Fitting the RCA's

[Jesse P]

Yesterday I finally found the right bolts to fix the RCA's to my car! It was quite a struggle to find the right bolts (M12x1,25x70), and they cost me a lot, but I've got them!

There was some other thing I ran in to:
T3 tells us that RCA's are effective on any lowered AE86
(Q: Does it matter if I am using coilovers or lowering springs?
A: No. RCAs are mounted on the bottom of the strut tube, so coilovers or lowering springs make no difference at all. )

On the other hand, Fensport tells us not to use them unless we run shortstrokes as well:
(Warning - should not be used on std length shocks, only used when full droop is less than 435mm, measured from centre of wheel to arch lip.)

I'm running a 40mm lowered AE86 on normal Koni Yellow shocks, but in my opinion the RCA's will just perfectly do their job in my setup. Am I wrong? Why would Fensport warn me not to use them in my setup?

Or is their statement incorrect and do they mean "std length struts"? That would make sense to me....

[Mux213]

Hey Jesse,

When you lower your car 40 mm this means the wishbone sits 40 mm 'higher' then with a stock setup. When you add our 30mm RCAs the wishbone will only differ 10 mm from stock. That can never be worse then the 40mm difference.

I think that fensport means that you should not use the RCAs with fully stock struts or when you lower the car less then the height of the RCAs because now your wishbone will end up 'lower' then stock. A few mm lower wont make much difference but 30mm lower my guess would be that it upsets the geometry alot.

[Ivan141]

I think you will be putting the RCA under a lot of stress if you have springs that extand the shock fully when unloaded. It's usually a struggle to get the strut on the control arm when it's extended, cramming an RCA inbetween would seem like a bad idea unless the springs you use are shorter than stock by at least 30mm (meaning they never extend the shock fully). Considering that the control arm has no more room to bend downwards when a stock shock is at full extension think about where that last bit of force will go when you have an rca in there. My guess is sideways, putting a lot of force on the bolts keeping it together.