Articulating Spring Hangers...kinda long

Got my hangers finished and figured I'd throw out a post in case anyone was interested. Love to hear some feedback, yah, even the flames about clearance issues.
So my theory was something like this: Ever seen how much a spring twists at full articulation? That's a lot of stress on both the mount and the spring, not to mention the fatigue that the spring experiences over time. Running OMEs with a relatively light rate, these springs see a lot of flex. This inherant stress is also what gives us a pretty stable platform, so what I did is a bit of a tradeoff, I know. I decided to design a mount which articulated a little (+/-10 to 15 degrees) to free up some flexiness (is that a word?) without fatiguing the spring so much. Something along the line of those orbits for Toys, but with a different approach.
Fabrication was pretty simple. The most technical part of it was getting the 4"x1.5"x1.5" square stock bored out and bushings pressed in at the machine shop. I cut up some 3.5" SHS into the actual U-shaped spring hanger and welded in a couple of washers on the insides to take up the difference in size between the inside measurement of the SHS and the size of the spring bushing, and to give a bit more bearing surface for the bolt. This hanger got drilled and welded to a grade 8 7/8" bolt with the head cut off, and the whole thing was slid into the 1.5" square stock. Welded this onto the 6x8x1/4 plate with some 3/8" stock to space it up a bit. To mount it to the Jeep, I bolted the plate onto the frame rail with some grade 8s. I got a couple of spare spring bushings which were fed into where the spring normally attaches and welded them to the plate with some 1/4" stock. This seems to make for a pretty solid mount and nets about 2.25" of lift.
I've made some shackles which give about 2" of lift as well, and correct the pinion angle a bit as well. A new shaft is definately a necessity as the stock one popped off durring the installation. At ride height, with the hangers in but not the shackles, I had about an inch of spline engagement. Needless to say, I'm driving around in front wheel drive right now.
I did this in conjunction with my 4.5 RE zj coils and putting my winch and bumper back on. The back sits slightly higher. The ride is pretty good. The front sway bar is disconnected and the body roll is there, but not scarry like when you drive around with stock coils and no swaybar. I may hook it back up if I make some discos. The hangers don't seem to induce much more roll. As soon as I get a driveshaft, I'll let you know how it performs. I can definately tell you that my shocks are the limiting factor right now, I've got to space them out some. This sure makes my 30" ATs look wussy, though!
So, check out the pics, maybe they'll make some sense of what I wrote. Let me know what you think.

(And I plan to plate some small skids from the rockrail mounting arms to the spring hangers to help slide over things that I would otherwise snag with these hangers.)

Autocad Plans (the actual construction ended up slightly different):
http://members.shaw.ca/kdklassen/leaf hangers.JPG

Side View:
http://members.shaw.ca/kdklassen/side.JPG

Another:
http://members.shaw.ca/kdklassen/quarter.JPG

End View:
http://members.shaw.ca/kdklassen/end.JPG

Opposite side:
http://members.shaw.ca/kdklassen/other_side.JPG

Are you also gonna deal with the new driveline angles? And if your gonna do any wheelin' on rocks I'd make some kinda skid for em. Just my .02


Edit: Duh, I guess I shoulda read the last sentence.

Yah, SYE is definately going in. Hopefully soon, I'm dying to get out and try this thing! And little skids. too.

I can see how this would help and I dont think there will be any big ill-effects. Definetly a cool idea.

What I was most worried about was the moment arm between the axis of the hanger mount (7/8" bolt) and the spring mount itself (the 14mm bolt). I was worried that if this was too great, I'd end up with a pile of body roll and also added stress on the u-bolts from the transfer of the forces this would then produce. As it turns out, the moment arm is only about 3/4" and doesn't produce the kind of results I was afraid of. If I were to do it again, I think that I would probably change the 7/8" bolt to a piece of precision ground round stock and turn threads on one end. The bushings mic out pretty close to .875", but the bolts were around 5-10 thou under. I like things precise and tight, so I'd aim for just a few thou tolerance. As it is, there's pretty much no slop when installed, but I'll wait to see how things wear.

That's an interesting idea. Why not make the spring perch on the axle articulate? I've seen these many times & they work quite well without the hang ups. I ran Revolvers for awhile & they do the same thing in helping to alleve spring stress.

I've seen those swinging perches as well. My reasoning for not going with this was that it looked hard to get a lot of strength into the design without eating up a lot of space. The end results looked like they end up with the same problems as a 2-3" lift blocks. This ends up requiring a traction bar. Which I plan to add anyway... But I still feel this provides a stronger approach. And then there's the ongoing debate about revolvers... They definately help alleviate some of twisting, but most of it occurs on the frame side of the spring. The shackles have a bit more give with two bushings.

good idea, just eats up too much ground clearance in my opinion. I guess you didn't want to cut off the factory hangers off....? I think it would've been easier to cut them off and throw those in the stock location, rather than making those brackets. Plus you don't lose ground clearance. But good otherwise. Much better than that z-box junk, and better than spending 600+ bucks on AOR leaf springs with the orbit eye.