Replaceable Ball joints for the suspension Arms *technical*

[Andy Ven]

Hey All, 

I posted this already in the general section but thought it belongs in here too.

I havnt posted on here for a long while as ive up to the eyeballs in work. The time came a few months ago to rebuild my supra that i had stripped to refurbish.

One of my biggest bug bears was that i wanted new ball joints in the suspension arms but i didnt want to pay for a new arm especially when i was fully polybushing the car.

So after alot of research and development. I finally managed to do it. With not just one arm. But so far 3 of the arms.

Upper front

Lower front

Upper rear

 

All these arms i can now convert to take a replaceable ball joint. Which also means the arm doesnt need to be removed off the car for it to be replaced! 

 

There are some vidoes of the balljoints in action on my facebook and instagram page. 'Unrivalled_supras'.

[rider]

Did you machine a thread into the arm or use a threaded ball joint adapter? The threaded adapters and threaded Mopar ball joints seem to be a popular mod in US racing circles and I could imagine that'd work with the Supra arms if there is an adapter that fits or can be machined to fit. Whichever way, it should offer hope where there was none before. I love engineering solutions to overcome an everyday problem.

Edited April 18, 2021 by rider (see edit history)

[Tyson]

Saw this on Facebook, when the time comes for me to replace mine I doubt there will be any new arms left so this will be a great solution and possibly the only one!

[Andy Ven]

1 hour ago, rider said:

Did you machine a thread into the arm or use a threaded ball joint adapter? The threaded adapters and threaded Mopar ball joints seem to be a popular mod in US racing circles and I could imagine that'd work with the Supra arms if there is an adapter that fits or can be machined to fit. Whichever way, it should offer hope where there was none before. I love engineering solutions to overcome an everyday problem.

The arm is machined and threaded. The ball joints are fully custom made by myself. I did reach out to them in america but didnt have any luck.

[rider]

One thing to potentially watch out for with a freshly machined arm, which presumably is alloy steel will be any chemical reaction between the thread and the ball joint body metal that could lead to corrosion of the thread. There probably are surfactants out there that can be applied to stabilise the thread with an inert coating or maybe even an epoxy thread lock gel/cement would do it. That last option would make it harder to change out the ball joint for a second time but how many of these cars are still running 10,000 miles a year?

Alternatively, there are anaerobic gasket sealants like Permatex 51813 that may be worthwhile considering to apply onto the threaded joint which won't hamper any future disassembly.

[Andy Ven]

On 4/18/2021 at 12:54 PM, rider said:

One thing to potentially watch out for with a freshly machined arm, which presumably is alloy steel will be any chemical reaction between the thread and the ball joint body metal that could lead to corrosion of the thread. There probably are surfactants out there that can be applied to stabilise the thread with an inert coating or maybe even an epoxy thread lock gel/cement would do it. That last option would make it harder to change out the ball joint for a second time but how many of these cars are still running 10,000 miles a year?

Alternatively, there are anaerobic gasket sealants like Permatex 51813 that may be worthwhile considering to apply onto the threaded joint which won't hamper any future disassembly.

Good call on this one, i hadnt really thought about it too much. The lower fronts wont be an issue but the uppers being aluminum could be. I will take a look and see what options are out there