I am also working on a K member for the car as well as a rear tubular one for the evo 9. It will be interesting to see what happens with this. I am in the very early stages but looking promising.

 

for the rear??? more info needed. i thought everything in the rear was aluminum.

 

Yes, it will probably be difficult to make it lighter - but you can probably relocate some of the pick-up points to improve the geometry on an extremely lowered car. . .

EVOlutionary

 

that i can understand. but im not interested in that.

im sticking with most-wanted in just making a light weight front k member. im a drag type person . i could care less about a turn. HAHA.

i just want a light weight k member that is ok for street and to shead some weight. ''clearly lol''

 

One benefit of lowering a drag car even further (as long as tire clearance allows) is reduced drag. Lowering the car 2" should reduce the drag by about 5% (extremely rough estimate). If that gave you a 5% reduction in times or 5% increase in MPH it you could possibly go from a 11.0@125 to 10.5@131mph. . .

To lower it this far you would want to change the suspension geometry so that when you launch the car does not go all wonky with toe and camber change as the rear squats and the front rises. . .

Just a thought. It probably doesn't work like that in real life. I'm not a drag racer - I just play one on TV.

 

I am having discussions with the shop that I am working with on this right now. I am really trying to get the front one done for sure. While they are looking into that I am also having the rear looked at a tubular version to save some weight and possibly suspension geometry. It all comes down to pricing and what makes sense

 

bump. any prototype pics or updated info

 

I am dropping off the front K member on Monday to start fabricating up the version I will be selling soon. I am also doing a custom rear one but have to look at the options and figure out what will work best.
Once I have some good information on Monday I will post updates to let everyone know, everything is looking very good to maybe having chromoly tubular k members for the Evo

 

Working on this and trying to confirm build cost...

 

awesome. pm me the second no wait the half second you know a price or a round about price. haha

 

I've got my front subframe out and was considering taking some measurements to build up a solid model of the factory crossmember to make a baseline for stiffness and strength. I've done this with the differential side mounts and the mustache bar is next. If I could duplicate stock strength, improve stiffness and drop weight, that would be my ideal situation. So far, I have a 1.5 pound differential mount (compared to 4.6 pounds stock) that is about there on strength.

In the rear, it seems like you could easily incorporate the rear most differential mount into the cross member if you are building a tubular item. Also, you could probably make a tubular section that replaced the front portion of the rear diff support and tie it in to the rear tubular mount to add some chassis stiffness. It would also allow you to redesign the differential side supports to make them quite a bit lighter. All in all, trying to do something drop in that used all the other factory parts wouldn't be nearly as beneficial as a redesign of the cross member system that eliminated the factory differential mount setup.

As for moving arms around, I think you are going to have a hard time in the back. One of the upper A-arm mounts as well as the lateral link mount is part of the unibody. The upper ARM has pretty tight clearances with the subframe too. If you tried to move the lower arm up, you would be pulling the inside mounts closer together and probably end up with a pretty nasty camber curve.

The toe-control arm I can't remember if it was part of the unibody or subframe.

Upfront, the lower A-Arm rear mount is part of the subframe mount. You aren’t moving it anywhere either without building new lower control arms. I suppose you could move the front mount around a bit though.

It would be a pretty cool little project to map it all out and build a working solid model of it though. Wish I had the know how to get accurate measurements with cheap tools on something like this.

 

My roll cage builder said he can do it no problem, but it is a numbers game now He does full funny car cages, etc. So no question whether or not he can get it done, it all just comes down to how much.... Mike and I bought a brand new K member for jigging, so its a fresh start.

 

Man after looking at the front crossmember closer tonight, I wouldn't want to jig that thing up for production and it turned me off to the idea of building my own 1 off.

LOTS of little shapes to get around things that you would have to be very careful about placing the tubing just right to avoid fitment problems. Not like the dsm where you could build the thing out of 4" round and still fit everything.

Can't wait to see what you come up with though.

 

i wish we can see some pictures of a prototype soon...and pricing too

waiting the results and ready to order if tested and fitment proof

 

I will have some good information on Monday, cant wait to get this thing done and ready to be sold