I can well imagine how this will go over in this crowd but you can generally seperate a tapered ball joint from the rod end with a couple of moderate whacks with a brass hammer on the rod end. This is the ring that the tapered part fits inside of. Whack it on the side once or twice and the knuckle will usually drop out.
Of course, whacking on the taper end is a formula for disaster (as is the pickle fork.)

There is absolutely no damage with this method.

 

by just getting the wheels with suspension stock, understeer was lost and oversteer was very prominant when running the spoon wheels. That was the major difference I noticed.

 

Yes, this old junkyard trick works great (Pitman Arms and sh!t)!
Can't remember which, but either the front or rear doesn't lend itself to this method because of a lack of real estate in which to whack.
I hear ya on the potential freak-out factor for even bring this method up

 

After an alignment set to 'agressive street driving', there was very prominent oversteer with Spoon wheels, especially on power application at corner exits. I tried many tire presure changes to try to compensate. The Showa units seem to be correcting the oversteer to a great degree. This may be due to rear drop more than the front and other factors, I am sure. Now, I feel not much needs to be done as far as alignment goes, whereas before the Showas, I was planning to get an alignment to correct the oversteer.

Small bumps seem to be smoothed over quite a bit with the Mugens compared to the stock shocks; the latter felt stiff on small bumps, but floated on the undulating ones.

 

may be you were runing too much rear camber. It can have that effect. I would expect steering feeling to be substantially changed. Not sure if for the better, but scrub radius is very important when it comes to feel what's happening with the front wheels.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Prolene
[B] The Showa units seem to be correcting the oversteer to a great degree. This may be due to rear drop more than the front and other factors, I am sure.

 

Luis, All good questions. I plan to get the car corner weighted this Thursday, along with alignment. I have not had the time since Saturday when I put the Mugens on to get an alignment.

The rear camber was about 1.4 deg neg, front caster 5 pos.

Believe it or not, I decided to try the shocks (for shock effect ) initially at full stiff front and back. The back would not take a set very well around corners and would skitter or jump around. I backed off the rear by 1 1/2 turn and handling was much improved, with a slight heavier steering feel (i.e. understeer feeling) and the oversteer possibly controlled.

Hope you find and hope that I have found the "perfect" shock. Obviously, I will try to make do with these, but so far so good, and I am sure compromises are to follow.

I'll try to post how the alignment goes, whether I can get to any decided upon specs. I am telling the tech to set up for track use. I noticed that with the track days, 1000 mi of highway driving to and from tracks (Laguna Seca, Buttonwillow) the rear tires looked very evenly worn except for less tread depth on the outside halves.

 

In the past, I've tried whacking ball joints from just about every angle to separate them. If the ball joint has been together for a while, it'll be too seized for whacking it to do any good other than to dent and mess sh!t up. If you're talking about whacking the treaded part of the ball joint (where the castle nut goes), that's a bad idea for another reason - you'll make it collapse where it's drilled for the cotter pin. Then you're really screwed.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by The Reverend
[B]

In the past, I've tried whacking ball joints from just about every angle to separate them.

 

I havn't driven that fast on this new setup yet. Would lighter wheels and brake components be an asset or hindrance to ride quality? One might have 10+ lbs less unsprung weight per wheel with the Spoon wheels and lighter weight brake components.