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Robert - the 4 link arms on the race trucks (the big boy ones at least) are taken off the truck in a decent prep. They break most of the trucks down on these. The links are then cleaned - as is the rest of the truck. This is where the peon's in the race shop come in. Guys wanting to learn & volunteering around the race shop get to clean stuff like this, clean & re-pack CV joints, etc. All the nasty stuff no one wants to do and most people don't know or talk about.

As for the shock mount on the leaf plate - the "boxing" plates are needed here for strength and the dirt collection is the lesser of the 2 evils here (weaker or collect crap). Again on a race truck things would be broken down ever so often (depends on prep schedule) and cleaned. Also these plates are often semi tight to the shock itself so there isn't really a ton of room for crap to get in. There is a gap & dust & water can get in for sure, but it's not a huge, gaping hole.

ChaseTruck754 wrote:Robert - the 4 link arms on the race trucks (the big boy ones at least) are taken off the truck in a decent prep. They break most of the trucks down on these. The links are then cleaned - as is the rest of the truck. This is where the peon's in the race shop come in. Guys wanting to learn & volunteering around the race shop get to clean stuff like this, clean & re-pack CV joints, etc. All the nasty stuff no one wants to do and most people don't know or talk about.

As for the shock mount on the leaf plate - the "boxing" plates are needed here for strength and the dirt collection is the lesser of the 2 evils here (weaker or collect crap). Again on a race truck things would be broken down ever so often (depends on prep schedule) and cleaned. Also these plates are often semi tight to the shock itself so there isn't really a ton of room for crap to get in. There is a gap & dust & water can get in for sure, but it's not a huge, gaping hole.

Gotcha...thanks Steve

We got a couple things knocked out last Saturday.
Ryan got the OE bushings cut out of the beams and tacked in the spherical cups.


We designed and built the lower radius arm mounts.





And then got them tacked in and mocked up the radius arm so we could start cycling it.

Nice work man!! This thing def. looks great in person!!!


Matt

Hard to tell in the pictures, but how are you planning to attach the rad arms to the beams? Will it be welded, or a bolt-on connection?

That black supercrew in the background has got to be one of my favorite trucks. Cool work on the Jeep too, keep it up.

Becks_Bronco wrote:Hard to tell in the pictures, but how are you planning to attach the rad arms to the beams? Will it be welded, or a bolt-on connection?

Welded.

Just asking out of curiosity, why did you choose to weld over making it a two piece design?

Becks_Bronco wrote:Just asking out of curiosity, why did you choose to weld over making it a two piece design?

The thinking was that fabricating the radius arms to the beams offered more strength and simplicity.

What's everyone elses thoughts on that?

You know Ryan its honestly preference. I run bolts on the bronco as i can replace either the beam or the radius arm. With it welded youd have to replace the entire unit.

I welded mine to my beams. I agree that it a bummer to replace the whole unit but my thoughts were easier to build, and one less potential failure point. One thing I noticed though was once they were fully welded it took a little bit of wrestling to get them mounted again.

FatCity Ryan wrote:

Becks_Bronco wrote:Just asking out of curiosity, why did you choose to weld over making it a two piece design?

The thinking was that fabricating the radius arms to the beams offered more strength and simplicity.

What's everyone elses thoughts on that?

Like said above, just easier to replace individual parts that bend or break that replacing the whole assembly. But it really does come down to personal preference.

Out of curiosity, how many have had to replace a trailing arm or beam due to damage? If so, how well were they built? Custom? Aftermarket?

FatCity Ryan wrote:Out of curiosity, how many have had to replace a trailing arm or beam due to damage? If so, how well were they built? Custom? Aftermarket?

Mines never left the shop so I can't help out on that front....

Ive bent a threat radius arm. Luckily it was bolt on so it didnt kill the beam and was simple to swap out

We got the beams cut and turned and a lot of the plate work on the beams done over the weekend.
Still need to truss the front of the diff housing, but progress is progress...

Very impressive build! Had a quick question, I noticed u cut a template n then scanned it, what software are u guys using and are the pieces being lazer, plasma or water jet? Looks like a great system to make exactly what u need.

Thanks,
For the most part we draw everything up in CAD just with good ol'fashioned measurments, but occaisionaly we make a cardboard pattern if its easier or just makes sense...
The plate work is all cut with plasma on our Torchmate.

Does the torchmate have a "trace" or copy type feature for when you guys do make something out of cardboard & want to copy it?

My software does not, but manually tracing the pattern it is pretty painless.