traction link (rear trailing arm) installation question

[i3igpete]

while uninstalling the factory traction links, they were under quite a bit of preload and required some elbow grease to remove. upon inspection, the factory arm on one side was about 10mm too short to reinstall the bolts without a fight.

the new links are adjustable so i could either install them at zero-preload length and leave them that way, or i could shorten them back to the factory lengths after getting the bolts though.

i know using the zero-preload length will change the alignment, although, the factory alignment being off is likely the root cause of the misalignment (suspension bind?).

i am not planning to replace any other arms at the moment. what is best practice in this situation?

screenshot from another thread for reference. red arrow.

Sponsored

 

[Thraxbert]

Size the center-to-center length of the new arm to match the old, then get an alignment. That's the "best" way. The other way is to just get it to whatever length fits the current hub position and get an alignment.

 

[razorlab]

If you jack up the arms at the hub and use a screwdriver to align the hole, it all goes back together normally. Took me some wrestling to figure that out, then it worked.

 

[i3igpete]

Yeah I thought about it a bit, having a non-stock lower link length will change the arc radius and path.

tricky part is that the hole is so far off that i couldn't use the screwdriver trick on that side

 

[Thraxbert]

You can also use jacks, pry bars, pickle forks, ball joint separators, and wedges to move the hub around.

 

[razorlab]

tricky part is that the hole is so far off that i couldn't use the screwdriver trick on that side

That's why you jack it up to align things better.

 

[RyanA90]

I used the Jack to get it aligned to the factory length.

 

[i3igpete]

what I ended up doing was extending the arms out to zero preload alignment, get the bolts through, then pulled the arms in to full short, and then counted the number of turns needed to go back out to stock length when measured off the car (22x 60-degree turns for the megans)

 

[i3igpete]

Quick update with review. wheel hop is not eliminated, but it is significantly reduced. it feels like the amplitude of hop is roughly halved, and feels like it damps out much quicker as well (say, 4-6 hops per event rather than 10-15)

Sponsored