Homemade rods
These are JSHarvey's homemade rods. I think there's a few others that have too.

 

Good lord, I dare not answer. :lol:

It can be done, it's pretty cheap, pretty easy and I have/had a complete parts list. It's about $140 including shipping for all the parts.

It lets the suspension move more freely, react quicker, and makes alignment a whole lot easier. IIRC you adjust camber when adjusting these.

 

http://home.bresnan.net/~dazed/adjustable

I haven't made them, but they look good, and its very detailed.

 

Strut rod length controls caster. One of the many benefits of adjustable rods is once the length is adjusted to set caster it doesn't change. The rubber bushings on the oem strut rods allows a small amount of change in the effective pivot point and length of the rod, creating unpedictable suspension behavior while cornering. It's not normally much of an issue on a street car, but with a tight suspension and modern wide tires it can make for a more stable and predictable feel in the cars handling. It also eliminates the binding caused by the oem bushing set up so the suspension reacts smoother and quicker.

 

On a similar topic, I've seen delrin bushings made to replace the rubber for '65-'66 cars. I think the cool part of this option is it keeps the pivot point and length of the strut rods where it was intended by the suspension designers instead of shortening the length to fit a hiem joint, and it still offers all the benefits of the heim joint option. I haven't seen delrin bushings for the later cars yet, but I imagine they're available somewhere.

 

So, is this simply a delrin bushing swap or is it the aftermarket strut rods with delrin? IIRC, delrin is pretty stiff stuff and not a good combo with stock strut rods (remember Poly bushings)

 

I have the delrin bushings from Maier Racing in my 66. I love them. Definitely cleaned up the fore/aft movement of the stock rubber bushings without any binding during braking and hard cornering, and were less than an hour for installation (and no adjustments for caster needed). They are comprised of two hemispheres of delrin that are separated by the sandwiched stock metal hole that the stock strut rod fits through and two billet sockets that fit around them. There are a few sets of shims included that allow for minor variations in length. The stock strut rod fits through the set and is torqued down as the stock bushings would be torqued down (stopping when the rod assembly movement was stiff, but not too stiff). There are a few posts about these, but not many have them yet as they are fairly new and only (so far) for the 65-66 style strut rods.
Daniel

 

I have the delrin bushings from Maier Racing in my 66. I love them.

Daniel

http://www.maierracing.com/images/ms2625/151_5127_bw.jpg

Mike Maier does nice work. :thumbsup:

 

I have them too. I like them.

 

BTW, to answer your second question, the adjustable strut rods allow for easier caster adjustments for the 65-66 and allow for a bit more overall caster even on the 67+ cars. The 65-66 used shims on the upper control arm to change caster settings. Later years switched to strut rods that allowed for caster adjustment instead of shims. These later strut rods still use rubber bushings, so still have the binding and fore/aft movement issues that the heim joints remedy. I had enough positive caster (+3*) using shims that I didn't need any extra the adjustable strut rods allow, so was able to switch to the Maier ones without issue.

You will find fewer and fewer alignment "techs" that even know what shims are, so if you don't have an old school technician, you may have trouble getting good alignments if you stay the shim route. I got lucky where I live.

 

I wouldnt run any aftermarket bushing like a poly material unless I used adjustable strut rods. The bind created will destory the front end. You have to run rubber unless you run an after market setup like Maiers bushings a TCP strut rods.

Im in the process of designing an adjustable strut rod to be like half the price of what is sold frolm the aftermarkets today. Right now I need to design a setup to mount to the stock location that doesnt look like I copied it from someone else. the rod and pivit setup is easy.

 

the delrin bushings won't bind like poly or even stock rubber bushings therefore they won't break a strut rod like a poly bush would. in effect these area really large heim joint. have a look at the insides of a heim joint sometime and you'll see they have a delrin or nylon bushing inside a steel bearing race. the maier bushing is the exact same thing only bigger.