It's All About The Damping - Project 350Z - Suspension Install

The SPL adjustable rear mid-link uses its new hybrid adjuster integrated into the monoball end. This replaces the sloppier rubber bushing on the stock mid-link and offers a larger camber and toe adjustment range as well as more precision during rear alignment.

The SPL adjustable rear mid-link uses its new hybrid adjuster integrated into the monoball

With our new suspension installed, we headed over to Driftspeed in Lomita, California, to help us out with a preliminary alignment on the company's bells-and-whistles laser alignment rack. A laser alignment rack can be as accurate as stringing up a car (depending on the mechanic) and quite a bit less work. For now, since we don't know the final weight of our car in track trim, we passed on corner balancing and just leveled the ride height and the alignment settings for our current height. As recommended by Steve Mitchell, we started off with a zero toe setting in the front. For more aggressive track use, we will add in a bit of toe out later for better turn-in. Unfortunately, the Z doesn't come with camber or caster adjustments in the front suspension. This means, in order to keep an appropriate level of camber to get around on the streets while we build this car, we'll have to adjust the camber according to ride height. For now, we'll keep the car just slightly lower than stock in order to prevent excess tire wear from too much camber. We have some tricks up our sleeves, but will wait to address front camber and caster after we have the car at its final weight and respective ride height.

Our rear suspension wasn't as troublesome. With the added adjustability of the SPL rear mid-links, we were able to get about 1.8 degrees of negative camber and about 8mm of total toe-in in the rear. The idea behind these settings is more rear stability through the corner with the toe-in and more straight-line acceleration traction (with less camber) once the car exits the corner so that we can actually use all the power we're making.

Even with springs over twice the stiffness of our original S-tune springs (which translates to a wheel rate of roughly 560 lb/in in front and 275 lb/in in the rear), our Z with the Moton suspension actually still rides smoother over small bumps and highway expansion gaps than the Nismo setup. Obviously, over big bumps it's harsh, but the Motons are hard to beat when it comes to controlling wheel and body motion.

Next time, we'll look at ways to help our engine survive the track beating to come.