Coil over shocks

[Jon Cole]

I have one pair of coil overs from R&D Unique, but I need 4.

How do you make them? I suspect the springs wouldn't be too hard to find (ball point pens), but the rest?

I have K&S aluminum rod in 1/16, 3/32, and 1/8" I also have some plastic rod. I don't however have a lathe.

Edited March 4, 2010 by Spyder

[Jordan White]

If it's smaller scale, I would think you could just retrofit some regular shocks by cutting out some little styrene plates to mount to the shocks, to fit on the ends of the spring.

[Mooneyzs]

Hey Spyder...as far as using the aluminum tubing you can use a K&S tubing cutter to cut the tubing to the length you would want. I Don't have any of the tubing right in front of me at the moment but you can use lets say 1/16" OD tubing and find the next size that it will slip into the ID which may be 3/32". then you could use styrene to make the ends. As far as springs go you can go the ball point pen route.... or you can get some craft wire. I have a bunch in different colors and use another piece of tubing and wrap the wire around the tubing to make your own springs to lenght that you please. As far as the spring perches you can make that out of styrene or aluminum tubing. Wish I had photos to show you but I don't and hope I was able to describe it so it was easy for you to understand.

[CAL]

I got some hardware store wire for hanging up stuff that is perfect for springs, just wrap it around a rod until you are happy with it.

[Mark Brown]

Go to Michael's or Hobby Lobby and pick up a couple spools of stainless beading wire. You'll want to look at 26ga or thereabouts...get two or three spools so you're covered. It's pretty inexpensive and will be useful for other scratchbuilding projects. It makes perfect material for winding scale coil springs. I've made coilovers with aluminum tubing as described above, and I used RB Motion four-link rod ends for the mounts at each end of the spring. Very easy scratchbuilding project. Once you get all the parts made you can polish them up with polishing cloth.

Edited March 5, 2010 by Mark Brown

[Mark Brown]

Here's one I made from the materials mentioned above. Again, a pretty simple and straightforward scratchbuilding task, and it looks much better than the kit part. When you compare the time spent making the shocks from scratch to the time to remove mold lines and paint the kit item, it's well worth it, IMO.

By the way, the piece of plastic sprue is how I hold very small pieces of aluminum tubing for shaping and polishing.

Edited March 5, 2010 by Mark Brown

[RodneyBad]

WOW!!

Cool Coil Overs..

Really nice work..

[envious8420]

dang mark those are insane!

[Mooneyzs]

Mark... Very Cool!! Those Coilovers are awesome... Looks really good, you did a great job on them. Did you use a RB Motion rod end for the one end connection or did you scratch build that as well?

[Mark Brown]

Mark... Very Cool!! Those Coilovers are awesome... Looks really good, you did a great job on them. Did you use a RB Motion rod end for the one end connection or did you scratch build that as well?

Thanks, guys. Yes, those are the RB Motion parts on the end of the shock. Some things you're better off buying than trying to make from scratch, and those rod ends are a great example.

[Terry Sumner]

I'm lucky enough to own a small hobby lathe so I was able to turn the inside parts out of a solid piece of aluminum. But you can still do that part just as you're planning with the separate pieces of tubing. Then I just simply wound some electrical wire around a piece of solid rod to make the coils. Here's a photo of it installed on a Borsch car... HTH Sorry about the grainyness of the photos...they were taken years ago with an old Sony non-megapixel camera.

Hosted on Fotki

Hosted on Fotki

Edited March 6, 2010 by Terry Sumner

[Mark Brown]

I'm lucky enough to own a small hobby lathe so I was able to turn the inside parts out of a solid piece of aluminum. But you can still do that part just as you're planning with the separate pieces of tubing. Then I just simply wound some electrical wire around a piece of solid rod to make the coils. Here's a photo of it installed on a Borsch car... HTH Sorry about the grainyness of the photos...they were taken years ago with an old Sony non-megapixel camera.

That looks great, Terry. I think I remember when you built that - it has been a while. Did you ever finish that 1:16 big block Chevy you were working on years ago? I keep thinking I ought to make one, and every time I do, your name pops into my head.

[Jon Cole]

Thanks all for all this great info! Ironically I just made my own control arm ends, I was thinking I could use them for a mount at one end.

The rod is 1/16" the hole I drilled is #68 drill bit. When I go to the NNL East I may look at the stuff that RB Motion has.

