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Old 02-16-2018, 07:50 PM
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Jack 1957 Jack 1957 is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: Strongsville,OH
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I finished welding the cradle mounts and had one last thing to do. The CTS has two tapered alignment tubes on the front bolts that keep everything tight and square. I cut them off the CTS rails and welded them over the front bolt holes on the new frame sections.

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I don't think I need to narrow the cradle. I am going to try to get what I need by taking one inch of length out of each control arm and getting the rest out of wheel offset. I'm still not sure I can do it this way because of how wheels are measured. Lip thickness varies. I want to narrow the control arms first and see what I've got with that and wheel offset. No matter what I might need to do, I will have to narrow the control arms anyway. If I need more, I'll have to find it elsewhere. I can only take 1" off each control arm. It shouldn't hurt me too much. If you notice, I offset my frame rails inboard 1" each to allow for the shorter control arms without reducing turn radius. Look at where I have the bungs welded to the rails. Rather than centered on the rail like they were on the CTS, they are offset toward the outer edges to allow the rails to be moved inboard 1" each .
Next, I bolted the cradle to the rails and started setting up. I tacked the rails to the rest of the frame and checked measurements. I am 2'' too low. The cradle needs to be moved up.

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I moved the frame section up and tacked it back in. This is the correct height. Measure, measure, and measure again.

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I wanted to check ride height and see the movement of the wheel through the range of steering so I put the lower control arm back on the knuckle and set up with the stock CTS wheel. This tire is 2" shorter so I added 1" of shim underneath the tire to compensate. Looks pretty good.

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Last edited by Jack 1957; 02-16-2018 at 07:55 PM.
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