I think I've had another change of heart when it comes to the crossmember and my lack of up travel. As you can see from my previous post, there is only so much room to snake the crossmember in between the alternator and the DS axle... but what if I didn't at all?!?
While watching videos on setting up swingset steering, I realized that the 2wd TTB guys do not run a crossmember between the pivots mounted under each frame rail. That got me thinking.
As you can see in this pic, the DS axle mounts almost directly under the PS frame rail. That means pretty much all of the load is straight into the frame. Unfortunately, because this is a 4x4 axle, the PS axle mounts pretty much in the middle, so I definately need to have that supported by both frame rails, but maybe not the DS axle.
What if I did something like this:
It seems like that might actually be better. It would give both mounts some front to back support, and the front mount should have plenty of vertical support being directly under the axle.
Does that make sense to anyone else? If I lost that section of crossmember it gives me several inches of up travel potentially.
Anyway, I'll noodle on that for a few more days. If anyone has any thoughts, please share.
In the mean time, I picked up a bunch of heim joints and bushings from midnight4x4 so I can get to mocking up the steering. After watching some videos by Dune Hippy, I think I'm going to build it something like this:
