Since my car is fairly low, I really need some drop spindles to help the suspension geometry. I've already spec'd out the wheels and sizes that I want to run and think I might have clearance issues. Some time down the road I'm going to run 18 or 19x11 front and an 18 or 19x12 in the rear. For as low as the cars going to be I should ideally have 2" drop spindles and extended ball joints but I fear there might be clearance issues between the wheel and tie rod ends. I also autocross the car and have 17x9" wheels with 285/40/17 tires all around and would still need to be able to use those. Can anyone provide some insight or experience?

 

You will NOT be able to run 11" wide wheels with drop spindles. I'm running 9" wide wheels on the front, and with a rod ended style tie rod I barely have room. And my wheels are 19". When I had 18s, there was almost no room. If you want to go that wide (and I really don't see why you want to go that wide on one of these cars) you don't want a drop spindle. Stick with springs and ball joints...and some sort of camber kit (strut mounts or camber bolts or both) to bring things back into alignment.

Oh, and you won't be able to fit the 12s in the rear without tubs if you want to go that low. My 19x11s with a 295 tire tuck perfectly (with proper offset wheels and cutting off the fender lip and hammering the inner fender). Any wider wouldn't happen unless you either raise the car up a little or go with tubs.

 

Do you have any other photos of your steering arm/wheel clearance? I was looking at this the other day:
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/post...28-post26.html
And it looked like 18's may barely clear. I was half way thinking of trying the rack drop spindles with the stock or maybe one of the slower stock steering boxes.

The ballpoints are worth considering, I'd check bump steer before and afterwords though.

On a side note on your avatar, have you seen the Senna documentary yet? Best movie I've seen in a while.

DBLTKE:

Personally I'd shoot for equal front/rear wheel width. Running larger tires in the rear isn't going to help much. By the time you add enough rear roll stiffness to balance the car you're going to have to have a really good diff to put the power down. If your not balanced your going to tear up the front tires even faster than normal.

18x11's will fit up front with some work though.

To me, being able to rotate tires is a huge deal when a6's are $300+ a piece.

 

I don't have any other pics than the ones in the link you posted. In that picture I have the 19x9 front wheels, racecraft drop spindle with short steering arm, and rod end style tie rods. With the 18x9s and stock tie rods, I had to grind A LOT on the tie rod to clear the wheel. I didn't even try the rod ended style with the 18s.

I can totally understand wanting to be able to rotate your tires. But trying to run a 295 or a 305 tire on an 11" wide wheel on the front is beyond silly in my opinion. Just because you can make it fit, doesn't mean you should. These cars will never offer up enough mechanical grip to take advantage of a tire that wide.

My advice: if you want to rotate your tires, run 275s all the way around. If you want to be able to put some power down and have it stick, run 275s front and 295s rear...which is what I did. And I have as much fabricated suspension stuff as you can get without fabricating an sla style front end.

Whatever your outcome, good luck and keep us updated.

Oh, the Senna movie. I've had it for quite some time, but I haven't had a chance to watch it. I've heard great things about it though. I don't know how old you are, or how much F1 you've seen, but to see Senna race footage again will be amazing. I became a Schumacher fan after Senna's death. These days, I just enjoy watching...although I would like to see Webber get a championship.

 

Kind of sounds like the chicken and the egg here. For autocross i'd take as much front grip as I can get. These cars are front heavy enough.

I haven't been able to do a lot of testing with my GTA, but with my old miata putting in the optimal amount of rear camber for rear grip, meant increasing rear roll stiffness to balance the car out. More rear roll stiffness meant less weight on the inside rear tire, and the poor crap viscous slip couldn't keep up with all 120hp. There would be tons of wheel spin on corner exit. I ended up decreasing the rear camber, going to a smaller rear roll bar and the car got faster. Of course, it would've gone even faster had I been able to put in a torsen from a newer miata. Same thing here except we're already at a disadvantage with poor weight distribution.

The larger tires will put the power down better in a straight line, but that's pretty much in only 2 or 3 places on the average autocross course.

I didn't start watching F1 until I got involved in FSAE in college, so it was an interesting history lesson for me. I'd seen some old youtube videos, but nothing like in the movie.

 

just got a set of 18x9.5 fronts and 19x12 rears ill be seeing how they fit

also you have a solid rear car camber and caster are ajustments you just dont have to make with the axle just stiff and roll rate really

 

I guess running regular drop spindles might be out of the question. I have a few options though...

1: racecraft R&P drop spindles. I would still use this with the stock front steering. But it might not work depending on the wheel.

2: 1" extended ball joint and build my own bump steer kit.

I've also seen people shorten their steering arms in order to gain steering angle and increase steering ratio. Another option is to slot the K-member to A-arm bolt holes. I haven't noticed if there is any room to do this with our cars though. I've never heard of or seen any of these things done to an F-body, just trying to see what options other people have come up with. The big reason why I'm exploring these options is because I've lowered my Camaro about 3.5". I understand the negative effects this can have with the steering geometry and I'm trying to reduce the amount of bumpsteer and positive camber gain I might get. My springs and sway bars are, for the most part, stiff enough to minimize these effects but I'd rather not have to raise my car everytime I autocross.