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Those with 52's or 56's...?

mikey_d05

mikey_d05

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How much uptravel do you have before the spring goes into negative arch?

To make a long story short, I'm gonna start building a truggy in a year. I want to keep it as low as possible. I'm trying to figure out a way to run 1"-2" of lift with 52's or 56's while still maintaining 4"-6" of uptravel. I hear that most 52 setups will net you around 4" but I'd really like to be lower than that. I'm too inexperienced to link the front, so that's out. I'm thinking of just pulling leaves from the spring until it sits the way I want it to but I believe that if I start with a 52 that sits that flat it will go negative before I get the up-travel I want.

I'm open to pretty much anything. I'd like to run a longer spring for more down-travel so stockers are pretty much out. I'd also like to push my axle ~ 4" forward so a 52 with a custom mount would probably work well except for sitting to high. Is it possible to push the spring far enough forward to the point that I could mount the rear shackle higher on the frame and bring the tail end of the spring up (and the truck down) some? It's strictly trail so caster and camber aren't a concern.

Anybody have any suggestions?
 
Getting 1-2" of lift from 52s or 56s w/o going into negative arch QUICK is not gonna happen. Most of those setups are already pretty flat and only take maybe 3" or so before they are totally flat. My rear is set up for about 4" uptravel and 4x the downtravel...why not work on gaining droop and not uptravel so much?
 
There will be plenty of droop, but 3"-4" of uptravel is the minimum amount that I'd like to see. Gotta have some compression in there. My truck is low enough for me from the COG perspective the way it sits now but I'd like to be able to fit in my garage with my trail tires on it (I'm only a couple inches away now). I can't make my roof line very low because I'm almost 6.5' tall.
 
I prolly have about 3-4" before they go flat. But that really isnt a big deal.
Problem is when you start pulling leafs and lowering the lift you will have spring plate-pitman arm clearance problems.
4" of lift from the 52's is perfect for a full width rig IMHO.

As for the roof line, since you are going to truggy it you can drop the seats down as low as you would like.

I am about 6'2" and my roof (upper bar haha) is about 2" lower then a stock cab. And I have plenty of room between my head and my cage. But I am kind of anal about having the tube far from my head.
 
Put the springs under the axle. The Baja racer K5 on the ORD site is set up that way. So are Jeeps. Check it out.
 
85mudblazin said:
I prolly have about 3-4" before they go flat. But that really isnt a big deal.
Problem is when you start pulling leafs and lowering the lift you will have spring plate-pitman arm clearance problems.
4" of lift from the 52's is perfect for a full width rig IMHO.

As for the roof line, since you are going to truggy it you can drop the seats down as low as you would like.

I am about 6'2" and my roof (upper bar haha) is about 2" lower then a stock cab. And I have plenty of room between my head and my cage. But I am kind of anal about having the tube far from my head.
Click to expand...

You were one of the guys I was hoping to hear from. :D

Dremu posted up some time ago about how he was extremely close to having steering/spring plate interference problems. It sounds like I'll either have to kick the axle out 4.5" or 7+" to take care of the problem if I try and stick with less than 4" of lift. Either way I'll work it out. I'd like to be around 5" but we'll see what clears. I think BadDog eventually found a different pitman arm that offered more clearance. I'll be using an ORD engine crossmember so clearance in that area shouldn't be a problem.

As for the roof clearance, I'm like you in that I'm extremely anal about not having things around my head. I really only call it a truggy since I'll be using the front half of a frame, but everything else will be tube and puck board or diamondplate, there's not gonna be a cab on this one. You bounce around a ton when you're wheeling and being tall accentuates it somewhat. Is there any chance (since you have everything cut up) that you could measure from your floor pan to the top of the frame rail? I took a ton of measurements off of my truck and spare frame while I was home this weekend to do some CAD work at school but that wasn't one of them.

Oh yeah, I finally got around to fixing the park problem, it was the linkage, thanks for the advice man.
 
I'm in the same boat as you.

I run 52" springs up front and I just removed most of the body and caged it out. It lost so much weight that it raised a few inches. Anyway, its got to go back down but I dont want to loose too much spring control. I though about dropping the overloads but I'm concerned about spring wrap.

I had my axle 3.25" forward and the steering arm hit the U-bolt pad. So I moved it back to only 2" forward.

What I'm looking at now is dumping the stock front hanger and building a higher hanger that uses the frame as one side of the hanger. I think I can get the mounting point about 5" higher up dropping the overall height down 2.5" inches or so. This is the best solution that I have come up with so far.
 
my springs have gone negative so many times, I think what started as 4 inches, has diminished to 2 :D ... hell, the right front spring is probably closer to 1, but that gives it character, right?

