Plavan's 818R Build Thread

[C.Plavan]

So just catching up as I prepare for a R build. This whole control arm spacer seems to be poorly designed, why wasn't there just a R mount at the right height?

No sure why- but they are trying to make as many 818 frames as fast as they can I imagine.

This is what I just got back from Jim at FFR- All future 818R builders use this as a good reference.

"Chad,

Sorry for the delay here.
The low ride height is something we designed into the chassis to allow for building a dedicated track car only that you are willing to compromise any street use as well as things like trailer and lift access. The standard donor package still assumes the higher ride height so there is some sourcing of parts needed to do the low ride height.

What you need if you want to run the lower ride height (not recommended for street use) This ride height is also only set up for Sedan control arms.

Move the upper control arm to the top of the chassis and put 4 .815 spacers in the old arm mounting locations to strengthen the new mounting location. Longer bolts will be needed to mount the arms on the top.
Mount the front lower control arms in the upper set of holes on the front mounts.
For the rear bushing mount on the control arm the inner mount bolt should be spaced up by .875 and the outer bolt should be mounted on top of the plate with a .400 spacer as a starting point. The height of the rear mount can be raised if you would like to dial anti-dive into the chassis as a tuning tool.
Running the low ride height requires the use of a bumpsteer kit because the steering rack stays in the same chassis location. We used the Baer kit but drilled out the spindles and replaced the tapered shaft with a longer bolt for more adjustment.

In the rear the low ride height mounts will only work with adjustable control arms. The easiest and intended set-up is to use 13 inch long swaged tubes with 3/4 shank rod ends that have 5/8 holes. We then drilled the rear spindles out just a hair to allow us to use the standard size rod ends and a 5/8 cross bolt.

Hopefully that gets you started in the right direction, there is lots of adjustment that can be done and when you are ready I can also give you our baseline setting to start out from if that helps.

Jim"


As you can see, we have gotten a lot of different numbers for the LCA spacers- Now 7/8" (.875) inner and 13/32 (.4063) outer. That outer one has been changing a lot (he does says its a start at .400)- but we have gotten 11/16th (.6875), and 9/16th (.5625). I want to know what is exactly on the FFR 818R? Is it (.4063)?

I may CNC the outer spacer block to .400 then add shims, or just do a .5 block.

This is where I over think things.