drove the car in a year I'm not to worried + it's snowing here now.

 

Not really. The torque arm to rear bolts you can really crank down on them. I haven't had one come out yet. AS for the jam nuts. Depends. Sometimes they do jsut because of the vibration of the tires bumps in the road blah blah blah. You can cure that by using a mild strength loc-tite on them.

Kat

 

lets see some more pics!

 

heres mine before it went in, very heavy peice big upgrade from the stamped steel factory one

 

very heavy duty stuff, very easy to adjust too

 

it is nice but pricey to mee....what do you know i paid for it though