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1991 Ranger Long Travel Woods / Prerunner Build


You want the lower end of your swingers (where your tierod will mount) on the red axis lines if you're looking for the least amount of bumpsteer.

OK I understand what your saying but think about this. After some hard thinking and testing I realized that as a TTB supention cycles downword (droops) it creats a toe inward to the truck if there was 0* "bumpsteer" built in. I say this lightly becasue when I say bumpsteer im defining no movement from spindle to axle beam.

Picture this. Turn your wheels completly strait with a good alignment and weld your spindle to the beams, so both wheels are strait and they completly follow the path of the beam and radius arm arcs...

As the suspention droops out the beam pivot causes a camber, which in turn pulls the tires closer togerther on the bottom where they have contact to the ground. They have to becasue they are following the beam pivot point. But becasue your radius arms are also a pivot point the rear half of your tire does not toe in the same amount as the front does. This is because as the suspention droops out the rear of your radius arm (where it mounts to the truck) stays to the outside of the vehicle while at the same time the front (where radius arm connect to beam) does not.

The opposite happends on compression...

I was thinking that by placing my swingers in front of the beam pivots paralell to the truck i would correct this toe in and out caused by the flex.

I was correct about fixing the toe out on compression becase as the suspention cycles up the shorter tire rod length following a different angle curve would result in the tires toeing back into normal track paralell with the frame.

But on droop this would have multiplied my toe inward. Not good.

So Junkie, and anybody else if your following me lol, I understand why now you say you need to mount the swingers on the "red line". But by doing this you still have the natural TTB bumpsteer problem. I figured out a way to get rid of it... To do this you must not mount them on the red line, but just below the red line...

Picture a line from your beam pivot to your radius arm pivot, your looking at this line parrallell to your vision from the front corner of the truck, you want the tire rod pivot to be slightly below the line. This way as the TTB droops out the tires toe back out becasue of the pivot being slightly below "red line" and when it compresses it will toe in. Same kind of action that taked splace with your pinion angle on an unequal 4 link rear.

With all that said I realized something else. By putting extended radius arms on a TTB without extending the Pass side beam and moving the mount accordingly we are messing up the equalized camber/caster curve the TTB has with stock length radius arms. Im not sure how bad it is but look at this picture below, the red lines represent stock radius arms and the blue represent extended ones on stock beams, notice that the curves are no longer equal on both sides with the blue pivot points? The yellow line represents where the passender pivot should be in order to fix this unever arc.

I have thought about it alot and Im thinking about just getting the 4" drop pitman arm Skyjacker Part # FA600 instead of building a swinger setup....

Is this the way to go?

I want to put off building swingers untill "stage 2", when I extend my beams, do a C&T and move my pass side beam piviot to the drivers side of the truck as much as I can to make up for the extended radius arms...

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I would put a K-link steering setup on there before using that long drop pitman arm (less stress on the steering gear).

As for the suspension pivot axis thing, you've got a good point, and is something I'd definitely have to think through further, maybe model it out somehow. I can tell you for sure though, at this point you'd only be dealing with a very minor toe error occurring well away from the center of your suspension's travel range that likely would never be noticed from behind the wheel. I also don't know that many people have noticed the effect on the suspension's symmetry caused by running extended radius arms (maybe if the driver's seat was actually dead-center of the cab it'd be easier to tell something like this? :icon_twisted: ).
Of course it doesn't hurt to be perfect, though you do have the weigh the amount of effort it takes to maintain that perfection. Often a little bit of compromise here & there is perfectly acceptable without noticeable effects occurring (mounting your swingers dead-ahead of the beam pivots certainly won't cause poor handling... People continually do this and don't report any ill effects because of it. After all, even a K-link setup works extremely well (properly executed, anyway), and strictly from a geometric standpoint a K-link would otherwise seem like a disaster lol).
 
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How could a K style or Superrunner style steering be any good at all...?

