Long Arm Discussion

I spent quite a bit of time searching and reading about Long arm kits. I have seen several times people have talked about a Rough Country long arm upgrade kit somewhere out there that is supposedly dirt cheap, but I havent found anything so far.

Right now, I have 4" Skycrapper springs with a 1" spacer and skycrapper LCA's....This weekend I will be running 4.5" RE springs, on "bent" rustys arms, still can't decide if I should run the 1" spacer or not...But at some point, maybe next year, I am seriously considering doing a long arm upgraded and running about 6" of lift.

Anyway, playing around on the net, I found this Teraflex long arm upgrade for $295, and I says to myself that shiz is pretty cheap. http://www.offroadwarehouse.com/Store_ViewProdDetail.asp!ProdID!8087!Cat!834

One thing I am really having a hard time grasping is the whole geometry sense of the front end...If I were rocking 6" of lift, would I have to drop the upper control arm mount to run in conjunction with the long arms, or would they be fine where they are with longer or adjustable upper control arms.

I have seen the Clayton's stuff, and Randy's, Full Traction, so on and so forth, and while I understand that is probably the best way to go if you have bottomless pockets, but that is something I don't have. Also, to be honest I don't get to wheel all that much, so something really expensive like that wouldn't do me a lot of good.

Anyway, I want to hear what some of you have say. I hope to get some good feedback, while some of you will probably think I am some kind of retard for asking...but hey, gotta start somewhere.

I'd spend the 300$ on drop brackets before that crap. Btw, I have DB's and am very pleased with them.

Here is a picture of my ride if anybody cares...(please pardon the picture) I had 13.50 TSL SX's on it, ended up ripping one of the flares off...You can clearly tell the suspension is not right, skycrapper springs in the front which are harder than a brick, supposed 3" crap country springs in the rear which actually gave me about an 1", then I had to throw some long shackles on, and it still sags...Good times...Its all coming out this weekend in favor of 4.5" Rubicon express.....Ok, back to the long arm discussion.

Search...Rock Krawler.

I have them and love them. This could start an endless debate....I hope not.

X2 on the rock krawler, articulation is incredible and once you get the steering setup right and stout, it drives good on the road to. Main thing with steering geometry is to keep the driveline angle as close to stocklike as possible. (parallel to ground with tie rod and drag link parralell to each other). Im an idiot but, HTH. 6'' is about as much as youd want to go in a xj for a DD. Just search youll find some good deals on parts. eace:

remember you get what you pay for. also when going to 6" of lift your going to have to worry about correcting the steering geometry if you havent already.

FWIW I have a habbit of wheeling a bunch on some of the mroe challenging trails. I have had short arms, long arms (TERA FLEX infact) and now mid arms. With the TeraFlex long arms I didn't flex well at all (the LCAs were about 35" and the UCA were 17.5").

Now I flex 100 times better with mid arms that are 21" long (with 17.5" UCAs) that are 'homemade' with RE joints on each end. I am a LOT happier.

The only reason you think the Skyjacker springs are stiff is because your suspension geometry is so screwed up. Do a simple long arm "upgrade" type kit that just includes crossmember and arms, and you'll fall in love with your springs (given you have decent shocks).

CRASH said:

The only reason you think the Skyjacker springs are stiff is because your suspension geometry is so screwed up. Do a simple long arm "upgrade" type kit that just includes crossmember and arms, and you'll fall in love with your springs (given you have decent shocks).

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Second that.

I think, for budgetary reasons, your best bet is a set of drop brackets if you don't wish to go any taller. You already have shocks, springs, and brake lines by the looks of the picture. Drop brackets will bring those short arms back closer to the stock control arm geometry which will improve your ride by leaps and bounds.

Long arm suspensions do have their place but most of them will cost you more than a set of new (used would be better of course) drop brackets. If there are no "features" that long arms provide that you're "dying for" or need then they'll really not do much for you in the grand scheme of things.

All of that being said, drop brackets will actually do rather well for you in the 4" range of lift even if you take it off-road more than you currently do. There have been many write-ups about them and what they're good for. One I know of off the bat is at http://www.projectxj.com. Fatwreck (a member here) had them for quite some time and swore by them until he wanted to get a little more off-road performance (and a few additional features) for his XJ.

Matt