Beretta.net

Get this thing done would lover to see it driving it's been far to long and will be cool as hell to see putting in work

New goal is bfest 2020

That's too far away lol especially since it's almost rolling now lol

Glad your making progress! I wondered how this was going. I like your control arms

Ok, I see how you did the caster adjustment with the rear lca mount. Pretty sweet setup.

Do you plan on running a bump steer stud in the spindle to hook to your rod end as a ball joint? Probably the best way to. You can buy them in 7* or 10* taper. Not sure what the Beretta spindle is reamed for.

We're having a track day at Bfest'18. FYI. Milwaukee Mile.

Yeah Woody, I have some studs that convert the bmw taper to 5/8 stud. I need to figure something similar for the tierods as the low mounted rack will have pretty bad bump steer if left stock.

Didnt get as much done as I hoped this weekend.

Mounted up the e36 top plates. Wish I could of made plates like Alxsmt had for his coilovers. I dont have machine shop access anymore. So I cut the ring out of the stock strut tower and re-drilled for e36 pattern. I will make a plate to sandwich the tower and weld it on to give it more meat, as the bolt pattern is small and there isnt much material.


I built the second arm. Jig makes it easy to make them exactly the same.


Getting better with the TIG. Still sucky though compared to all the weld porn on instagram. I can get a lot of heat into these vs what I could do with my MIG.


Finished up one


Both fully welded ready for paint


Painted ready to party.



This week wil be messing with tierods and messing with this new trans.

All the steering components are on order. Ill be making some tierod sleeves that convert from the BMW M14x1.5 to standard 1/2-20 heims so I can run easy to find off the shelf heims. I need to do this to my drift car too because metric heims seem to be annoying to find in a 1.5 thread.

Also designed some steering knuckle blocks. These bolt between the balljoint and the tierod mounting holes. They relocate the tierod in some for better steering angle while also offering 25mm bump steer correction. There getting water jetted now hopefully ill have them in a week or so to try it all out.

Not sure I follow you on the knuckle blocks. Having a hard time envisioning it. I know you posted a BMW knuckle pic on facebook but I don't remember.

Here's the bumpsteer stud I got from Speedway. Using it this way for a balljoint wouldn't give you dick for ground clearance but you can just nut it and cut the stud.

For the top of your strut tower I wonder if this would help:
A steel or aluminum plate cut out like a doughnut with inner and outer diameter, probably 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick on top to help sandwich the top of the strut tower steel between the plate and the top of the strut.
I think there is clearance for that under the hood.

woody90gtz wrote:Not sure I follow you on the knuckle blocks. Having a hard time envisioning it. I know you posted a BMW knuckle pic on facebook but I don't remember.

Here's the bumpsteer stud I got from Speedway. Using it this way for a balljoint wouldn't give you dick for ground clearance but you can just nut it and cut the stud.

I have those exact studs, except bmw uses gay ford taper. Im using them for the main balljoint and 1/2" stuff for steering. Should hold up on a lighter car I would hope

GT_Indy wrote:For the top of your strut tower I wonder if this would help:
A steel or aluminum plate cut out like a doughnut with inner and outer diameter, probably 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick on top to help sandwich the top of the strut tower steel between the plate and the top of the strut.
I think there is clearance for that under the hood.

Thats exactly what im planning on

Some updates. My new trans was a huge disappointment. I wanted the internal slave so I could save the tunnel clearance. I was thinking I could just unbolt the trans, slide it out, then get to the bellhousing bolts like on a t56. Welllll they bolted the salve to the trans and not the bellhousing so you cannot seperate the 2 without unbolting the salve. Back to square one.

New trans on the bottom.


You see that the slave bolts to the bearing retainer, but the bellhousing is behind that. Lame


So the solution is to bolt tabs to the bellhousing and mill the retainer mounts down so the slave is attached to the bellhousing and not the trans. But being careful to have the beariring retainer still pilot the slave to ensure its on center.


It uses the same salve as t56 and my nv3500 truck so I already have a spare


Slave bolted in


Trans seperates!

New trans uses a longer input shaft so now I have full pilot bearing engagement which is nice. But its 26 spline so I need to have a clutch made. I believe this will allow me to use the beretta flywheel again instead of the heavy ass 2.8 camaro one.




Onto suspension.
Here is those angle blocks I made. Its not super clear in the picture. But basically they bolt between the balljoint and the factory tierod mounting location. Then you bolt the tierod closer to the balljoint to get more steering angle per rack revolution. They also offer alot of geometry correction for the low mounted rack


Control arm installed


Measuring up to make tierods


Tierods im welding up compared to a aftermarket one from my drift car. This one is metic on one side and standard on the other for simplicity


Painted up


Installed. Tierods are pretty parallel to control arms. Im super happy with how this turned out.



So at this point front suspension is just about wrapped up. It should be better and more adjustable than my drift car even. The new trans setup works great. I can have it in and out in minutes without fussing with getting to hard bolts.

If if uses the same slave cylinder as the T56 - checkout the Tick Performance Speed Bleeder - I have one on the C6 - and it helped out when I did the clutch a year or so ago.

Trans work blows - I'm gathering my third set of trans/diff for the Vette - and my setup is mostly OEM!

Ok, now I get it. Looks like minimal bumpsteer, too.

I'm brainstorming a way to make a custom pilot bushing on the lathe for my FWD trans. Maybe get rid of that god damn input shaft rattle.