All of the knuckles pick-up points have been moved to improve the geometry. The toe curve that on the OEM part goes toe out and in under compression, has been modified to only toe in under roll, greatly improving stability. This alone makes a huge difference in drivability.
The rear suspension Anti-Squat geometry has been changed to where the suspension never goes into Pro-Squat or the point where torque reaction causes the suspension to suck down and preload anywhere in the wheel travel. Furthermore, we will be relocating the location of the lower control arm forward pivot with another GKTech kit to further flatten the Anti-Squat curve. Getting rid of Pro-Squat and making the rear suspension have a flatter Anti-Squat curve helps the rear suspension find grip and makes the car’s response to throttle input more predictable.
Finally, the negative camber gain under compression has been reduced. This improves rear tire forward traction and tire life. We did all of this by modifying the suspension pick-up points but once again, with GKTech, you can simply buy knuckles where this is all engineered in for you!
The GKTech rear knuckle features a stiff but lightweight fabricated hollow construction designed using FEA (Finite Element Analysis) optimization. The knuckles are designed to take 4x the maximum anticipated load. In the OEM knuckle, this would all be solid steel. Most of the tension that creates stiffness is at the skin of a part so by making the skin have more cross-sectional area, but hollow you can get the diametric opposites of stiffer yet lighter. The GKTech part is 2.65 lbs lighter than stock.
All the pivot points of the knuckle feature PFTE-lined spherical bearings this gets rid of all the soft rubber in the bushings of the OEM part. Bearing conversion kits are offered for the OEM parts but this is included with the GKTech part. Even though everything is changed around, the GKTech knuckle is still compatible with OEM configured (as long as they use bearings and not bushings due to rubber not being able to conform to the geometry changes) suspension links so it will work no matter what other arms you may already have on your car as long as they work on the OEM knuckle.
The GKTech knuckle is configured to take single or dual Z32/R32 two-piston fixed calipers which is a popular brake upgrade for the S Chassis. This makes it super easy to add a drift brake to a car. Z32 or R32 GT-R vented rotors can be used without having to resort to offset spacers. It also makes it super easy to upgrade to lightweight 2-piece rotors. The stock Z32/R32 drum-type parking brake is also compatible with these knuckles. Finally, the knuckles have clearance for larger R32 and heavy-duty aftermarket axles, something many drop knuckles don’t have.
8 comments
It’s a little funny to me that you’re raiding gktech’s catalog because I came across them the other month and thought that they had a lot of interesting ideas in terms of engineering a whole system.
The mention of OEM ideas on anti-squat and so on just brings to mind a question that I’ve been mulling over – do you have sort of a rough geometry philosophy or with the production based stuff you do a lot with, are you too constrained to do more than “this is optimal within the limits I’m forced into”?
For me, I do not like anti-squat and anti-dive. For production, cars that have to have softer suspension and less sophisticated dampers. a small amount is probably ok. Nissan’s of this time had 30 plus percent, a stupid amount that has negative side effects. Things like bad wheel hop and squirting sideways when on the throttle. Nissan back way off on anti in the later models of these cars.
Do you have sort of a “this is the top priority” geometry-wise? I’m doing my tube car final suspension revision (which is to say, final before it turns into steel and I maybe decide to change it later based on on-track data) and decided to focus on “roll center in reasonable places and stays constant relative to CG” as kind of a way to narrow things down.
I understand if this is getting too into the weeds for a comment thread. 😉
In my opinion, nothing beats good old-fashioned unequal-length A-arms.
You should just know that double wishbone SLA suspension is ubiquitous and so far has not been reasonably improved upon. It’s simple, it’s light and easy to understand.
You can technically do trick stuff like put a hydraulic ram in an A-rm mount and give dynamic negative camber to outside wheels like the Mercedes Carver concept, but that’s obviously way too costly and complicated for a single person to do.
Someone went to a lot of trouble to make their product not look like the Driftworks Geomaster 3 rear knuckles.
That is because it is very different. The geometry is different for all the reasons we mentioned and there is axle clearance for 930-type CV’s. We used those knuckles before and they would not work with DSS axles.
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