C4,5 or 6 Vett spindle on 1st Gen F Body

[XLexusTech]

Hi. The recent article on Camaro performers has me interested in the "Hot Rods to Hell" Lower control arms. They use a threaded "tall" Ball joint to help with geometry. I really like the ATS spindles but due to cost (not that they are not worth every penny I am just poor) I had a thought could I use the OEM corvette spindle?

I realize I could use my drum brake spindle and hubs but really like the advantages of the big bearings and built in caliper mount.

[dipren443]

I hope Tyler will chime, but if it were that simple, the AFX spindle may not have ever been born.

I would like to hear Tyler's comments on the OEM spindle geometry and how it would affect the overall suspension geometry...

[Lowend]

The Vette's are Front Steer - that's gonna stop you right off the bat

[Marcus SC&C]

Interesting, we`re pretty well known for being inovators when it comes to the use of taller than stock ball joints, and we don`t use tall lower ball joints on any of the Camaro applications. They work wonders on A and G body cars if they`re properly implimented but on the Camaros,both 1st and 2nd gen the tall lowers ruin the bumpsteer. In the case of the 1st gen it goes from terrible to, well... much worse than terrible. Instead we designed our X-tall SevereDuty upper ball joints to get the geometry correction we wanted without using taller lowers.
We did a subframe conversion for 1st Gens using C5 spindles about 9 years ago (good grief is it that long ago...sigh...). We had it at a lot of shows in the north east but we must have been too far ahead of the curve, nobody seemed to quite get it. Maybe if we had been in SoCal it would have been a big hit. Anyway to ru nthe Vette spindles naturally you`d need to convert to front steer, probably a R&P and fab new steering arms (unless you plan to set your motor back about 10") and a new swaybar setup and new UCA mounts and....it`s a lot of work. At the end of the day you have spindles with a huge drop compared to stock (about 2 1/2"), which limits some of what you can do with the rest of the geometry, springs etc. The AFX spindles give you all of the benefits with none of the downside. Because the AFX spindles were specifically designed for a Camaro and not a Corvette we`re actually about to get better geometry and performance out of them. Guess that`s why we dropped the C5/1st Gen subframe years ago and have been carrying the AFX spindles. Mark SC&C

[Samckitt]

The Vette's are Front Steer - that's gonna stop you right off the bat

So put the right spindle on the left, & the left on the right? Seems like guys used to do that with Nova / Camaro spindles or something.

[TitoJones]

The biggest issue besides the front steer, and the fact that the spindle holds the upper ball joint, not the upper control arm, is that the damn thing is huge! It's like 14" tall! Our Tall AFX spindle is 8.5 overall. The C5 is just not a good idea for a swap.

The spindle would act like a 4" drop version, the steering arm is so far out of place it's not even funny, and there is no way to get any sort of range out of the upper control arm as it would be in ball joint bind before you could bolt it together.

Also Marcus is totally right-

Tall lower ball joints on F/X platforms is the wrong thing to do.

Tyler