StanceWorks: COILOVERS! Custom H&R Suspension Build for the Honda-Swapped Ferrari

StanceWorks Video Transcript

Our h r coilovers are here the new merch is live on the site and we’re redesigning our rear suspension from the ground up this episode’s going to be a good one let’s dive in every great stanceworks episode begins with a new box of fresh parts given the intro it’s no surprise that

Inside are our custom h r coilovers for the 308 but these are some of my most anticipated parts for this project so far so let’s take a closer look these one-off h r coilovers were built specifically for the 308 project using dimensions and measurements that i

Provided to h r a couple of months ago but the weight was worthwhile because as they say perfection takes time what we got in return is a set of aluminum-bodied mono-tube coil-overs that will do everything that we ask of them they are sprung and valved for the new

Weight of the 308 along with its aero package and the downforce it’ll make and they tip the scales at just 9.2 pounds per side or 18.4 pounds in total absolute featherweights they’re also some of the smallest dampers that i’ve ever seen which will fit our packaging constraints perfectly

On top of the coilovers we’ve also got a slew of springs to use once we get to the testing and tuning phase so we can really dial in the suspension package of this car but that’ll come in a future episode for now let’s get these coils installed The front end is a bolt-in affair made simple by the fact that we made turnbuckles as placeholders for our coilovers a few months ago if all of our measurements are correct it should be as simple as simply removing the bolts from this turnbuckle removing the turnbuckle itself and then

Putting the new coilover directly into place As hoped our bushing widths were perfect now it only comes down to overall length now keep in mind that our turnbuckles sit the car at right height versus the coilover itself will compress with the car’s weight on it that means the control arm needs to come down just a

Touch but with it dropped the coil over slipped right into place and we can call this complete the front coilovers are officially installed now let’s move on to the rear of the car i wish that i could say this was going to be as easy as the front but it’s anything but

Let me disconnect the toe link and move some parts out of the way so i can show you the problem the ball joint on our lower control arm is a tension ball joint as load is placed on the wheel of the car it attempts to pull this ball joint

Apart that is of course opposed to a compression ball joint which gets pressed together you can see the stud and the cup for our ball joint here and how they get assembled the stud is unable to pass through the front of the ball joint which is how it carries its load

This ball joint is meant to be pulled apart not pressed together the front end works the exact same way which is why we have our coil over mounted to the lower control arm this mimics the way that a corvette is built which is what we’re borrowing some parts from

The problem is we’ve done something different in the rear end we’ve got the coilover mounted to the upper control arm and because the upper ball joint is inverted this ball joint is also in tension unfortunately i finally heard back from the manufacturer and i’ve been told that

This ball joint is a compression ball joint it’ll come apart if we run it this way on top of that there is one other small issue if you look closely our temporary coilover is actually angled towards the inside of the car this would yield a falling spring rate

If we were to run it this way we could solve this problem by just moving the tabs on the control arm and we could fix the ball joint issue by just modifying the spindle and putting a tension ball joint in place but honestly i’d rather solve this a better way

I want to relocate the coilover to the lower control arm just like we have it set up in the front that lower ball joint is a lot more stout and better suited for the loads that it needs to carry for that we’re going to need to design

Some new shock mounts so let’s start with the upper shock mount i drew this up in fusion 360 after making some cardboard templates to figure out what’s gonna work it’s a very simple sheet metal part that can be made from three individual pieces and then welded together

It can get mounted to the reinforced section of the chassis that we built in a previous episode and it makes for a somewhat simple solution so now let’s talk about the lower control arm this dainty looking thing is what’s currently in the car and we need to beef

It up considerably which is why we’re going to do this a crossbar spreader with a 3 16 plate to triangulate the entire thing along with some tabs to actually support the coilover itself the tabs are offset towards the back of the car because we need to clear an axle

That we don’t have yet i’m playing it on the safe side and leaving a bit of room to spare the last thing that we need to do is rebuild our upper control arms because there’s currently a plate welded in the middle of it and we need a coilover to pass through it

