What a turdy 30!!!

[Matt S.]

how long did you stretch the wheelbase? how far did you move the track bar mount forward? I saw you moved your coil buckets up as well, was that planned to gain height or just a byproduct?

I stretched the wheelbase 3"s (about). I moved it forward (about) 4"s and out 4"s from stock. Moving the coils was very intentional. I did run 2" spacers before on these 3" springs. I was slightly sagged in the front after I chopped the rear. I wanted to truss from ball joint to ball joint, and I saw no better way than this to do it. I can honestly say that I wont be afraid of speed in the desert with this housing anymore.

 

[vetteboy]

New panhard mount to accomodate the stretched wheelbase and to optimize the longest possible panhard. BTW, its 40.5" long. Thats 5.5" longer than my drag link!!

Isn't that generally undesireable? Or are you just gonna let the flat angle minimize the effects of it?

Looks good, for a 30. The un-equal height UCA mounts kinda tripped me for a little bit until I saw you were only using one. I was still breaking ball joints and nice 760x joints on mine nearly every trip so I just got tired of it.

Actually turned out sorta like a miniature and more bling-intensive version of my 60. :roll:

'cept mine probably weighs twice as much. :wierd:

 

[Quacked]

When you guys were doing all this work to your housing, did you rotate the axle tubes to try to get a better pinion angle / caster compromise?

Brad

 

[CanMan]

When you guys were doing all this work to your housing, did you rotate the axle tubes to try to get a better pinion angle / caster compromise?

Brad

They would rotate the inner C's instead of the whole tube, would be my guess.

 

[Matt S.]

Dumptruck... yes Troy and I get along very well! How did you know!?

Quaked... Nah, I only run about 5"s of lift. A HP 30 has good angles already. If and when I do a custom axle, I will most deffinatly be building all that into it. Oh and it is just the knuckles that you turn, not the whole tube.

 

[53guy]

Isn't that generally undesireable? Or are you just gonna let the flat angle minimize the effects of it?

I might be wrong, but from what I understand, with his longer drag link, he'll have the opposite sort of bump steer direction that normal xj's typically experience. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the perfect steering angles would be exactally parallel and exactally the same length so that their radius of movement in relation to eachother (drag link and track bar) would be exactlly the same.

 

[Matt S.]

Not sure why I am still up, but I can explain the reasoning for the longest trackbar possible.

No particular order to this mind you.
Having it very long and nearly flat will really help the axle movement laterally offroad. It may not matter much, but I like the fact that my axle is centered under the jeep perfectly at ride height AND at full stuff. That alone is cool with me.
Having it longer than the drag only made sense. I want to run full hydro down the road as well as 14" airshocks and a more refined suspension. Building a trackbar this long only optimizes my performance.
I dont know how it will handle, but I am sure that it wont be any worse than before. My track bar was under 30 inches and was 5 inches shorter than my steering.
Its got the bling bling factor.

I should have it driving this next weekend, I plan on giving it a good tossing around the ranch and letting FarmerMatt feel it too. I am fairly interested in how it is going to drive and flex out on a ramp. I doubt it will be much different, but who knows.

Oh, I spent like 30 mins on the phone with CRASH while I was building this. We couldnt come up with a reason NOT to do this.

 

[vetteboy]

Not sure why I am still up, but I can explain the reasoning for the longest trackbar possible.

No particular order to this mind you.
Having it very long and nearly flat will really help the axle movement laterally offroad. It may not matter much, but I like the fact that my axle is centered under the jeep perfectly at ride height AND at full stuff. That alone is cool with me.
Having it longer than the drag only made sense. I want to run full hydro down the road as well as 14" airshocks and a more refined suspension. Building a trackbar this long only optimizes my performance.
I dont know how it will handle, but I am sure that it wont be any worse than before. My track bar was under 30 inches and was 5 inches shorter than my steering.
Its got the bling bling factor.

I should have it driving this next weekend, I plan on giving it a good tossing around the ranch and letting FarmerMatt feel it too. I am fairly interested in how it is going to drive and flex out on a ramp. I doubt it will be much different, but who knows.

Oh, I spent like 30 mins on the phone with CRASH while I was building this. We couldnt come up with a reason NOT to do this.

With full hydro as an eventuality, that makes perfect sense. A wishbone 3-link or tri-4-link would be optimum-er but with the amount of travel you're describing it's nearly the same thing with a long/flat panhard.

With a drag link though, you want the same angle AND length, otherwise it will bumpsteer. Ideally you want the panhard & draglink to form a parallelogram; any deviation from this and something will have to change over travel. It might be significant enough to notice, or you might be willing to just live with it and be fine.

Because I sit a desk all day long with a calculator and notepad, I roughly figured that if your drag link and panhard are parallel at ride height and at an angle of 0*, and the panhard is 40.5" and drag link is 35", at 5" uptravel the axle will have shifted 0.3" over and the drag link will have moved about 0.38". So you probably won't notice that.

 

[53guy]

exactally....and because it was 5" shorter than the drag link before and now it is 5" LONGER, you'll just have bump steer in the opposite direction but like said before, it'll will hardly be noticable when driving on road. 5" of travel on road is pretty extreme. I typically get about 1.75-2" of up travel on road between the highway and around town (as seen from my ghetto up travel meter called dirty assed shocks!).

 

[vetteboy]

Those crazy California guys have all those wonderful deserts to go bombing around, so it's not impossible to hit a bump or come down from something while going 80 mph and get full compression.

All the access roads I've got around here, anything faster than 35-40 mph gets you a wadded up rig at the bottom of a ravine. No place to really do any good off-road racing.

 

[Matt S.]

Those crazy California guys have all those wonderful deserts to go bombing around, so it's not impossible to hit a bump or come down from something while going 80 mph and get full compression.

We are not crazy, the pedal just LIKES to be on the floor.:skull2:

 

[XJ_ranger]

I want to run full hydro down the road as well as 14" airshocks and a more refined suspension. Building a trackbar this long only optimizes my performance.

Hows this project coming along?
I havent seen any pics of this jeep in a while... :confused1

:smootch: you matt!

 

[Matt S.]

ha. well if you think its going move forward... something is wrong. But I am getting my MJ and trailer this weekend!

 

[cracker]

I saw this and I thought of Cal's front end. :shocked:

 

[karstic]

I saw this and I thought of Cal's front end. :shocked:

That turd is not only polished, it's chromed!

 

[cracker]

That turd is not only polished, it's chromed!

Fo Sho!

 

[XJ_ranger]

Fo Sho!

stop posting! you're ruining my credability everytime I read your signature... :doh:

 

[cracker]

stop posting! you're ruining my credability everytime I read your signature... :doh:

:laugh:




:laugh2:





:laugh3:

 

[cal]

stop posting! you're ruining my credability everytime I read your signature... :doh:

who's ruining your credibility?

 

[Jump This]

who's ruining your credibility?

He just needs to use spell check...