My DIY rear linkage by gotbhp?

By stevegolf
( 2 )

4 minute read

My DIY rear linkage


Compliments of gotbhp? @ www.6speedonline.com

Greetings everyone, just thought that I would share a little project that I just finished up. I picked up a 996 GT3 about a year ago, and I love everything about the car. I do track my cars quite a bit and through the feel of the rear end, the tire wear and the lack of alignment adjustment range, it is pretty obvious that changing out the rear 'dogbones' would be rather rewarding. I always kind of balked at the pricing of some of the kits out there considering how simple the parts actually are, so as a mechanical engineer with a little experience in motorsports, I decided to tackle this on my own as a hobby.

So I decided to design, prototype and test my own adjustable rear linkage for my GT3. My intention was not to copy what was already out there, but for such a simple part there are only so many ways to skin a cat. 

This is all better shown using pictures, so here you go:

The first thing to do was to take some measurements and to decide which rod end would work best for this application. It gets pretty dirty under there, huh?


I decided to go with one of FK's higher end products, as they offer a very high performance rod end, were dimensionally easy to incorporate, were easy to purchase/replace if necessary, and are rated for an appropriate radial load. Once I had selected the rod ends, I could design the rest of the parts. Here is an assembly:


Next, some quick calculations and FEA to ensure that the linkages will not buckle or fail under use.


Time to program the lathe and mill and start making parts:


And here they are, unfinished:

 

  

For these I decided to polish the aluminum and then send them out for anodizing. In the future I may just leave them a machined finish or bead blast them. I went with a black anodizing (also clear on some parts), might try something different later. Finished parts, ready to install:




Time to put them on the car and test them out!



Well if you are still awake after all of that, here are my conclusions... The feel of the car is WAY better in my opinion. Losing those rubber bushings on the dogbones makes a big difference in how the rear end of the car reacts. Once it was all said and done, I probably didn't save very much money on these over some of the discounted kits out there (mainly due to my choice of rod ends), but I had fun. 

Cheers -


Comments