Spacer Rings For CVDS.

CVDS Spacer rings when adjusting rear camber.

For many years the writers S2 elan was driven around thinking that it handled pretty good.

But it wasn’t until my friend who is a professional suspension tuner had the elan on the alignment bench checking the front suspension, when he also decided to check the geometry of the rear suspension, one side was “0” Deg camber, the other side had +0.5Deg Camber… definitely not a good combination.

That’s when the decision was made to do some re-engineering work. The inner lower A arm bush housings were converted to threaded adjusters.

We also manufactured and installed LH-RH toe adjusters into the rear A frame tube, this allowed the perfect toe setting of the rear wheels. It appears that not to many manufactured A frames are correct, the process of welding can distort the jig setting that the A frames are built in… hence the reason for toe adjusters. And despite popular belief, they do not cause stress or strain on the A frame, when a toe adjustment is being made the LH-RH screw is generally turned .75 of a turn either way, which amounts to just a few tenths of a mm, or just a few thousands of an inch.

There are only two methods to adjust camber on the elan. The ideal method is to lean the top of the struts inwards to gain the required neg camber, and “off set” lotocones would certainly come in handy here, and perhaps we should mention that Craig W in QLD Aust has been working on this mod, I believe they work well, but of course you will need narrow wound springs, as there is limited adjustment room with standard springs. (Craig could fill us in more on this I think)

The other method, (what we are explaining here) is to use adjustable lower A frames… But, this is where the fun begins.
If a CVDS conversion is on the car, the adjustment will mean that the wheels are in effect pushed outwards a small amount (Make the track wider) to gain the desired degree of camber…. the problem is… CV joints have a limited amount of plunge movement inwards and outwards… it is possible that when setting and adjusting the desired camber, the CVs may be close to the end of their available travel, and that is not a good operating scenario.

So with the loss of side to side movement of the CV joint, the spacer rings shown in the photograph above are designed to restore the operating plunge of the CV joints… the spacer rings are cheaters and effectively lengthen the intermediate drive shafts, if you can understand that.

The rings are generally about 10mm thick, but they can be machined to any desired thickness, and the correct thickness is only arrived at by trial and error… But of course, once they are made correct, there wont be any need to alter the settings.

The set up and rejigging of the rear suspension is quite a tedious job, the complete job requires many engineering skills and a comprehensive workshop set up. The most important part is having access to a car suspension laser alignment bench, and without that it will be guess work at best… although there are people out there who like to work with other methods… but laser alignment is by far quicker and higly accurate.

We hope this has explained the reason for the spacer rings.

To learn more about the following:
Adjustable rear A arms.
Fast road suspension.
Hybrid CVDS Conversion