Look at the pic, you can see obvious amounts of bumpsteer without even a tape measure during the flexed TTB with superrunner steering in the pic below...

I cant accept that lol... At high speeds ill prob crash with that amount of bumpsteer during a landing!

The stock steering with drop pitman arm will deff be better than that, at least on the passenger side!

I may need to make swingers...

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How could a K style or Superrunner style steering be any good at all...?

Look at the pic, you can see obvious amounts of bumpsteer without even a tape measure during the flexed TTB with superrunner steering in the pic below...

I cant accept that lol... At high speeds ill prob crash with that amount of bumpsteer during a landing!

The stock steering with drop pitman arm will deff be better than that, at least on the passenger side!

I may need to make swingers...

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t433/nooch450/zimfront1.jpg


Please note the bold text from my last post:
After all, even a K-link setup works extremely well (properly executed, anyway), and strictly from a geometric standpoint a K-link would otherwise seem like a disaster lol).

The typical way-too-high-up centerlink (as provided by stuporlift) is quite fully obvious in that picture. :no2:

K-link setup on mine:


If you look real close, you might still be able to tell a small bit of toe-in on the drooped tire, but because the steering centerlink is where it actually belongs (on the same plane as the beam pivots) it's probably not even 5% of what that f-ed up Explorer has.
Going from stock steering to the K-link was a very noticeable improvement. The truck tracks straight going up an off-camber hill climb (the type with the divots created by people spinning their tires with open diffs) whereas before it would dart side to side because each side of the linkage could not operate independently because of the way it's linked in the middle.


Have you read the article about that Explorer anyway?
IMO, that thing comes uncomfortably close to being a candidate for the Ghetto Fab thread over on Pirate4x4. The dude seems to have good enough welding skills, but the execution needs major work. Modding of the beams like that should be done by moving the lower ball joints outward, not by hacking them up in the middle. Then that feeble tubing used for those radius arms and the thin frame brackets. I honestly wish that thing would go away, because it's not a good example of how to go about building these trucks.
 
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IMO, that thing comes uncomfortably close to being a candidate for the Ghetto Fab thread over on Pirate4x4. The dude seems to have good enough welding skills, but the execution needs major work. Modding of the beams like that should be done by moving the lower ball joints outward, not by hacking them up in the middle. Then that feeble tubing used for those radius arms and the thin frame brackets. I honestly wish that thing would go away, because it's not a good example of how to go about building these trucks.

Amen to that brother!



Sent using two cups and a string
 
My Klink works great commuting and is light years better than my stock y-link setup was and offroad it works great too, though there is always room for improvement.

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I have gotten some close up pics from Lego a while back for a K link I am building for my truck. Because of the winter months I put it on hold but will be getting restarted on the project now that spring is in the air. I am doing my setup with heim joints and double sheer mounting. It is being built out of 1.5" DOM .25 wall. I have already drilled a pitmanarm and have the basic layou tset up. I need to get my plat epieces from a cousin that is fabing those so I can do final measurements before i do any welding.

I think for a TTB suspension the best and most cost effective solution for steering once it is lifted is the K-Link design because it allows the stering for each side move with the wheel semi independant from the other side.At least on paper that is how it appears it would work. If I was better using my CAD software I am sure I could get it to animate it for me and show me what each part is doing at a given time. Alibre is pretty decent CAD software but for someone with no real training it gets very confussing quick...
 
Here are some more pics... Still alot more stuff to brace up...

This is what I have so far.

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OK here is some good stuff :) sitting on the ground... Half welded... Gussets need to be added... Than Steering is next... And i think I may need softer upper coil...

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nice truck and nice build but i would really recommend getting rid of those drop brakets and building your self some extended beams
 
nice truck and nice build but i would really recommend getting rid of those drop brakets and building your self some extended beams

Thats next (stage) possibly D44 or modifies D35...

Im going to run it with these for now... I dont see any reason why not.. Its a woods truck that will be driven fast lol
 
noticed you notched the frame
 

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