I have read about alot of folks upgrading their Upper Control Arms, and Lower Control Arms. In most posts they are refering to adjusting rear axle pinnon angle.

My question is are their other handling, weight, or power/traction advantages?


Thanks

 

you will stop wheel hop and the spinning of your tires dramatically w/ LCAs and UCAs

 

THE PURPOSE OF THE UCA & LCA ARE TO ADJUST PINION ANGEL AND STOP WHEEL HOP

 

Please forgive me for restating the obvious, but for the n00bs here, the S197 Mustangs have only one Upper Control Arm (UCA) and two Lower Control Arms (LCA's).

With stock height springs, non-adjustable LCA's are fine, and if you want to install an UCA, you can buy an adjustable one. The are many members who only have LCA's and a stock UCA, and they do not have wheelhop problems. A concern about an aftermarket UCA is it will transmit more road noise/vibration/clunk into the car, but it does help for launching at the track.

If your car is lowered (or you plan to lower it later), then you should consider buying adjustable LCA's and the relocation brackets.

 

The only issue with saying LCAs and UCA help with wheel hop is the fact that wheel hop is a vertical thing, and the control arms rotate vertically. How would something that pivtos vertically stop something vertical from happening?

Anyways.... I noticed a huge improvement in handling for road racing by upgrading my 3 control arms. The upper one seemed to tighten the rear more than anything. Consider replacing the upper control arm mount which is just as weak and important as the actual upper control arm.

And yes, if you drop a car you may need to adjust pinion angle. Pinion angle is the angle at which your rearend's driveshaft flange points towards the transmission. You want the tranny and rearend flanges to point at each other (but not perfectly. do a search on the topic).

 

I recommend a NON adjustable UCA.. and Adjustable LCA's...

Its Very Difficult to get to the UCA..But with the Adjustable LCA u still can adjust your pinion angle, I also Recommend a Adjustable Pan Hard

Bar to straighten the Axle from side to side..

Good luck..

 

Thanks

 

When I slapped on my LCA's, wheel hop vanished, but wheelspin still existed. That's nothing that a new set of sticky tires can't fix though

 

from experience, I can tell you that the upper control arm is a real pain to get to. You need to pull the back seats up to access a bolt that holds in the mount and you also need to lower the gas tanks so you can get that bracket out. Some GT's you need a 13mm socket to remove the bolt, but there was a recall apparently so newer ones (I know my 07 had one) require a torx 50. I had a tough time with the gas tanks and could not get them low enough to pull the mount out. The more I loosened the bolts the tighter they got. I even put jacks underneath each side so they wouldn't just fall out. I tried a crobar, i tried everything to get that bracket out but I got nothing. Then i tried tightening it and jus removing the UCA from the mounting bracket, but the frame comes down just enough to block me from removing the bolt in the back. I'll give it another shot this weekend but if I had known I'd run into this many problems, I would have just gotten adjustable lower control arms instead of an adjustable upper control arm.

 

It's an indirect effect, and they're harder to visualize. What you can see may be vertical, but that's not all there is. Actually, I don't think it even has to get started as a vertical motion (unless the anti-squat/IC is all wrong, but that's a different problem).

Impact loads from sudden acceleration can over-compress soft bushings (and allow a little too much axle rotation), which will eventually spring back when traction and wheel torque conditions permit. This involves a tiny bit of rearwardwheel slip and an over-reduction in the bushing loads. The tire regains grip, overcompresses the bushings because it's suddenly applied,and the cycle starts all over again.

But since axle rotation and vertical axle movement cannot be completely separated (in engineering-speak, they are 'coupled' to some extent) starting the rotation cycle means that vertical hop is likely to follow. Especially if the rotation cycle coincides with a suspension frequency.

It's important to look at the rotation because that's what the combination of lowers and upper are specifically designed to control. And by directly controlling the rotation, they indirectly control the vertical hop. But for a softer ride, OE bushings are made softer, and both the direct and indirect controls over what the axle is up to are reduced. Good for sales, bad for the launch.

Stiffer bushings in either the LCAs or the UCA tend to raise the axle rotation frequency away from the suspension frequency, and willdeflect less and store less energy when they do compress. It's pretty difficult to overcompress something that doesn't compress very well at all. Stiffening both lowers and the upper is sort of like taking a full dose of medicine instead of just half a dose. If half a dose is all that's needed, fine. But some cases need the full measure.


Norm