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1982 C/K 6.0L Caitlyn Mall Crawler (Interior time)

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y5mgisi said:
Im sure a case could be argued against them being safe, but if ORD can run an entire ultimate adventure on them, i would put them in my rig.

With the cost, seriously, i wonder, how much would it cost you to get all your brackets welded up by your welder guy? And dont forget the ones you have to have welded twice or three times because you messed something up.

I think if i was you, i would buy the kit, without the shocks. Let your Credit card recoup while you put in some labor on other stuff. THen when the CC is paid off again, buy the shocks.
Click to expand...


Yup kinda what I said earlier
 
Driveability wise, our link system is great. You have nice soft springs (usually around 150 lbs/in for Blazers) with really good shocks to soak up the bigger hits. Bump steer is virtually non existent and roll steer is minimal. There is a fair amount of body roll and you'll get that with coilovers regardless, but we help that out by mounting the springs further outboard, about 4" per side compared to the leaves. For your use, I would plan on a sway bar.

You mentioned durability of the Johnny Joints and they've really been pretty good for us. If you ever had to, they are rebuildable and the new parts aren't expensive.

There is a little bit of "bind" in a parallel four link and that's why we use Johnny Joints rather than heims, to give a little bit and let everything move like it should. If I remember right from when I did mine, the suspension would completely cycle the shocks with just the weight of the axle, so there isn't much bind. We've worked through a few radius arm systems and they are WAY harder on the joints, which is easy to see on paper, but part of why we ended up with a parallel 4 link.

The 3 links can work well but we didn't do that because there's twice as much force on that single upper link which is harder on the joints, harder on the mounts and most importantly harder on the frame. That just means reinforcing the frame where the link attaches, which we avoid by spreading the load across both frame rails.

For what it's worth, we split the kit up all the time so you can do it in stages if that helps.
 
Chris typed some or all of this above, I'm just going to expand and/or say it different.
The 4 link actually wins for a few more reasons that can be big. The inside of the frame rails is often taken up by exhaust systems that we didn't want to force everyone to re-do. There is not place to mount a 3rd link on the frame end so it would require a super beefy crossmember that has to interface with about 1000 trans/t-case combos too. So putting the links on the naturally strong frame rails was a no brainer.

As for on road driving, I'd take this link system over a leaf setup any day. 3 times. The handling is very precise to the point that you have to quit driving it like a "truck" where you move the wheel a couple inches each way to get something to happen and treat it like a "car" where you just steer where you want to go with instant response. Ride is awesome and very tunable. Adding a swaybar is a good idea if you expect to haul heavy or tow a lot but we never did put the swaybar on my '88 sub with the coilovers and it handled a lot of light trailers (snowmobiles, etc) no problem and with a load dist. hitch I pulled our 28ft camp trailer to Moab with no drama. I'm itching to put a 4 link on my Dad's '99 F350 and it's primary job is a tow/work truck. There's a good reason ford and dodge have linked front suspensions on everything now. It's better.

now I need to go.
 
Thank you very much Chris and Stephen.You pretty much sold me on the kit. :thumb:

I would suspect the 28 foot camper would weigh about as much as a car? I probably won't tow much with this but I want the option. In the 90's it was nothing for this truck to have a case backhoe or bobcat on the bumper.

How do you guys set this up for ride height and wheel base? Do you have a set height or is that discussed when ordering? I'm thinking 4 inch and 33's I want to be able to fit this in a standard house garage.
 
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Ride height is set by the height of the shock hoop. Basically we set your spring rates so that the shock will collapse halfway under the weight of the truck, so we know what the shock eye to shock eye measurement should be. Set the truck at the ride height you want, then set the shock hoop height so that the shock mounts are that same measurement apart, and that's it. 4" lift is no problem.

As far as wheelbase goes, it's pretty adjustable but you'll probably want the axle in roughly the stock location. There is plenty of adjustment in the links.
 
Sounds great, what travel coil covers do you recommend? I would assume caster is around 6 degree? In the pictures it looks like the bracket replaces the body mount?
 
Baba you need to go ahead and order this apparatus and get it installed so we can see it in detail. I'm starting to want to do this swap myself. :haha:
 
Babaganoosh said:
Sounds great, what travel coil covers do you recommend? I would assume caster is around 6 degree? In the pictures it looks like the bracket replaces the body mount?
Click to expand...

We usually do 14's for your ride height, 6 degrees of caster is fine.

We have two different versions of our frame side bracket, one that bolts under the body mount and one that requires some fabrication there. The second is our "high clearance" version for guys that would be dragging their links on rocks, you'll probably want the first version.
 
Yes I would agree with you about the one bolting onto the body mount. Would you be able to snap a picture of one? The website isn't very clear on the rear mount.

Thank you so much for answering my questions, looking forward to this.
 
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