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On 15 Mar 2004 at 8:47, Jim Adney wrote: > You and I are talking about different kinds of "seating." You MUST push it in > the direction that the car's weight would push it to get a meaningful reading. > Otherwise you'll be on the wrong side of the "slop" that's in the splines. If > you just let it hang there while you take the reading, gravity will pull the > arm down, so that the splines will be seated (rotationally) against the wrong > faces. > I think the Bentley mentions pushing upwards somewhat, but I'll have to look at > the manual to get the specifics. I checked the Bentley and I can't find any mention of it, but I still claim that it's necessary to get an honest reading. I find myself wondering if they set the axle beams up at the factory with the beams upside down. The beams were preassembled so upside down would be easy, and this would make the gauge preload simple and repeatable. On another matter on this same subject, I just measured the angular deflection available from a lower ball joint. I get a total of 61 degrees. I think it is safe to assume that at OE suspension settings the ball joint would be somewhere near the center of the ball joint's range of travel. That only leaves ~30 degrees of motion in either direction. If we use up ~12 degrees per tooth that means that the ball joint can't have a significant amount of travel left if we lower a car by 3 notches. There's a small amount of difference between the angular deflection of the arm and the deflection of the ball joint, because of the unequal length arms, but this would only change things by a very few degrees, and I don't remember which way this would go. I think John J. might be able to clarify this, as he worked out the math on this a while back. I don't think anyone has brought this up before, but Patrick's comment about his ball joints getting all stretched out made me start to think about how the travel in these was limited. For me at least, this is a real safety issue; abusing suspension parts is not something to be taken lightly. -- ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list | mailto:gregm@vwtype3.org