i am going to buy the spherical strut mounts for the t/a, but i am in question about which ones to get, the aluminum $350 ones or the 250 billet steel. i plan on this car seeing hard street driving, and some track time.
in your opinion, which ones would be better?

thanks

 

I would get the steel ones. I know at least dean has had some issues with wear on the alum. ones. I may replace my HMS units at some point, with the steel verson from spohn.

 

I got the steel ones. nice pieces.

 

Yep, I will be the first to tell you that a part I have is a POS. Do not by Aluminum strut mounts, they will not last. I will be buying steel ones very soon.

On a possitive note: These sperical strut mounts (whether steel or aluminum) are the very best thing yiou can bolt onto the front of your car for steering response and overall in touch with the road feeling you get. They are an absolute mustbuy- Just buy the steel ones, the aluminum gives over time becuase there is no steel insert (race) to hold the bearing load

Dean

 

I just sucks though because my Aluminum ones look so pretty. I'll have to buy some steel ones and have them sent out to be chromed.

 

I was thinking about getting these also. Did you guys get the retainers also?

 

i was thinkin that the aluminum ones would be much lighter, but steve said the aluminum ones are only 1 lb lighter than the steel ones. granted, the aluminum ones look bitchin, but i will get the steel ones, and mabee powder coat them later on. Steve also said the aluminum and steel ones are identical in performance, so i guess in this case the most expensive ones are not needed unless the polished look is required.

so, to go with the steel spherical strut mounts, i will get his install bracket due to my car being an 85. I am also buying the tubular front lower control arms with spring boxes, and the double rod ended adjustable panhard bar, and that will finish my tubular suspention front and rear, all spohn of course.

Do any of you have the derlin bushings on your front control arms? what are the performance advantages and longevity?

the only things that i need to get after this is the stb, and i am thinking about buying the bmr panhard bar brace, becase having all that tubular stuff on the car, and leaving the stock stamped and ugly brace is an eye sore lol. i know its not really needed for performance. but it compleats the look.

thanks

 

the steel strut mounts come powder coated. so you dont have to worry about that. Mine were shipped black.


..i still need to slot my strut towers more to get more caster. im at 3 and 3.5 respectively...i'll be happy if i can get 2 more degrees.

Does anyone know how much farther i'll have to extend the stock slots to get 5.5 degrees?

With this extra bit of caster i might actually have room on my towers to mount my edelbrock brace securely.

 

You'll probably have to go another 1/2" on the slots towards the rear. It really depends on the individual car and ride height has everything to do with adjustment range. The lower the car the more camber and caster you can get out of it due to the angle.
I would extend the slots about 3/4" to ber safe but I would guess you wouldneed about 1/2" more since you are at 3 and 3.5* right now, but do not know your ride height. If you are not lowered at all you may need more like 3/4"

 

I'll try to get some ride height measurements, ive been wanting to do that anyway. Im on the pro-kit, with heater hose isolators up front...but thats not very descriptive either.

 

On most 3rd gen slotting them doesn’t help much if you don’t get rid of the dust shield, since that will get in the way of the lip on the hole that it goes through in the strut tower. Even then, that only gives you an extra maybe ¼ in, if that before the edge of the strut hits.

Depending on your ride height 3/8-1/2” is roughly a degree, as your ride height gets shorter so does the length of the degree.

On later 3rd gens it shouldn’t be a problem to get 4.5-6º caster, but on the early cars you’re lucky to get 3º (with reasonable camber settings, more negative camber = less caster). I made my ’83 adjustable from about 2.5-7.5º by cutting and rewelding the tops of the strut towers and by making my own strut rod boots.

 

Yeah, its an 82. The alignment was done before i pulled the spring isolators and reset the springs in the pockets correctly. It looks to have came down a bit. But the alignment still looks pretty good...I'll see if i cant get any more adjustment out of it now that its slightly lower.

Like i said when i had it aligned they got 3.5 out of it..so maybe with a little slotting and the slightly lower stance i'll be able to get 4 or 5 out of it.

 

Well, I ordered a set of the sperical strut mounts from spohn. Can't wait to try them out.

 

Dean,

can you post a close up pic of the insides of the alluminum mounts? I'm curious how the bearings are held in place. does it use a snap ring? is it just a ball bearing? I have an ever growing collection of fabrication tools, some pipe that is just about the right size and a lack of funds for a car i've barely driven in the last year. I would love to take a shot at making myself a set.

 

I love how you can get aluminum strut tower “caster camber plates” for mustangs that are totally durable for half the cost of the few available for f-bodies…

I’m almost wondering if you can modify a set of HPM ford plates to work with an f-body…

 

Laiky, These HMS are the same basic design Spohns aluminum & steel ones are. They use a snap ring with a machined groove in the bearing slot.

Spherical bearing= blue

Snap ring= green

Aluminum mount =grey (cutaway side view)

Note the blown up section (upper left scketch) shows the little red arrow displaying where the thin aluminum ridge above the snap ring groove is bending upward allowing the bearing to slop upward. The stronger steel units will prevent this.

I have a solution with a custon steel cap I can have custom made to bolt ontop of my HMS mounts to retain the bearing instead of the snapring, but the cost to have them made is just as much as just buying a set of Steve's steel units.

 

Custom bolt-on steel bearing retainer cap example

 

What keeps you from just cutting the top off where the retaining ring is and using a flat plate instead?

 

Does anyone know what bearing is used in those? Are they available as replacements?

 

Thanks Dean.

I'm surprised that the snap ring takes the compressive forces, i would have thought it worked the other way, installing the bearing from the bottom. Would have been nice with a hollow threaded tube "Nut" that screws in from the top and preloads the bearing.

I don't know that i'll ever get to it but i would love to take a shot at a set of my own.

 

Crossfire, They are a com-12 spherical bearing. I run a very upper end bearing in mine though. Much stronger than the standard COM-12. I wiped out the COM-12's in about 6 months or so when I first installed the mounts.

I installed the stronger PNB-12T spherical bearings from Aurora and noticed immediately that one side was fine (It was a bad bearing onloy on that side) but the other side had two problems. One was the bearing and the other was the strutmount itself was enlarging. I took a very thin .003 feeler guage and cut it into a shim and placed it underneath the bottom edges of the new bearing on the passenger side. That did the trick. all noise gone.

A few months later, the noise started to appear on the other side. I thought it was the berings going again, but it was not. The bearing to this day are still great (again, the PNB-12T's) but both sides are knocking from the snap ring ridge stretched upward and allowing the ring and bearing to slop on both sides. Its definately the aluminum mounts.

As for a flat plate? 1) I have no access to a mill to machine the aluminum surface down to the top of the bearing so a flat steel plate will retain the bearing, and 2) if I did that there is no way to keep the plate centered other than by eye when trying to snug the flat plate onto the bearing top. The bolt hols could allow side slop and misalign the flat plate over onto the bearing swivel rather than keeping the rim of the bearing. I like the idea of having a ridge that protrudes down to the bearing top and fits snug inside the top of the aluminum mount- just my opinion.

I use EMachineshop.com for little projects like this rather than having so machine shop guy try and give me his unwanted opinion. I know what I like, I know what I want- I can be stubborn as if you didn't know that already.

 

You kidding us right.