Probably covered well enough some where but have had these pictures on my install sitting there for a few years now waiting for this write up! You can tell by the amount of write ups of late that it has been too hot here to enjoy my spa that I normally have on a Saturday night instead!
To cut and paste a bit from my write up:
These are necessary when the lift reaches 4" or more. This is because the angle of the arms is getting too great at this height and the ride suffers because of this. Every time you hit a bump, even on the road with angled arms, the arms actually force the tyres harder into the bump because they have to go forward and up rather than just up if level. The steeper the resting angle of the arms, the worse this is happening. You are no different than the old leaf sprung front end that had the shackles at the front. Also, I have seen photos of a axle at full droop when climbing a steep hill, then try and climb a ledge. Well rather than compress the suspension, the whole axle, control arms and shocks, got forced UNDER the Jeep. The only thing holding the axle back once past 45*, is the top two little 10 mm nuts on top of your shocks! All force after 45* wants it to go under the Jeep and can even be a cause of flipping the Jeep. The easiest way to test this is push a piece of timber along the concrete and over the lines that are pushed into it when wet, like in the you can see in the picture below. Now if you push the timber along basically flat, you will not even notice them. But now rise you hand and push over it. At first it is just felt as a small shock when passing over the line but as you get steeper, it gets hard to just even go over it. Once past 45 degrees, the bottom on the timber will stop and the end your holding will try to go over the top instead. This is what is happening with a lifted Jeep that has the steep control arms.
You can see that with my 4" of lift the arm actually go up slightly to the axle which will give the best ride possible. However I have since change that a little for more clearance. I also found that the brackets had lowered the lower arm 4.5" but the upper arms 4"?
So I later raised the lower hole up when I fitted the WJ arms for a little extra clearance and trimmed the bottom off the bracket level with the bottom of the brace. This restored the arms geometry back to stock and felt it gave a little more anti dive under braking too. I also removed a triangle out of the brace by drilling a hole in each corner and then cutting with a angle grinder between them to remove some of the metal. Found it looks much better and more professional and saves a fraction of weight too.
Full install on my site under the Suspension Modifications section of the index.
www.go.jeep-xj.info
To cut and paste a bit from my write up:
These are necessary when the lift reaches 4" or more. This is because the angle of the arms is getting too great at this height and the ride suffers because of this. Every time you hit a bump, even on the road with angled arms, the arms actually force the tyres harder into the bump because they have to go forward and up rather than just up if level. The steeper the resting angle of the arms, the worse this is happening. You are no different than the old leaf sprung front end that had the shackles at the front. Also, I have seen photos of a axle at full droop when climbing a steep hill, then try and climb a ledge. Well rather than compress the suspension, the whole axle, control arms and shocks, got forced UNDER the Jeep. The only thing holding the axle back once past 45*, is the top two little 10 mm nuts on top of your shocks! All force after 45* wants it to go under the Jeep and can even be a cause of flipping the Jeep. The easiest way to test this is push a piece of timber along the concrete and over the lines that are pushed into it when wet, like in the you can see in the picture below. Now if you push the timber along basically flat, you will not even notice them. But now rise you hand and push over it. At first it is just felt as a small shock when passing over the line but as you get steeper, it gets hard to just even go over it. Once past 45 degrees, the bottom on the timber will stop and the end your holding will try to go over the top instead. This is what is happening with a lifted Jeep that has the steep control arms.
You can see that with my 4" of lift the arm actually go up slightly to the axle which will give the best ride possible. However I have since change that a little for more clearance. I also found that the brackets had lowered the lower arm 4.5" but the upper arms 4"?
So I later raised the lower hole up when I fitted the WJ arms for a little extra clearance and trimmed the bottom off the bracket level with the bottom of the brace. This restored the arms geometry back to stock and felt it gave a little more anti dive under braking too. I also removed a triangle out of the brace by drilling a hole in each corner and then cutting with a angle grinder between them to remove some of the metal. Found it looks much better and more professional and saves a fraction of weight too.
Full install on my site under the Suspension Modifications section of the index.
www.go.jeep-xj.info
