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Ground Control Suspension made its first set of camber plates in 1993, over 10 years ago. These plates, designed for racing, incorporated many features that were previously unavailable at any price.
Some of these early features include: sliding caster adjustment, offset sliding bearing, multi-position bolts, adjustment markings and multiple bearing assemblies.
Ground Control designs and builds racing parts, with the same goal as racing itself: The desire to be the best.
Since the earliest Ground Control camber/caster plates, there has been constant improvement and innovation to continue being the leader.
Some features of our camber/caster plates
(CCP) are quite unique. Probably the most striking innovation is the separate bearing surface for the spring loads. This assures that when the strut changes its angle with the chassis, the spring can also change its angle, without overloading a centered bearing.
Early in the development of our CCP, we did try to allow the spring to actually pivot ON the single bearing, but carrying the entire weight of the car as an axial load, even on a very large bearing did not last. It also made the engineers at the bearing company roll their eyeballs.
Our early testing without needle bearings also forced the spherical bearing to rotate, which significantly reduces the load capability, i.e. dynamic vs. static loads.
The modern GC method of carrying the spring load on a separate bearing, allows the spherical bearing to have an extensive safety margin. The separate spring bearing surface is then equipped with needle bearings in order to allow the spring to actually rotate when steering.
Sometimes, it is not easy being the leader
The leader of the race is the first one into the track debris. After successfully using thousands of spherical bearings specifically designed and manufactured for Ground Control, we decided to improve the bearing.
We have recently finished testing, checking, and retesting an even newer style bearing, and are now successfully using this new spherical bearing, made exclusively for Ground Control, in all our camber/caster plates. |