Datsun 521 Ball Joint Mod - Page 4

Chronicles my work of converting the kingpins to ball joints on a Datsun 521.   

The stand out features of this mod are that it will retain the stock track width and torsion bar suspension.
Got some work done on the upper arm.  I made the two gussets and put the bends in them.  The vid is more of the highlights rather than minute by minute fab work.
Worked on getting figuring out how to do the bending.  I tried to keep the Vee(bottom bending die) as narrow as possible, but with further research on the internet, I found that I I'm going to need to make the Vee a good bit wider.  I was hoping to figure out how to bend the arm after it was completed, but that may not be possible with only a 20 ton shop press.
6 pics put in a super short vid for those that haven't seen the latest design.  I post the pics in the build thread on Ratsun, but I've realized that some of the people watching my vids don't follow the thread on Ratsun.  Anyway.....This is the latest CAD design I've come up with.  The #37 vid will make a bit more sense when you see this one. :)
This is a first for me.  I only took pics in the shop today.  Usually when I do that, the pics only end up on the build thread.  I figured I'd see if I could put the pics into a vid and put them up here.  It worked, but I didn't add any audio.  I need baby steps.....I'm not too bright :)
One of my shortest vids! LOL  

I wanted to check the camber after taking one of the washers out.....but I set the level's alt zero to the wrong place on the frame.  I'll check it again, but if I remember right, the correct place on the frame was .9 deg....the one I set it to in this vid is .4....so instead of being off a full degree as I show in the vid, I think it's only about a half a deg of pos camber.  I may have that math backwards, so I'll remount the arm and check it again next time I'm in the shop.
I finished up the ball joint plate I started in 33 & 34.  I lengthened the slots on the tubes for the plate to fit and tacked it all together.  I think the last 10 min or so is the arm on the frame doing measurements and range of motion.  I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out.

When I show the scrub measurement, I have the suspension bottomed out.  I should have checked it at ride height.  I think it would have just barely kept the cross member off the ground, but it would have been really close.
Continuation from 33.  Still fabbing the ball joint plate the hard, but cheap way.  About all that's left now is to cut the clearance hold for the ball joint with a hole saw.
I was able to verify that the flat ball joint plate will work within the upper ball joint's range of motion for the lowered vehicles.  A lot of this vid is checking range of motion, then I start into manually creating the ball joint plate.
Since the arm I'm started with is only going to work for stock ride height and the first guy getting a set of these is running a lowered 521, I figured I'd better work a bit on a lowered UCA.  With the UCA being shorter than the stock 720 arm, the range of motion on the upper ball joint has been already used up....that was the point of angling the mounting plate on the first version.  So, I need to change the plate angle so that the swing of the UCA will still be within the ball joints range in a lowered configuration.
This ones really short and I almost named it lower control arm removal.   A lot of people think that they need to pull the torsion bar out of the LCA coupler....I know I did a few years ago.  You can use this method to pull the LCA or reclock the torsion bar for a lower stance.  Just make sure you mark the parts in some way that you'll know how many teeth you've moved the arm on the bar.  The second half of the vid is more ball joint mounting stuff....it was a left over vid that didn't fit in with the last couple I did, so I thought I'd just attach it to this one.