First I want to state that this all started because I found a prblem on my Pilot that needed to be fixed. When I put on the first disc brakes set up that I made I dicovered that the upper ball joints felt like they were really bad. This surprised me for 2 reasons. First it is usually the bottoms that go bad first and second the rest of my Pilot is in such good shape it just doesnt make sense. I really think the the guy that sold me this Pilot changed out bad parts that were on his other Pilot before he sold it to us.

Well when I took off the spindle I found that not only were the upper ball joints worn but one of them was close to braking apart all together. Then began the serch for a-arms. At the time that I was looking I could not find any that looked even halfway decent for over 4 months. This made me look for other ideas. I did not want to go with long travel for both space and money issues. I looked at doing an a-arm conversion using the arms from another vehicle. Then I had an idea. I thought that if I could hack off the ball joint from the stock a-arm that I might be able to put an after market balljoint through the center tube that was left in the middle. It took a lot of figuring out though before I actually hacked the arm.

I found high quality Italian made ball joints at alba racing for $20.00 ea and if you call and order direct they throw in free shipping. I driled it out with a 3/4" drill that just basically sleaned it up and evened it out throughout the entire center tube. Then I pressed in a 3/4 x 5/8 x 1 3/8 steel bushing into the center tube until it was flush on the back. Then I machined the front flush all the way across evenly. This is a pic of the ball joint in the a-arm after it was done and powder coated (I also added the eurothane bushing kit at the same time).
Now this would work for the stock spinde at the correct camber if I set it up that way but I had a lot of room to adjust and that led me to the second idea. A while back I found a disc brake conversion for the pilot that used the spindle hub set up from the TRX 450r. The only problem with it was the camber was not correct. A buddy of mine had the front end parts from an '05 and an '09 and sent them to me to try. I tried the '09 first (on the theory that newer is often better) and is needed so much adjustment for the camber that it would not work. Then I tried the '05 and it did work. I can hold from 0 to -3 degrees camber. I had read a lot about the difference between the '04-'05 and the later models of TRX spindles before I was done. It was a very interesting read. I looked on ebay and could see that people wanted a lot more money for the '04-'05 parts because they are in high demand by people that want to change out the font ends on their newer TRX for the old. Here are some sics of the mounted spindle with out them being diled in yet. They are just put on with some washers for spacers and the jam nut is not set yet.

Very nice, do you have links and info for the ball joints and the bushings?

Pretty slick!

I can see this being a popular mod.

Is that stool Honda blue?!

That looks great MAS Racing! I Installed my tierods the other day using the 3/4" shorter per side and it worked great. Now i just have to dial it in once i get the pilot finished. Thanks again for the tips BTW! I woulda ended up with 06-up parts if i hadnt talked to you first!

The link for the ball joints is
http://www.teamalbaracing.com/product.p ... t=52&page=

Like I said before they are really nice if you call direct.

The bushings are just some that I have had laying around for years and I do not have info on where to buy them.




The stool is actually a target special from about 15 yrs ago. I have 2 of them left and they are great for working on stuff like this.

As Nitrosport said above we discovered that the stock tie rods are too long by 3/4". The origional tie rod is 18 3/8" long and we are having some made that are 17 5/8" long. We learned also during this experience that one of our tie rods were bent also.

The stock tie rod end can be used if you drill out the hole on the spindle from 10mm to 12 mm. We did this because the stock tie rods ends seem alot stronger that the 10mm ones and they are half the price.

I did not post the pics of the rims I found on the first build but I did tlk about them. I found a DWT ultimate yellow dot .190 rim that is 4+1 offset. The lip of the rim has a good roll and seems a lot beefier that the red dot rims. It is as close to stock offset as you can get without having costom rims made. I hope that they are as strong as they look.

Sorry to bring this topic back to life but i need a little information. I would like to do this ball joint mod too but i need to know what degree is the bend on those ball joints or what degree do the originals sit at in relation to the a-arm? I would look myself but my pilot is about 200 miles from me at my parents house.

I am pretty sure that those ball joints are made by Frap and they do a few different angled joints so i need to determine what ones to use. Also are the angles on the upper and lower arms different? When i can determine what the degree should be i can let you know the Frap part number for future reference.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Dan

They are the upper 16mm stock angled ball joints for the 04-05 TRX 450R. I do not know what degree they are. They said that they are Italian made. I never tried to do one for the lower yet. They were not in need of fixing. Wish that I could help you more.

These are the pics of the custom tie rods installed. They are made of 321 stainless. They are stronger than stock. Sorry it took so long to get the pics put on here. It has been a really hard year.

Just to finish up this section of my project I decided to post the pics of the shocks installed as well. I went with G Series Works shocks with reservoirs on the front. I used some billet aluminum reservoirs clamps that I had from another buggy I was building in the past. They were purchased for fox shocks so I had to glue in some rubber to make it fit. This also added a little cushion to protect them. It looks a lot cleaner than the regular hose clamps. It may be a little over kill but extra parts are extra parts. :)

MAS, quick question, have you run these spindles real hard?

I was looking at this conversion (or even the trx700xx spindles, but they are the same spindle diameters) but have reservations on the spindle being strong enough

It's got 15mm outer spindle diameter, vs. stock pilot 20mm

I might be being overly cautious, but I had asked earlier on feedback on this issue and never hear from anyone

I know the TRX are out there getting hammered day in day out, but thought I would double check

If you've got feedback, it would be great

Thanks,

Consol
This is my daughters Pilot and she does not ride it that hard yet. But one of my friends Pilots does get ridden hard with this same set up. It has had no problems after a whole year of riding. Also they make aftermarket spindles for the racers that are having bending issues. They press in. You could look into those if you are concerned. With the set up I went with the brakes are very impressive. Hope this helps.

my 670 pilot is running these and no issues yet. granted only a couple rides to the dunes and quite a few wheelies around the house they are working well. the disk brakes are an awesome upgrade over the stock drums. even if the spindles are not as strong.