Micah
 
Sandman said:
I'm in the same boat as you.

I run 52" springs up front and I just removed most of the body and caged it out. It lost so much weight that it raised a few inches. Anyway, its got to go back down but I dont want to loose too much spring control. I though about dropping the overloads but I'm concerned about spring wrap.

I had my axle 3.25" forward and the steering arm hit the U-bolt pad. So I moved it back to only 2" forward.

What I'm looking at now is dumping the stock front hanger and building a higher hanger that uses the frame as one side of the hanger. I think I can get the mounting point about 5" higher up dropping the overall height down 2.5" inches or so. This is the best solution that I have come up with so far.
Click to expand...
I wouldnt do that since that would KILL your pinion angle. Unless you fell like rotating the knuckles or running 20* shims i would find another option.

After trugging mine out that suspension has prolly raised a good 3". I am going to re-do my rear suspension and pull a leaf out just to soften it back up.

Im glad the front raised since that arched the springs more giving me more uptravel before they go neg.
 
Sandman, has anyone successfully set up a traction bar in the front? It doesn't seem like it'd be all that hard and it'd help more with axlewrap than an overload.

Can you elaborate on your hanger idea? I was thinking about making a custom hanger and moving the spring forward quite a bit and up a ways. If I'm visualizing it correctly I could move the front of the spring forward ~ 1' and that would allow me to follow the slope of the frame with the rear shackle and move the tail end of the spring up also. I know the frame narrows around that point but it'd be easy enough to get around. Also, I could always flip a 52 around if the axle ended up being farther forward than I wanted it to be. All this depends on the clearance between the pitman arm and spring of course but I'm gonna try and dig up BadDog's thread on that.

Another option would be to simply clear everything out of the way of the rear of the tire, run stock springs, and see what happened. A stock firewall isn't in the cards for me so it'd be easy enough to build the passenger compartment back a ways. Although with that setup flex wouldn't be the greatest and axlewrap would probably suck; it'd be the simplest solution. The only obvious problem I can see with that would be approach angle. By the time I tilt the radiator back, put my 8274 up there, and a set of lights you're already getting fairly long. My axle is 1.5" forward right now and I'd honestly like another 3" out of it.
 
Thanks man, looks like I might end up ditching the bracketry and mounting my seats way close to the floor. I'll have to invest in some good quality heat wrap for the exhaust. :eek1:
 
I have mine setup for 2-3" of uptravel. If I got anymore then I have oil pan to tie rod issues and ram to crossmember issues.

Heres a pic before steering and shock placement.
DSCN1642.sized.jpg
 
When I trailer my K10, I use the winch to pull the front suspension down so it doesn't bounce as much. The ~3" that it pulls puts the spring just barely into neg. arch.

Mike
 
Thanks for the link to BadDogs article. I think I'll look into that...

OK, it looks like you and I are doing similar things..

Here is my progress so far....

overall.jpg


Sitting on the floor with 4 leaves and the overload puts the top of the holder and the frame about 8 inches apart. This is with a 454 and a winch but not much else as you can see....

length.jpg


Current pinion angle is fine and the axle has been rotated 8 degrees.....

pinionangle.jpg


Anyway, I want to go down but not at the cost of the spring control that I have. Current flex is great at about 23" measured at the tire.

Here is the idea side view. The blue area is where the new spring bolt would be.

sideview.jpg


Here is a front view to give you the general idea.

new-hanger-front.jpg


I dont know how I could get a track bar in there and make it work right. The rear is easy but the front has the motor, tranny, exaust, blah blah in the way.

I think a few inches in the front wont mess up my pinion angle to bad. Its dropping at the same time anyway so some of the ange created will be eaten up.

I might go ahead and do this in a month or so when I get done with the rest of it.
 
Can anybody else post up the distance they have from the plate to the spring? I did not measure mine before I pulled it apart. I'm curious to see how it compares to a full bodied rig.

Thanks.
 
Sandman said:
Can anybody else post up the distance they have from the plate to the spring? I did not measure mine before I pulled it apart. I'm curious to see how it compares to a full bodied rig.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
You talking about top of spring plate to bottom of frame?? Brb ill go measure mine, even though it isnt full bodied:D

EDIT: 8 1/2". Top of spring plate-bottom of frame.
 
Sandman said:
Can anybody else post up the distance they have from the plate to the spring? I did not measure mine before I pulled it apart. I'm curious to see how it compares to a full bodied rig.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Like these?
Top one is at stuff.
DSCN1643.sized.jpg

DSCN1640.sized.jpg


Just remember my front hanger is dropped 2 inches.
 
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