Needle Bearing Kit

Need I say more?

Thanks Mike...

It will be good exposure.


B

You know me, I don't mind a little exposure now and then

I'm trying to come up with something creative for myself and Ebay.

"Ex Porsche Hack mechanic computer guy with sales experience"

Will work for cot on floor of shop and food.



B

Thanks, Mike. Can I bid? Just playing ...

Seriously, all of you deserve some

Mike,

I wasn't completely clear on the advert -- is this a complete set of bearings for both front and back of a 914? (feel free to answer in lots of detail!!!!!!)

kim.

Sorry, this is only for the front end of the car (914 or 911 A-arms)

I would be happy with an auction for an airbrushed t-shirt

got to love eBay feedback.....a few clicks and one can tell who the bidder is by thier past purchases


Those T-shirts are nice.....hmmm, one of these days I'll have to have on made...


As an added bonus, if the high bidder is local, I'll do the R&R of the rubber bushings and install the sleeves and housing onto your parts. Sorry, you have to supply the A-arms off of the car and put 'em back on

Dude,

No apology required!

I was just trying to muddle through what the auction was.

It's cool that you put it up!

kim.

The t-shirt reference -- more clues?

kim.

Click on the t-shirt link above

Doh! Thx for the pointer!

Damn, I'm glad it's the weekend.

Hope y'all enjoy yours! (I have "house reno" and "914 reno" planned -- we'll see how much of each get's done :-)

kim.

Brad, I've got a cot in the spare room. No need for you to sleep in a shop - you're housebroken, right? ;-)

Any word on the piece from Mittlemotor, or have you been occupied with other stuff?

-Rusty

Rusty, thats cold!

Brad knows we all love him.

If I would have had that 8k cash, I would have given it to him and let him hold the car for me.

-Rusty

For some reason.. all my Mittelmotor emails are bouncing.

They can send to us..but I cant send to them. 99% chance it's a DNS issue somewhere.

Cool !! a cot in the middle of Kansas. I could go to work for Salem trucking. The owner races a SCCA GT2 911 (Dick Salem)


B

Hey, its saturday night. Time to bug Mike for more details.

Questions -- maybe we need a FAQ for this puppy!

- Road Noise -- some point out that the evil rubber we are dumping in this switch also intoduces a solid connection between the road and the chassis. I'm guessing that tney are thinking something simllar to the difference between using sport mount and solid mounts on the tranny. There are always points of diminishing returns -- on the tranny front "sport" seems to win for street (for example). In the user community of this type of front end change (either for a 914 or a 911), is there a road noise change that would be annoying for the average driver?

- Is there a difference, either in performance or noise/etc, between the 914 and the 911 installations? Yeh, I know -- you may not have enough folks using them yet, but I'd be interested to hear your best guess on this -- after all, you have a C2 and a 914. Hm. Well, I know the C2 runs at least ...

- I thought I heard someone at the swap meet say this was easily the best change they had made on their car in the handling department all year. (I'm thinking it was yeaman, but I don't want to attach his name without a more reasonable attribution -- it was someone active on the racing front in your client list... but it was clear that the driver was very much pleased with the changes) Can you offer some commentary from the user community -- unattributed is fine -- I'm just looking for a sense of scale to what a purchaser might expect...

'Course it's Saturday -- I spent part of the evening with someone who owned a '69 Shelby for 18 years. Total Ford/Mustang/Shelby junkie. Mix in an owner of a 68 camero, and a harley owner. Toss in an aircooled junkie and we had a great evening! Listened to the harley on idle 'till it got too cold for us -- yeh, pathetic, (there should have been a bonfire somewhere...) but damn I love automotive stuff!

kim.

Thanks Kim. I have the same questions. I couldn't have asked them better myself.

Hey Kim, hey Mike, sorry, not ignoring you

Noise? Yes, some road noise will be transmitted from the suspesion to the car...how much, well, I'm sorta embarressed here, I've never been in a roller bearing equipuid car, or at least one that ran The level should be just a tad more than the plastic bushings but not too much more, figure the plastic bushings will not "abosorb" much noise and will transmit the noise as well.

Brad? care to chime in?

Currently, these have all been installed on race cars...Yeamans is the closest "street" car that I know of, he has not complained once...JP, care to add to this?

911 or 914?? No difference at all..these are only good for 911's up to early '89's that use the steel a-arms(torsion bar cars)...in late '89 the 964 series 911's came out which have a completely different suspension. (I will take pictures today of my 964 suspension while I change the brake rotors)

The bearings will still work on 914's or 911's that have been converted to coil-overs as well.