The only problem is we need new tapered ends for the upper ball joints so let’s pay a visit over to brett walker at nimmo machine if you’re new to the channel you might not be familiar with brett but brett is what you might call a master of all trades

I’ve never taken a problem to him that he hasn’t been able to solve and as such he’s been an integral part of every single project i have undertaken in one form or another and this time some tapered holes are going to be a cakewalk for him these holes will require some precision

Machining though so brett whipped out his machinist handbook and then explained that these tapered holes would be measured not in degrees but in subsections called minutes and seconds a minute divides a single degree into 60 subsections and a second divides each of those subsections into 60 more

Just like a circle has 360 degrees it has nearly 1.3 million seconds and brett is aiming for one now let’s be clear it doesn’t need to be that precise but brett doesn’t cut corners and as a result we have two perfectly machined ball joint receivers to weld to new control arms

Now forgive the merch plug but before we get back to fabrication i’ve got to share it because i’m so pumped we’ve got the new k24 and turbo buddies tee in black and in white along with the ivory stance works pentagon t and the balance and power design which not so subtly

Blends ferrari’s prancing horse topped by a samurai which perfectly encapsulates everything about a ferrari with a k24 in it i’ve also got new garage banners so head to the stancework store and snag whatever you’re into now back to work because i’m cramming all of this work

Into one episode i had my buddy dylan plasma cut all the parts we designed and cad earlier in the episode the downside is that plasma cut parts have much rougher edges than the laser cut parts we get from send cut send there’s a lot of curfing that’s going to

Need to be cleaned up in order to make these parts up to snuff between the belt sander and my finger file i spent roughly two hours cleaning these parts up but even still i can’t thank dylan enough for knocking these parts out for me after the cleanup work i’m pretty happy

With these and i’m definitely willing to weld them onto the car so i took our shock tower over the workbench got it mocked up with some one two three blocks and burned it in I ran this at about 106 amps with three thirty seconds tungsten and three thirty seconds filler rod and i’m pretty happy with the result although i might have cooked it just a touch on to the lower control arms here’s a glimpse at what the arm looks like in

Its current state without any revisions or changes the first step on the list is to mount the central gusset for the control arm this will not only make the arm itself a whole lot stronger but it’ll give us something to mount the shock mount too the shock mount of course is going to

Need a tube running along the back side like i have mocked up here after confirming that our cad drawn tabs match our original real control arm it’s time to make a tube that will actually fit Copes like this it’s definitely possible to use a tube notcher but it’s often quicker just to do it by hand the old-fashioned way by sneaking your way up to the cope you can get a really nice fitment with only a marginal amount more time invested

With our rear tube in place i mocked up the tabs and got them squared up with a few pieces of scrap metal and a clamp and then worked my way around tacking them into place as well we’ve still got a lot of finish welding to do and one other small change to make

In the future that we’ll cover later but for now we can call these modifications to the control arm complete another thing crossed off the list i don’t think anyone wants to see me make more control arms at this point so let’s shortcut fabricating the upper rears and talk about the changes instead

First is that our new tube nuts are considerably longer than the ones on the old arms so i had to account for this when cutting the new tube work second is the fact that these tube nuts didn’t fit inside of the tubes so i had

To chuck them in the lathe and take a few thousandths off just to make it work for the final change you’ll have to look at the drawing underneath the control arm you might notice that the curved arm is significantly more curved this time around and that’s to give us clearance

For the coilover that now needs to pass through this control arm thankfully i’ve built enough control arms at this point that this only took about an hour to do and now we’ve got everything that we need in order to build the rear suspension of the car our upper and

Lower control arms as well as a shock mount so all that’s left is to actually install them the lower control arm is the same control arm that was installed before we just extensively modified it so it bolted right in the upper control arm is a copy of what