[Mark Brown]

Great ideas on this topic. Mark - I know Spyder mentioned some diameters in the first post, but would you mind sharing the diameters of the tubing in your picture (the 3 pieces to the right)? Thanks, Colby

I believe there's three different sizes of K&S tubing - 1/16", 5/64",and 3/32", and there's a piece of .050 stainless hypo tubing in each shock as well - that's the leftmost piece of the three in the photo. The 5/64" is used for the two collars. I had to order the 5/64" from K&S (min order 100-ft) and I found a place online to get the hypo tubing. That stainless hypodermic tubing is one of my favorite scratchbuilding materials.....all sorts of uses for it, and I'm always finding more. I've got about ten different diameters and it's great stuff, though it's not easy to work with. You can't drill it and to cut it, it has to be scored and broken. It's the same stuff that R&B uses for four-link bars.

[Mark Brown]

Here's another little scratchbuilding exercise I did using the same materials. Believe it or not, each of these wheelie bar casters contains something like 16 pieces - the wheels themselves are made up of six pieces - I guess I got a little carried away. It's all K&S tubing, stainless hypo tubing, and a couple pieces of aluminum sheet and plastic stock. I'm not sure I'd do this again, but once I got started I had to finish.

[my80malibu]

Where do you find hypodermic tubing? without getting stuck.

[Terry Sumner]

That looks great, Terry. I think I remember when you built that - it has been a while. Did you ever finish that 1:16 big block Chevy you were working on years ago? I keep thinking I ought to make one, and every time I do, your name pops into my head.

Actually I sent what I had to another guy off the Modelcarlist and he was going to finish it up and cast it. Dunno if he ever finished it as of yet though...

Good to hear from you!

[Terry Sumner]

Where do you find hypodermic tubing? without getting stuck.

You can buy stainless steel tubing from www.smallparts.com Also you can go to any Agway store...they sell hypo needles in some pretty large sizes for horse injections!

[Mark Brown]

You can buy stainless steel tubing from www.smallparts.com Also you can go to any Agway store...they sell hypo needles in some pretty large sizes for horse injections!

There you go! I'd recommend getting a selection of the stuff - I've got several sizes that are tight slip-fits within one another and it works great for things like working suspension parts and hinges and so forth. Once you get it, you'll start finding all sorts of uses for it.

I haven't seen the big needles for horse shots, Terry - how long are they? I couldn't find any needles longer than 1.25" at Walgreens and that's what prompted me to look online. I found one outfit that sold the tubing (before I knew about smallparts) but they only sold large amounts. The lady I spoke with was nice enough to go out to the warehouse and pick me up a big bag of cutoff scraps, and she even sent them to me for free. Made my day!

Good to see you still around, too, Terry! Maybe I'll have to sit down and look at making that BBC again. I've got factory blueprints and a ton of photos of bare engine parts.....just have to decide whether to go stock or modern aftermarket (big heads, tall deck, sheetmetal valve covers,etc).

[Terry Sumner]

Here's a photo of one of the horse hypo needles. This sucker is about .085 O.D. Can you imagine having this thing injected into you? Even for a horse I have to believe it would still hurt like the dickens!

Hosted on Fotki

[VW Dave]

I just unearthed an R&D Ford 9-inch rear end kit with coilovers....Spyder has a PM from me.

[Casey]

On 3/5/2010 at 3:35 PM, Mark Brown said:

Here's one I made from the materials mentioned above. Again, a pretty simple and straightforward scratchbuilding task, and it looks much better than the kit part. When you compare the time spent making the shocks from scratch to the time to remove mold lines and paint the kit item, it's well worth it, IMO.

^This.

[Straightliner59]

On 3/5/2010 at 2:35 PM, Mark Brown said:

Here's one I made from the materials mentioned above. Again, a pretty simple and straightforward scratchbuilding task, and it looks much better than the kit part. When you compare the time spent making the shocks from scratch to the time to remove mold lines and paint the kit item, it's well worth it, IMO.

 

By the way, the piece of plastic sprue is how I hold very small pieces of aluminum tubing for shaping and polishing.

 

http://i829.photobucket.com/albums/zz212/Bushmaster460lx/front_coilover_parts1.jpg

 

http://i829.photobucket.com/albums/zz212/Bushmaster460lx/front_coilover1.jpg

That's some beautiful work by my friend who is gone too soon. Hard to believe it's almost four years ,  already .