sheizasosay

Been trying REAL hard to hunt down Ross Murray. Phone numbers I have seen don't work. Website isn't there. I see Rodeo Flyer had one. I don't know how to PM. Have read about AJE having a mild-steel K-member that works on the street and raises front RC by 2". Anybody got anything for me? Agent 47's k is tailored to their SLA and so is Griggs. I would never put a UPR k on my car and BMR is for drag racing. Stocker is good from all I am hearing but I want to raise the front RC up and I don't want to use Steeda X5 ball joints to do it becaise they have noted failures on road courses.

UPRSharad

If you wouldn't use UPR or BMR, I surely wouldn't recommend AJE.

It sounds like you need Griggs, Agent47, or something custom. As specific as your request is, I would certainly recommend a custom k-member. A good chassis shop could fab one in one working day, and then you could just powdercoat it and roll with it.

jymontoya

Kenny Brown has one for s197's now...

sheizasosay

Yeah I wish I knew more about Kenny Brown's product, but when I searched for folks using it I got this http://www.svtperformance.com/forums...n-parts-2.html

Don't know if it's isolated event or not.

Sharad- UPR and BMR would be drag racing even though they both claim it's good for road courses. I would have zero issues supporting my disagreement for either of those k-members for road course duty. AJE... I confess I don't know much about them at all, I know they have history of drag racing, but they have a k-member that brings the front RC back up, which is a plus. Either way, I wound up making contact with Ross Murray. We will see how that pans out. Sharad, are you still on for running your car at Sebring with the UPR k-member?

tj@steeda

Hello Sheizasosay,

I am not familiar with our X5 ball joints having noted failures. Can you please provide any information regarding those issues? If this has occured and the person that had the issue has not contacted us, we can not resolve the issue.

I am on the boards daily and I have not seen "noted failures" with our ball joints, so just hoping you can provide the details to that claim.

Thank You

TJ

sheizasosay

We have been quite late getting our S197 products to market. The economy of the last 3-4 years has certainly had an effect on that.
Our website is actually quite up to date. We just do not have a lot of parts available for these cars yet. Another part of this is
that the S197 chassis is so much better than the chassis it replaces, it doesn't need as much fixing.

We are doing testing of parts, but this is never posted on our website. Most of our racing efforts come after the design and testing
portion. The vast majority of our testing is done with instrumented track time. The racing is done afterwards to prove to everyone
else that the testing and design process worked *

As long as you don't excessively lower the S197 chassis, it works quite well. The FR500S race cars from Ford work quite well with
stock k-members and FCAs. Only the ball joints and bushings are changed. If you go through the car and do the standard replacement
of overly soft bushings, that will improve the precision of the chassis quite a bit. For real track use, the car needs to front and
rear spring rates raised a fair amount. This will minimize the brake dive, acceleration squat and overall body roll. Matching struts
and shocks need to be installed to properly dampen the increased spring rates. C/c plates need to be installed in the front to
provide a proper alignment for performance use.

Raising the FCA inner pickup points will raise the roll center, allowing the car to be lowered for better handling. This requires a
new k-member or X5 ball joints. The k-member is the better solution. The X5 ball joint uses a taller stud to raise the roll center.
The increased stud length reduces its bending strength. I have seen several of these fail in track use. The Fox and SN95 chassis
used a larger ball joint stud. When Ford designed the S197 chassis, they made the ball joint stud smaller diameter, removing all of
the safety factor in it.

Installation of an Eibach R1 kit, will massively help to limit the chassis motions. It comes with springs that are about twice as
stiff as the stock springs. Since it uses standard 2.5" diameter coilover springs, it is very easy to change the spring rate:

http://www.maximummotorsports.com/st...oducts_id=1386

We have c/c plates specifically designed for the above R1 kit here:

http://www.maximummotorsports.com/st...oducts_id=1380

These allow you to precisely adjust in the correct amount of camber for track use and get the caster set the same side to side.

For the rear lower control arms, we have two models available. Given that you have a supercharged engine, I would use the heavier
duty model:

http://www.maximummotorsports.com/st...oducts_id=1318

Installation of these RLCAs will remove most of the axle housing wind up. This will reduce wheel hop considerably and result in
improved precision of the rear suspension and reduced roll steer.

Since you already have a Watts link installed in the rear, all of the side to side gush of the rubber bushed stock PHB should be
gone.

The only other two things I would consider is a bumpsteer kit for the front suspension. This will allow you to remove almost all of
the roll steer that Ford built into the front suspension:

http://www.maximummotorsports.com/st...oducts_id=1236

If you experience wheel hop from a dead stop or want to increase straight line traction more, install a Roush upper control arm kit.
This, along with the MM RLCAs, will eliminate wheel hop and increase forward grip by adding some antisquat to the rear suspension:

http://www.roushperformance.com/part...2005-2010.html

Let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Jack Hidley
Maximum Motorsports Tech Support
www.maximummotorsports.com

UPRSharad

Let me be clear... we don't pretend to have the hot setup for roadracing. Our k-members have been used for open-track racing and have held up well, so they give you the benefits of weight reduction and extra clearance in the engine compartment without sacrificing strength. But we don't alter the factory geometry like the road racing setups do. (unless you count the 1/2 engine drop option) If I was personally building a max effort open-track car, I'd use Griggs or Agent47. But that's high zoot stuff that I wouldn't want to use on a street/strip/HPDE all around usage car.

Anyway, yes, I am working on wrapping up the UPR suspension build on my car for the Sebring Sensation. I'm very excited about comparing lap times to last year's test to see where we end up. Drop me a PM if you're going and I'll make sure to meet up with you there.