V8s trailing arms

[v8s4me]

jwoffshore said:

Well, I've got to say that I am wondering why I have bothered to post anything factual and helpful here!! You guys have pretty much ignored what I went to the effort of describing in some detail and gone off on a load of waffle and speculation..... ....

Come on Jonathan, the weather is crap and we can't get out to play, so we've nothing better to do

jwoffshore said:

.... I am fortunate to live within 20 miles of him, so delivery charges were not an issue....

And so maybe he knew if you did have an issue you'd be back like a shot?

jwoffshore said:

....Anybody motivated to get new arms made should chase up TVR Parts and also Neil at ML Parts rather than dreaming that anybody is ever going to bother tooling up from scratch to produce aluminium arms for such a small market.....

You're just being sensible now

[DamianS3]

As JW said I've dropped a mail to TVR parts, hopefully it's just a matter of time and demand.

Thanks

Damian

[jwoffshore]

Fair enough Joe

I can't even guess at how things went so badly between you and Adrian.

I know how it feels when things go wrong dealing with a TVR trader. I was in for multiple £10k's on a long term project with one trader, who is held in high regard by most on PH (though he does not deal with S series). In the first instance you have to give the trader fair opportunity to put things right. In my case, repeatedly, delivery of the project compared to what he was doing for other customers over a long period got to the point of me feeling taken for granted and thoroughly insulted. In the end I was driven to cancel the whole thing and it all got broken up into parts to be sold off and recoup some of the costs, though not the wasted years. So you'd hope that a complaint over a few £100's for a trailing arm repair would be relatively easy to sort out between the two parties??

Back to Damian's query, the V8 arms compared to V6 arms have the same damper bracket location. It's only the width at the wheel hub mounting face that differs. Therefore the rear dampers and resulting ride height should be the same.

Jonathan

[jwoffshore]

DamianS3 said:

As JW said I've dropped a mail to TVR parts, hopefully it's just a matter of time and demand.

Thanks

Damian

Good luck Damian. See if they can confirm whether they do actually have the original jigs or not. If not, the jigs are maybe either still at Morrish Eng in Devon or they have been lost/scrapped - hoping not!

[Adrian@]

Thanks for people posting me direct as a heads up, as I try not to post on PH..I think Joe should of spoken to me and I would of explained that I am not looking for pretty welding ..options on a trailing arm where they get shot blasted for me, on a job where they are rusty, powder coated and also most waxsprayed, then, where the plasma cutting of the old tubes off the material leave a molten slag internally (which is ground off to the best of) produces gaps of 7-12mm to be in-filled and welded...I am looking to corrupt and pool the weld with a full penetration, drawing the rubbish in the weld to the surface to be ground off and over-layed again to full penetration...it is not pretty, and never going to be as you expect a pretty fillet weld to be, I can understand that people want pretty but I want strength, I up-size the tube that is removed which miss- matches the OE C section too, use 425 amp welding and spend more time grinding out the welds and re-welding than I do welding. Yes, as such, I do these for TVR traders, I have not had a problem/issue ever. A@

[DamianS3]

jwoffshore said:

Fair enough Joe

Back to Damian's query, the V8 arms compared to V6 arms have the same damper bracket location. It's only the width at the wheel hub mounting face that differs. Therefore the rear dampers and resulting ride height should be the same.

Jonathan

That's interesting but leaves stumped as to why they are too long.. maybe just put em back one and live with it.

Damian

[jwoffshore]

Damian, I have Nitrons on my V8S. In my case, they are really too short! The standard dampers are approx 14" fully open and have about 4" stroke. My Nitrons are somewhat shorter with only about 3" stroke, though I don't recall the exact figures. The problem with a gas mono-tube damper like the Nitron is that they have reduced stroke compared to a twin-tube damper of the same total length. This is due to accommodating the gas reservoir in the body of the damper, which eats into the available stroke. The way to restore the stroke is to add a remote reservoir, but then you are looking at more £££ for Nitron to upgrade the dampers and you need to decide where to mount the remote reservoir.

My car is in storage at present and I have an elbow injury preventing me from doing much manual work, otherwise I'd be happy to take some proper measurements for you.

Jonathan

[tvrgit]

jwoffshore said:

Back to Damian's query, the V8 arms compared to V6 arms have the same damper bracket location. It's only the width at the wheel hub mounting face that differs. Therefore the rear dampers and resulting ride height should be the same.

Be wary - I researched all of this for a Sprint article when I was S-Series editor, and not all of the V6 arms have the same damper location. The S1 and S2 are different, and those are different again from the S3/4/V8S damper mounts. Mix them up, and the ride height will be different.

This thread illustrates the differences - See the advice of Adrian@ on that thread - he is THE MAN on trailing arms (and probably a lot more!)

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=829...

[jwoffshore]

tvrgit said:

Be wary - I researched all of this for a Sprint article when I was S-Series editor, and not all of the V6 arms have the same damper location. The S1 and S2 are different, and those are different again from the S3/4/V8S damper mounts. Mix them up, and the ride height will be different.
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=829...