Now why do the bearings work so well?

For our application the bearings are "near-friction free".....notice "near"....nothing in this atmosphere is free from friction, but these are damn close....

The specs for the needle bearings themselves are tighter than any single component than your motor......the sleeves are 1.5000 +0/-.0005
the bearings are 1.5000 +0/-.0005...try finding a more precision part in your engine?

What this means is that the a-arms are located positivly and securly to the chassis.

Now to get back to why they work, hahaha

Comparisons:

Factory rubber....these would work okay if you had zero up and down suspension movement since the best thing they would offer you is some isolation from road noise.

Why don't they work as a suspenion component? The problem is that the rubber is "gripping" the bar at both ends not allowing the a-arm to freely rotate

the a-arm should pivot smoothly like a hinge on your office or bedroom door. But the rubber is so tight on the a-arm shaft that without tremendous force, the a-arm cannot rotate while being held so tigthly.

Plastic bushings:

These are a step up from the rubber if installed correctly. The proper method to install the plastic is first press them into the factory housings and ream the inside diameter to match the OD of the a-arm shaft so that the interference fit is minimal. With the plastic bushings, grease can used to help the a-arm rotate in the bushings.

Now one part of the bushings we have not discussed is the "flange" of the plastic bushing, this too needs to be addressed and lubricated as well since the flange of the bushing and the flange of the a-arm also come into contact. In fact during hard braking, this contact surface is put to the test even further (on the rear set of a-arm bushings) since the braking action is causing the two flanges to bear even more of a load than normal driving.

Now back to the office door....if one was to excert pressure on the top of the door, it will be harder to rotate for a couple of reasons, one is that you are putting stress on the hinge pins and the hinge itself and second would be that the surface of the hinges would be fighting each other.

With the Needle Bearings, the friction on the flanges is reduced with the use of needle bearing Thrust Washers.

I know none of this makes sense and I probebly confused you more, I'll have to make up some drawings or diagrams since I have a hard time writing this tech stuff, i know what I want to say, i just don't know how to say it

Mike,

Thx for the info -- I knew others were interested in some of the questions so I'm sure there are other interested followers.

Last dumb question. (well, probably not :-))

That's a front set in the auction. Any thoughts on having them only on the front and something stock (more or less) on the back? Any differences between the 914 and 911 from that perspective?

kim.

Hey kim.....

no stupid questions as they say, only stupid people breeding

Ideally, one would want the rear of the car to be optimized as well and to work to it's full potential.

However:

An improvement to the front is still an improvement to the whole car, but it could be better.

I see the front of the car (911 or 914 or Model T) as more important than the rear, heck, look how many cars have done well performance wise with solid axle designs...the rear suspension for most cars "is just along for the ride"

By freeing up the a-arms, the shocks and springs (torsion bars) will get a chance to do thier job....fighting stiction and friction from the rubber/plastic bushings make thier job that much more difficult....the more time your tires keep in contact with the ground, the better, even if only the front tires...and since 70% of your braking is the front, and your steering control is done by the front, keeping the tires on the ground is VERY important.


If you notice that right now in your 930 or 914 when you hit a bump the car raises up....this should not be happening (I lied, it depends on the size of bump and how fast one hits the bump) what should be going on is that the springs should compress and the shocks also compress (the shocks control the rate of compression of the springs)..the car should remain level with only the tire assembly moving up and over the bump while maintaining contact with the ground.



did I help or hinder your quest to learn??

Actually, helped quite a bit. Thx.

I more or less buy the front/rear suspension positioning. Certainly braking and pointing in the right direction are good things.

Ok, one more. I actually don't know what's under my 914 -- I'm guessing it's a pretty stock /6, but I've not had the time to crawl around and look.

With many things, if you upgrade one part, it may just point out that something else needs to be upgraded to get the full effect. Is this likely to be one of those things? (i.e. you upgraded your bushings, but you really need different springs, shock and sway bar to really tell -- 'course an excuse to go hunting new gear for the car isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's best if it's not too much of a surprise)

Developed any theories yet on component matching?

kim.

Thanks Mike.



What kim said. I vaguely recall Brad saying something in the past about running stiffer springs/bars when using bearing setup. Any thought?

BTW - Are you planning to continue production on these units? My thought is I want to go this route, but I won't do it until next winter after the shock of the rust repair wears off.