The reason this board is changing is that there are a core of members who have become far more sophisticated in suspension design and far more extreme in their pursuits. In the case of this thread, you can certainly say that the "low hanging mount" long arm design is very well covered (see Clayton's long arms, which I run, and upon which I high centered last weekend, and which I wouldn't be running if I was building my front end today) and you can also say that a bargain priced long arm setup with quality components is very relevant for the mass market - it just depends through which lens you are viewing the release of yet another standard long arm kit. Some of us are as unexcited as others are excited, both for perfectly valid reasons.
In reading this thread, it got personal in an odd way, and it strikes me that the reason isn't the "people", but rather the process (which is almost always the case). We aren't a bunch of nice guys who suddenly happened to sprout sphincters on our foreheads one day.
probably needs a new forum for extreme modifications so that newbies to moderate wheelers can post more basic stuff and show more basic out-of-the-box products to this board, and the extreme crowd can spend their time discussing cutting edge stuff while not worrying if a long arm setup that isn't ever going to see extreme wheeling will get hung up or not, because, quite simply, it just doesn't matter.
Most of us who have been around for a long time would like to see a more creative mass market approach to the XJ front suspension question, but as JNJ stated this typically requires custom work, and you don't make money selling custom stuff to the mass market at cheap prices. Just try selling a mid-arm three-link suspension when the caveat is that you also need to build a D44 front end from scratch. Yes, it is the right solution, and no, you won't get a damn bit of business. It will be interesting to see if this market will support more customized solutions at premium prices (no bolt-on compromises), and hopefully we will see more of this in the future.
In my case, I had a chance to watch a couple of 4-link coil sprung XJ's on the trail last weekend, which was my first experience in that field, and it certainly has me thinking as I saw both massive advantages and some disadvantages. For certain the four link appears to be the future of extreme XJ suspensions if for no other reason than leaf springs are boring. And the three link appears to be the future of the front end, with non-stock mount configurations. If I were building an XJ from scratch, this is where I spend my research time, but I've also been web wheeling for a good 6 years now :yelclap: .
I hope to see the
forums continue to gain in sophistication and ability to comment on the out-of-the-box problems with any given solution. Yes, it should be stated tactfully. However, if I came out with yet another cookie cutter long arm setup I'd expect to get a "why on earth did you design that?" response because those suspensions were bleeding edge 3 years ago and have problems that are being dealt with on today's market. If that is painful to anybody it simply represents the reality of coming to a market very late with a product that offers nothing new, except possibly a lower price for quality components.
In any case, we've moved way, way on and in doing so don't represent the mass market (bolt-on) the way we did a few years back. And that is a good thing. This whole thing would die if all we had to talk about were 6" bolt on lifts and how much of your fenders you have to cut in order to run 33" tires and how great radius arm designed long arm kits are. :speepin:
Nay
