The Panhard rod relocation bracket drops the end of the Panhard rod down enabling it to be parallel to the ground once again. The bracket allows the Panhard rod to be mounted into one of 3 positions depending on how low to the ground the car is.
Our car came with the T3 bracket and Panhard rod already installed so we did not have to procure it, a nice plus!
The Panhard rod angle doesn’t look right here because the car is at full droop.
Our car also had an early version of T3’s traction brackets. When the trailing arm is in the stock location, when the car is lowered, the arms point downward messing up the instant center location and causing the pro-squat geometry issues that lowered AE86’s suffer from. The traction brackets lower the rear pivot point of the trailing arm downward and correct their angle. The T3 parts allow the arm location to be adjusted in two different holes depending on how low your car is. Our car had an older version of the traction brackets and our new trailing arms would not fit so we ordered a set of current parts so everything will go together nicely.
Zach Mallin from ZSM Customs installed the upper trailing arm mount boxes. Zach first removed the stock mounts and made a small pilot hole so he could rough out the boxes location. This is a fairly difficult installation that requires decent fabrication skills.
6 comments
Well, that’ll do it! It’s actually interesting to me how many pretty well regarded cars moved to equal length 4-link rear suspension instead of… well, many other things. Not messing with setting anything up in CAD and going through the motions right now, but are there any issues with the upper links and lower links not being in the same plane, or “maybe in theory but not really”?
They have to be out of plane if you are going to have anti-squat which any 4 link needs at least a little of.
I meant in terms of the upper links being further inboard on the axle, to be clear; a lot of the implementation I’ve seen of, for example, 4-links under rally cars the box that was added here would contain top and bottom links instead of just top.
I suspect that some of this upper link stuff was done for interior packaging like it was on the FB RX-7 but ugh dealing with the consequences of that decision.
In this case, they are in the same location as stock. The factory doesn’t do this because they want to have a rear seat.
Mike, any thoughts as to whether it’d be worth using those boxes to add chassis rigidity if you’re converting to 3 link, or is it sort of moot at that point, since you’d be permanently tying the cage to the chassis at that point to provide positive location for the middle upper link anyway?
One of these days I’ll get started on my rotary 86, I swear!
You would have to do one in a three-link conversion. Don’t do a short upper link,