Progress

  Some help from Abe's Garage and we found a solution to the camber plate fitment problems.  A few minutes on the mini-lathe and a new spacer is machined for placement on the strut stem between the upper spring seat and bearing plate.  This allows an extra bit of clearance so that the seat does not interfere with the upper strut tower hole or any of the lower ring bolts. Strut stem side clearance to the center tower hole is minimal, less than 1/4", so I presume I am near the maximum caster limit with this design.  The strut mounting bolts were welded to the lower support ring to allow easier installation.  Bump travel is increased about 3/4" but then the ride height is lowered about 3/8" for a total net gain of 3/8" bump.  Toe appears to be close to zero and caster should be improved but a professional alignment will come next week or asap.

This top-mount design puts a lot of stress on the strut towers and more load through the hardware compared to the stock mounts.  Next step is to make a full circumference spacer and possibly upgrade the hardware.  Would also be nice to somehow incorporate a strut bar for reinforcement.  Just gonna drive it for now and see if any weak spots show up.

  My recently replaced exhaust manifold gasket started leaking again so I knew something was wrong.  A quick look revealed a blown out gasket and carbon deposits all around cylinder #2.   Header removal and straight edge check shows a low spot at the header flange around runner #2.  Abe's Garage has a big selection of tools so we whip out the belt sander and go to work.  Add a new gasket and all is quiet again with the OBXv2 race header.  I bought this header used and it always had a slight leaky tick when cold; must have been a manufacturing defect or a previous owner problem.

Good news:  I finally have a second full set of 15x7.5 5x114.3 Rota Slipstream wheels.  The bad news is that the last 2 wheels I bought have a different offset, +40.  All the others are +35 and barely clear the front brake rotors.  A test fit with the new +40 wheels and there are no problems . I bought some 5mm spacers just in case I need more inside clearance between the strut and tire.

Caster Plates DIY

  Nothing fancy, but good enough for my budget.  Generic pillowball centers (the same bearings as used in my existing ebay camber plates) bolted to 3/8" aluminum plate.  The lower support ring is 1/8" steel with M10 hardware and steel standoffs -  similar design to the Hotchkis and Noltec plates.  Not intended to be slotted but it was easy enough to do while the tools were out.  The slotting is strictly front to rear for caster changes only and the camber is minimal and fixed at the plate.

Test fitting onto the Bilstein struts and there are minor clearance issues that will need to be sorted out before final assembly.  Some strut stem spacers are needed to move the upper spring perch down away from the tower, and the standoffs need to be about 1/8" taller to give room for the bearing assembly bolts to clear the raised lip on the strut tower hole.

The goal of these plates is to maximize caster and allow more strut travel.  I hope to gain almost an inch of strut travel and then reduce ride height by half that.  Caster will be improved a little, but by how much I am not sure as it depends on the tie rods and strut tower hole clearance.

Plans to have these installed and tested for last weekend's autox was a fail and time is ticking.  Future suspension development and tuning mostly relies on this project as I want to play with the ride height and rake before making another spring / swaybar change.