Measuring Draglink & Trackbar Angles?

As I'm sure you can guess I'm trying to diagnose some bumpsteer issues and I'm going back over my angles.

A little background: Currently Skyjacker 8" coils, RK 3-Link, HP44, inverted-T steering mounted to hysteer arms, shortened RE HD Trackbar & Mount with relocated JKS axle mount. Caster: about 8 degrees Toe: about 0 right now (straight)

Symptoms: I'm getting some bumpsteer over bumps/potholes. Also getting what seems to be almost torque steer (wants to go left on acceleration/wants to go right on deceleration).

So I want to make sure I'm measuring my draglink and trackbar angles correctly. For the draglink I'm just throwing an angle finder on the draglink tube (straight tube) and getting a reading of roughly 9 degrees. For the trackbar I'm measuring the angle from bolt hole to bolt hole (since my bar isn't straight) and getting a reading of roughly 10 degrees. I would think that is pretty damn close, but maybe not. Should the draglink angle also be measured from hole to hole (meaning hole in tie rod end to hole in pitman arm) instead of just by the angle of the tube? If so, then I'm thinking maybe my draglink is really about 11 or 12 degrees instead of 9.

Any thoughts you guys have would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks...

doesn't your RE trackbar have two bend in it? Assuming it does, measure from hole to hole.

MaXJohnson said:

doesn't your RE trackbar have two bend in it? Assuming it does, measure from hole to hole.

Click to expand...

Correct, mine does and I am measuring from hole to hole on the trackbar and getting roughly 10 degrees. I'm fairly confident that the trackbar is being measured correctly, more concerned with the proper way to measure the draglink angle.

So what is the concensus on the best way to get the angle of the draglink? Hole to hole or angle of draglink tube (because the TRE at the pitman drops the tube down an inch or so from the pitman arm)?

Thanks!

sorry, I misread your post and was thinking trackbar rather than draglink. In any case, since the pivot to pivot (effective link) distance and angle is what matters, the hole to hole measure should be the more accurate of the two. As an alternative, you could measure the hole to hole length of each link and measure the height from level ground to each hole and use trig to calc the angles.

(trackbar frame mount height - trackbar axle mount height) / trackbar length = sin of the angle

A small amount of bump steer can be exagerated by increased suspension travel. Part of your problem might be due to the lack of anti-dive whith the lower and longer IC of the radius arm suspension.

Had to go through this when I did my OTK. The correct place to measure any thing with a tie rod end is not at the bracket part but the middle of it's pivot point. That is the middle of the part that houses the ball. Run a string line from that to the middle of the other tie rod end housing or bolt centre if a trackbar.