New and Improved Rear Suspension Arms :-)

[doporto]

I always thought that Lotus was the end all be all when it came to suspension but now that I own a Lotus I am finding that there is a lot of room for improvement. My first shock came (no pun intended) when I discovered that my Esprit had decided to dump all the oil out of the front right shock. The worst part is that the car only had 2,000 km on it at the time. Having heard so much about the final edition Bilstein dampers and Eibach springs I upgraded to those and luckily it only cost me an arm and half a leg. They were a great improvement over the junk that Lotus put on my car originally. However, for the price I think that I should have gone to a Moton setup and I still might.

I'll stop complaining about the shocks and get to the main reason that I am writing this post. One of my friends made up some upper and lower suspension arms for me that address the binding in the rear suspension. The binding occurs because the rear suspension moves in an arc due the radian arm but the rear arms only move up and down. This movement pinches the rear bushing. Here is a picture of the original lower right arm, as you can see the bushing got mangled because of the binding. Lotus knew there was a problem and released some poly bushings but this doesn't fix the problem it just masks it for a little longer than the stock rubber bushings. If anyone would like to buy my set of Lotus rear poly bushings let me know. They are still brand new in the bag.

The new suspension arms that my friend made have hind joints on the outer end and a poly bushing on the inside. The hind joint allows some twisting that needs to happen and stops any binding. Here are some pictures of the new setup.

There is no noticeable difference in road noise with the new arms and in regular driving the car seems to handle the same. I'm sure there will be a noticeable improvement when track driving because the suspension can now do what it was meant to do without fighting its self. One thing that my friend noticed is that with the old arms and the shock and spring removed it is very hard to move the rear suspension but with the new arms it moves freely. Installation of these arms took less than a half hour and I would highly recommend them.

[kyliesmith.com]

Superb work!! Wow and I am loving that clean underneath. Credit to you

The links look really beautiful.

[mwmackenzie]

Looks great, love the idea but when Lotus set up the suspension it didn't move so freely and was set up accordingly. Something I'd not mess with unless your a suspension set-up guru? If it makes that much of a difference in the way the suspension moves you may need to look at your shock rate and possibly spring rates so your not over or under damping?? I'm not that knowlegeable on these issues so could well be talking rubbish here?

Looks great though! And your car is a credit to you!!!

Mark

[andydclements]

My TE has a similar transformation on the upper links, but rose jointed at both ends, I'm actually thinking of going back to either no rose joints and simply poly bushed with normal adjuster or single rose jointed and poly bushed at the other end , having seen your set-up I may now decide to go for the single option.