Front Upright Upgrade

[Canuk40]

Hi Guys,

Here's something CAV Canada undertook to further strengthen the CAV Front Uprights as supplied by Cape Advanced Vehicles (pre Autofutura). Undersized load areas and insufficient assembly torque being the issue.

The issue with the upright comes from the heads of the hex bolts retaining the ball joint mounting blocks being drawn into the billet upright main part. This results in a loss of clamping force on the blocks, flexing in the parts and possible failure of the bolts.

The oval washers recommended by Autofutura certainly are an improvement and to be clear neither Autofutura or CAV Canada can take responsability for these parts, upgrades or maintainance. John and Jean have done a tremendous job of upgrading the new production cars so these issues don't continue.

The upgrade is really an overhaul of the parts, cleaning, deburring, stripping, increasing lower mounting bolts from 10mm to 12mm with Helicoils, using Oval Nuts on the upper mounts and clamping the mounting blocks with through bolts as opposed to bolting into the blocks.

Functionally the greatest improvement comes from eliminating the ability of the Hex Bolts being pulled into the aluminum by substantially increasing the clamping area on the part and under the bolt heads.

The pictures below show some of the procedure and resulting part. It's takes a while to do and some mackine shop type work is required (installing helicoils and drilling the ball joint mounting blocks - no drilling by hand).

We finish the parts in high temperature engine enamel although all surfaces are washed down with acetone and lightly primed with a metal etch primer before assembly and paint.

The end result is a substantially stronger part that , worth the effort. We can do the overhaul for you by sending us your uprights, without the brakes attached. Oh yeah, the lower bolts failed after a weekend of Pace Car duties while the car was being backed up to put in the trailer, more red faces than anything else...