Affordable aftermarket tubular a-arms revisited [Archive] - Chevelle Tech

: Affordable aftermarket tubular a-arms revisited


cjlandry
Feb 27th, 03, 1:19 PM
Yeah, I made my own, so it shouldn't matter to me. But the point of the whole exercise was to show that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to fabricate something like this. The other point was to hopefully get a source for affordable arms.

I just got off the phone with Larry at Spartan Rod Works (http://www.westcentralauto.com/SRW.htm). He contacted me with questions about the arms I made and about the tall spindle conversion. I sent him a fax with some dimensions.

We had quite a nice chat, and he's nearly ready to start the project.

His arms will take the screw-in type ball joints, so that will make life a little easier.

He said his price for a pair will probably be in the $200 range. Sounds like our work on this will pay off.

I also spoke with him about fabbing tubular lowers. I have a stock lower arm that I've been trying to figure out how to make a jig from.

He asked what the advantage of tubular lowers would be. I told him about the issues with broken lower arms. He seems interested in this too.

I told him I'd give him any and all measurements I can to make this possible.

I very much appreciate that Larry took the time to contact me about this.

Send me an email if you'd like to add any input to this. I'll call Larry once I get everyone's opinions together so he won't get 50 calls with the same issue.

He said he's not familiar with Team Chevelle, so I told him that we have over 12,000 members on the web. I think that might be good enough to get him moving quickly on this.

We may even be able to talk him into a discounted group purchase, but I wouldn't bet on it since his pricing seems very low to start with.

ponjohn
Feb 27th, 03, 2:12 PM
Question: The hotchkiss arms and the arms shown on Spartans website are flat. The GW arms seem to have a contour to them, is there any benefit from this?

It appears after looking at the picture of the GW arms it is simply the way they fasten the arms to the BJ mount? correct? Again any benefit?...they do look nicer.

cjlandry
Feb 27th, 03, 2:31 PM
The only advantage I see is that the curve will clear the frame rail when you jack the car up.

My flat arms will contact the frame rail when I jack the car up, but the balljoint won't bottom out.

I've yet to hit anything while driving that causes the flat arm to hit the frame rail. Maybe if you jump the car you'd need a bump-stop in there.

BC
Feb 28th, 03, 11:40 PM
great work Chad,
Please keep us posted on this!

Bill C.

chevelle68malibu
Mar 2nd, 03, 5:56 PM
Is this for real? i just riped my suspension apart, and am looking for disk spindles, if these are this cheap i will deffinately go with the cheaper tall spindle swap. Thanks for posting his website!

cjlandry
Mar 2nd, 03, 7:03 PM
It's for real, but I don't know how long it's gonna take him to get started selling them.

I really want to get the correct dimensions for the lowers so he can do those as well.

This could prove "revolutionary" for A-body owners everywhere. :D