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Fabing long arms

Jerm S.

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Northern Utah
I'm in the middle of doing a front axle swap on my 88' xj. i'm replacing the D30 with A D44HP. I have the rockrawler LA lift and have decided to change the design a little. I would like to know what you all do when you make your long arms. do you use a shorter arm that connets to the longer lower arms like rock krawler does or do you use something like a ford radius arm. and what are the pros and cons to all the setups. some pics would be great.

Tia

Jerm s.
 
Well I can only speak from what I've seen work and from information that others have relayed to me. You're basic "RE-Style" front long arms are probably the easiest to work with besides the Ford radius arms. The configuration that RE uses is a proven design and a lot of guys model their arms after these.

I've also seen a few guys who have pulled the uppers back to where the lowers mount to, so essentially, both arms mount on the same plane. This has been argued to cause more bind as the suspension cycles, but I've seen pics of a guy's TJ that is running these and they appeared to work fairly well. Tera's new TJ LCG kit kinda resembles this as well as that new Aluma-Flex Long-Arm kit that is supposed to be comming out.

I'm planning to go the "Farmer Way" and run extended Ford radius arms with my HP44 front. They just seem a whole lot easier to work with because it's essentially only two arms instead of the two lowers and two uppers; its appealing to me and they appear to work very well when correctly utelized. But if you don't wanna retain the stock Ford arms, then I'd be inclined to run the RE style arms simply because we all know they work - there's not a whole lot of testing to be done.

Honestly, there's more than one way to skin a cat...

HTH.:anon:
 
XJCHUCK72 said:
PM Farner Matt, He has a HP D44 with Ford Radius arms, I think has got it as perfect as it can get. Just wait to see if he has any JV pictures. :)

Farmer Matt has an early bronco 44, which means it's low-pinion. Otherwise....still radius arm.
 
I really like my RE style setup. I run them on a narrowed HP 44, and everything clears fine, barely. The pinion is very close to the short upper, but it has never touched.

The performance is awesome, especially at high speeds in the desert. There is an ongoing debate about the clearance issues while in the deep rocks, but I have never had too many issues, as I've tucked the frame side mounts up as high as I could. As soon as I switch bodies and get an Atlas, I will move them up even higher.

Pics to follow, don't have access to them from my current location.

CRASH
 
They are both basically the same idea. I chose to go with the Ford arms because they were already there & took relatively little work to keep them. You will need to cut everything off the axle & fab or buy & weld on all new mounts which can be a PITA. The only draw back I can see with going the Ford route is a loss of ground clearance. The bottom half of the "C" hangs below the axle tube a bit, but so do stock LCA mounts. It's easier to set caster with the RE style, but playing with the "C" bushings isn't all that bad.

PS Have you seen this yet? [url]http://www.naxja.org/html/techarticles/ebswap.html[/url]
Matt
 
Thanks Mr. Fixit. The setup I'm running now is a little different from what is in that link. The arms are about 2" shorter than before & mount up flush with the crossmember. If you want to fab up your own mounts you could gain clearance under the axle, but in all reallity I rarely touch this area. You are always focused on tire placement with the frontend so clearance here really isn't a huge issue. The rearend is what really takes the brunt of the beating & is where clearance under the tubes is of real concern.

Matt
 
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