Spherical Bearing. GC vs. Vorshlag


#1

Bottom line. The design of the two is not crazy different. Contrary to some rumors, there’s no GC magic going on such that their spherical bearing is less loaded then the Vorshlag design. The Vorshlag design definitely appears to be better, but maybe not because of the spherical bearing.


This pic shows the GC weight bearing piece. I attempted to mark in black the actual surface that bears the entire weight of the car. The weight bearing piece sits on roller bearings, as discussed in another thread, but that doesn’t change the fact that the entire weight of the corner is on the marked surface.

As you can see there isn’t much of an “insertion lip” adjacent to the marked load bearing surface. That lip is only 2mm high so doesn’t insert deep. Not much rigidity in that connection.


This pic has the GC camber plate flipped over. The GC weight bearing piece inserts into it.


This pic shows the GC top hat attached to the camber plate just like it would sit in your car. Note how the camber plate is a fair amount above the top hat. That’s important because that means that there’s no way some weight from that corner is pressing on the camber plate, except thru what I called the GC weight bearing piece, which transmits all load to the GC spherical bearing.


I measured the area of that marked surface. It’s ID is 15.9mm. The #'s worked out to 38.8 sq mm of steel bearing the weight of that corner. Call it 1/3rd of a sq cm. Doesn’t seem like much.

Vorshlag. Here’s the top hat (bottom) and the spherical bearing (in the slider) that it fits into. The surface marked in red is what bears the weight of the corner. If you look back at the top hat you’ll see that it has a tall lip that inserts into the It inserts 10mm deep which has to add rigidity to the connection.

Here I’m figuring out the size of the Vorshlag weight bearing surface. 19mm ID. The #'s worked out to 79.5 sq mm of surface area bearing the weight of that corner. That’s >2x the weight bearing surface area as the GC design.

This pic shows that, just like the GC design, the Vorshlag weight bearing element is transferring all weight to the spherical bearing.

I did not attempt to compare the spherical bearings themselves. I didn’t take them apart.

Summary.
–Both designs require that the spherical bearing support the entire weight of the corner.
–The Vorshlag “weight bearing piece” that transmits weight to the spherical bearing does so with >2x as much surface area. That would reduce the amount of stress on that part proportionally. .
–The Vorshlag weight bearing piece inserts 5x more deeply into the spherical bearing.

Bottom line. The Vorshlag design is significantly more robust. Of course, it’s also more expensive.


#2

Yay! I can ad my 2 cents again! Scott, how does the nut look like on the top for both? My best guess, they both have a significant flange and both enters the to the spherical bearing a certain amount. Also that lip that enters the bearings guides and shouldn’t see much load. Given the arm length between center of the wheel and the spherical vs center of the wheel and ball joint, the spherical is seeing a very very small amount. Stock is rubber in the first place.

Now the biggest difference between the VL(Vorshlag) and the GC is one uses a deep grooves bearing for the hat and the GC uses needle bearing. Also talking about surface area. 2mm x circonference 2* pi* R 2*3.14.7.5mm=47.1mm^2(Gross approximation) So some mid grade 6061-t6 with 200mpa tensile strengh could hold a little over 2000 lbs on that little surface. Move to steel and it can hold 2 times more.

I have mentioned before, but it’s possible to emulate the GC with a purchased needle bearing, but also the VL deep grooves bearing is overkill. (Correction, I have a hard time finding a bearing that can take more 900lbs force in axial for the approximate size.) Needle can hold around 2500lbs for that size, but can’t hold any radial load.

Only thing that affect real performance is how much caster camber you can get and how much shock travel you loose(hat height).

BTW the other spring hat on Facebook does bypass the spherical in terms of loads. It’s just the one you are showing is a conventional shape/clearance design.


#3

I think there are two different GC camper plate designs and you should for that reason probably define which GC design you compare against. The picture shows the design where a “cupped” washer is transferring the load against the plate itself and not the spherical bearing.


#4

Go ahead and do the same study. I can only study the GC camber plates that I own.