We had minus the shock mount so it too is a bolton affair that brings us to our new shock tower which needs to be welded into place like pretty much everything else in the back of the car we’re only going to tack it for the time being and we’ll leave

The finished welding for the future so let’s cross some stuff off the list we’ve got the shock towers and both control arms officially installed so let’s check out the final product In retrospect i should have taken this approach from the beginning but i’m really happy with how it turned out and all of the changes are definitely worthwhile we’ve got tons of room for the axle there’s plenty of room for the coilover through the upper control arm and we’ve solved the problem of a

Falling spring rate and a potential failure at a ball joint that means the biggest thing of the episode is now crossed off the list the rear coilovers are now installed but to be clear we have introduced a few new things we have to tackle i’m sure some of you guys have noticed

That the heim joints at the back of the car are extended a little bit too far we can easily solve this when we pull the arms off for finish welding by installing these extended tube nuts which brett machined for us an easy fix no problem at all

On a similar note i’d like to change how the control arms mount to the chassis because these original ferrari mounts aren’t that stout and that should be a simple one-day fix most importantly though we need to talk about this little guy the toe link mount on the spindle side

Let’s take a look and i’ll show you why because we’ve relocated the coilover to the lower control arm the toe link now fouls it it’s close to clearing but it’s not quite enough and there’s no real way to fudge it this might seem like a big problem but

It’s actually an opportunity to improve our bump steer situation even further by having brett machine an entirely new mount for the spindle there’s still a few small details in the front that we have to sort out like the ackermann angle and supporting our tow link mounts but overall the suspension

On this car is largely complete the hard work is out of the way at this point there’s still a lot of stuff left on our list before we can call this car complete in any form but in this episode we cross some of the biggest and most stressful jobs off entirely All right guys that’s it for this episode don’t forget to like leave a comment or subscribe if you enjoyed this one and of course be sure to check out the merch if you want to show some support or if you just like the designs all of that stuff helps keep this

Channel alive keeps this project going and allows me to do this kind of stuff and keep making this content and your support means the world to me in any form monetary or otherwise even just those likes and those comments do so much to help this whole operation just

Work and i pour so much time and effort into this and i’m rewarded thanks to you guys so anyways enough rambling i’ve got a lot of work to do over the weekend we’ll be back next week more progress on the ferrari i’ll see you then i’m tacking this at the end of the

Episode because it doesn’t really have a place in the episode i’m not even sure why i’m including it other than i don’t know it’s an event for me uh it’s currently like five in the morning last night i finished up the control arms just to kind of give an idea of

Where i’m at in this process and uh yeah i’m up this early because my truck alarm went totally crazy and i got up trying to figure out oh is that my truck alarm and yeah someone was trying to break into my truck and steal it which i guess isn’t surprising it’s a

Six liter ford probably the most commonly stolen easy target out there and it’s one that commands a lot of attention but man i’m just i i had a truck stolen a few years ago i had a land cruiser stolen from me and it was one of the worst feelings i’ve ever felt just

Completely violating and frustrating and as someone who really cares a lot about vehicles and my vehicles mean a lot to me it sucked and i know how it feels to have a vehicle stolen from you and this morning all i feel is just pure frustration and hatred i’m lucky i know

My car’s still here i’m really lucky but i’m just i hate thieves and i hate that this is the reality of this world that you can work so hard for something and people just try to take it from you and here i am feeling like

Screw it you know i’ll just sell it i won’t even have something fun to drive around because every time i do that somebody tries to steal it from me i’ll just drive around a beater you know and it sucks because i really love this hobby and i try to

Sink myself into it not 100 but 200 percent i mean i eat sleep and breathe this stuff and i don’t know i’m just disheartened this morning i’m frustrated this sucks nothing to be said about it that’s that’s it i’m just complaining but i’m sharing this sucks thieves suck so

Take an extra step make sure your cars are safe guys guys and gals make sure they’re locked up make sure you got good security systems kill switches all that kind of stuff all right i’ll catch y’all next week you