Home-Brew Extended Radius Arms?

[Ranger44]

How hard would it be to fab up a set?
Who's made there own?
How big of tubing should I use, wall thickness?

 

[4x4junkie]

2" .250 wall 1020 D.O.M. tube, arm is extended 12" over stock.



Check my BII Cardomain page for more pics

 

[Ranger44]

Awesome! I just don't like the fact of shoving out $500 for a set when I could spend less than half that to make my own.

 

[Evan]

Do you have a writeup on those? I have been kicking around the idea of fabbing up a set. What about camber? Do you leave the camber the same as stock?

 

[4x4junkie]

No, no writeup, sorry. There's really not a lot to it though, just use some good, beefy tube, lop the arm apart where it just fits, then weld 'er up (don't forget some braces to support the end of the tube inside the arm body).
The frame mounts I built from scratch, although '73-'77 F-150 RA mounts can be used as well.

Camber isn't changed by the RAs though (unless you meant caster, in which case I did add about 3-4° at the axle so I wouldn't have to put the frame end down as low (you can see the tube is cocked slightly within the arm in a couple of my pics).

 

[Ranger44]

Did you reuse the ends (threaded ends) from the old arms and weld them into the new pipe? Do you think that these could be used with say a seperately purchased tranny x-member from Duff or Skyjacker?

 

[JFA_Spyderman]

Yo,
Did you use a bushing on the threaded end? I just lopped mine off and they seem a bit smaller than the inside of 2"/.250.

 

[Ranger44]

Oh, I forgot to ask, did you use the stock style bushings also?

 

[4x4junkie]

Geez guys, sure don't look like heims in that pic above, do they?


The threaded end part was probably a little under 1/8" smaller than the inside of the DOM tube (not enough to be an issue)
If you click on my Cardomain page like I mentioned above, you'll see in one of the pics the amount of gap between the tube and the arm end piece in the plug weld hole.

 

[BARanger]

do you think that set up works better than the heims

 

[ckblum]

A little off topic, but what are heims?

Back on topic though, I think Im gonna try to build some for my truck. Would it be possible to get a write-up or something? And what are some important things to remember when designing these? Also I have stock suspension with 1.5" lift coil so are there any limits I have? Am I even able to do this?

 

[Ranger44]

These are hiem joints.

James Duff exended RA's are like this. In reality, extended Radius Arms are pointless under 2.5" of lift. I'm doing 3-3.5 inches of lift therefore they be of benefit.

 

[4x4junkie]

Yeah, you need at least some lift (beyond simple coilspacers/leveling coils etc.) to make effective use of extended RAs.

I wouldn't say bushings work better than heims, but they sure as hell do last a whole lot longer (and are less noisy).
The differences in performance between bushings and heims isn't significant until you start pulling over 16-18" of wheel travel, and are running softer, more flexible coils (and even then, the tradeoffs in maintenance still might not be worth the small gains in travel, particularly on a truck that still sees some street duty).

 

[Ranger44]

Well, the only problem that I see, is the tranny crossmember. On my Ranger it is mounted on the outside of the frame. On your BII it is mounted inside? Will that style of x-member bolt to the inside of my Ranger? That way I can use an F-150 mount:

I could maybe scrounge these out of a J-yard or better yet maybe new ones from the dealership. We'll see.

 

[4x4junkie]

My crossmember is "inside" on the d-side, but is "outside" on the p-side.


That pic looks like TTB RA mounts, I was referring to SA mounts (1977-down specifically), although I s'pose the TTB ones also could work if there is enough room to mount them (the angle on them doesn't look to be as great as on the RBV ones).