Yes, I should have been more clear, I was referring to the damper location of the S3 being same as V8S, since I believe Damian has an S3. So long as Damian presently has S3 arms, changing to V8S arms is unlikely to make any difference to ride height. It will provide a wider track.

[phillpot]

jwoffshore said:

It will provide a wider track.

Are driveshafts longer on V8s ...

[DamianS3]

Hello again folks, a late update for you all..

Well turns out the shocks, springs, and trailing arms are all ok..

So why is it high..? you all ask.. well the body is high on the chassis.? WFT and all that..Eh? I seem to have 4 rubber packers at the back which is over 20mm.

Question to you all, how many do you have or otherwise how much of your fuel tank is below the body line?

Thoughts, pictures etc appreciated.. we reassembled back to as was. Shortening the already short shocks seemed a horrible way to fix this.. it's mostly cosmetic afterall.

I didn't want to start stripping the pads off, as can only think Dulfords put them in for some even more hideous reason (body won't fit?) any other ideas?

Anyway back on road now..

I did discuss trailing arms with TVR Parts who were super helpful, they have the jigs but would like to verify a set against the new ones and ideally fit to a car before offering on open sale. Imagine if they just made them and shipped out and they didn't fit properly? These are Blackpool jigs afterall. We talked prices and I was very tempted but still want 8" rims at some point and my existing good S3 arms are ideal for that.

So if you have a v8s and want to get a special price on new trailing arms give them a call and see if you can work something out.. no promises but I understand an owner willing to help out here would get a great price on a pair from the first production run.

Give em a try someone please, I don't know why the official TVR Parts get such a hard time on here, I've found them to be very good and the spares catalogue is growing all the time. Personally I think it's great they are remanufacturing parts like servos for our old cars. They don't have to and it's a pretty llimited market. I picked up some door horseshoe things new £6 awesome.

Thanks

Damian S3

[phillpot]

M<ight be worth checking (if you haven't already) your ride height compared to others

I believe measurements are taken from bottom of longitudinal outrigger tube (body height/mounting irrelevant.

[DamianS3]

Doh... dammit.. what a fine idea.. thanks

Damian S3

[GreenV8S]

DamianS3 said:

Shortening the already short shocks seemed a horrible way to fix this

Agreed - it would mean the chassis was too low at the back, which would significantly alter the geometry of the rear trailing arms.

[tvrgit]

DamianS3 said:

n I didn't want to start stripping the pads off, as can only think Dulfords put them in for some even more hideous reason (body won't fit?) any other ideas?

Presumably these are the pads behind the rear edge of the door?

Glassfibre body shells are very flexible, and the S shell bends a lot open the middle if it's not supported. I suspect that those particular pads have been put in to lift the centre of the shell to open up a suitable door gap. If you take those pads out, and leave the rest, you might (almost certainly will) find that the doors won't close properly.

Unless, of course, the door gaps are already too big!

[magpies]

GreenV8S said:

Agreed - it would mean the chassis was too low at the back, which would significantly alter the geometry of the rear trailing arms.

The suspension wiki shows most chassis ride heights are in the range Front 170 - 180mm and Rear 175 - 185 although a few are outside that range like mine is lower (I have altered the upper suspension mounts to allow more suspension movement)
Again check the suspension wiki for what springs others are using.

[phillpot]

If it's the packing here mine also has a lot but only about 6mm under outrigger supports.........

[v8s4me]

DamianS3 said:

.....I did discuss trailing arms with TVR Parts who were super helpful, ...

If TVR Parts did go into production what would you prefer them to produce (i) original pattern units, powder coated or (ii) new items made from box-section and galvanised? Assuming of course box-section would be stronger. Would they be?

DamianS3 said:

.... I don't know why the official TVR Parts get such a hard time on here, I've found them to be very good and the spares catalogue is growing all the time.....

That's been my experience as well. I've bought a few bits for the Tasmin recently and even unusual things like door spindle bushes and odd shaped door seals are available.

[Top Gear TVR]

v8s4me said:

That sounds a lot given the cost of the materials and assuming the jig already exists. Say an hours work per side at £100 plus steel at say £30 plus two bushes at £40 plus painting, say £30 giving a manufacturing cost of maybe £200 (ex VAT). There's the cost of the mounting plates to add in but there's still a decent profit margin to be made. £50/hr for a decent welder is OK isn't it, and steel hasn't gone up much, has it?

Edited by v8s4me on Sunday 20th November 13:55

Things are rarely valued on the basis of cost, more typical would be value to the customer...

[Kitchski]

phillpot said:

I believe measurements are taken from bottom of longitudinal outrigger tube (body height/mounting irrelevant.

Just as irrelevant taking them from the outriggers, seeing as I've never seen a symmetrical S chassis

I clamp a straight edge to the lower chassis rails and measure from that. The lower rails are symmetrical.