track bar question

How much lift can you put on an 89 whithout changing the track bar? I was told I need one...

That depends on how picky you are, and how picky your states police and DMV inspectors are.

ANY lift will start to pull the front axle over toward the driver's side. A 4" lift moves it almost an inch. With big tires like in your photo, that's enough to have a tire extend beyond the flares, which in my state is an automatic ticket at a DMV spot check.

Of course, you don't have flares, so maybe it isn't an issue for you.

Rule of thumb, I'd say you need an adjustable track bar for anything beyond a 2" budget boost. Remember it's an arc geometry, so the last 2" of lift will move the axle a lot more than the first 2"

You were told right, get a good adj trackbar. IMHO, all of them will get the job done, RE, Rusty's, JKS. Get something that will work, check with those boys up your way and see if they have any leftovers to sell cheap.

After shopping for tracbars for MONTHS, I ended up just drilling my tracbar mount about 5/8 inch to the drivers side. The axle is centered, droop and flex are the same, and it cost me 3 dollars for a new drill bit.

If you go with Rusty's, make sure you get the Heavy Duty one, with the poly bushing instead of the TRE. I had the TRE one and it gave me such a bad steering, that it took me 6 months to cure. The bloody end was bad but not so much to tell. Still, it let the whole front axle move around.

Rgds

I ended up just drilling my tracbar mount about 5/8 inch to the drivers side.

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Did you have to fill in the old hole? Almost seem like with that small of a change it would be right next to the old hole with very little metal between them for strength.

Hi Guy's this is my first post.

Last weekend I put a 3" Black Diamond lift on my '91.

After the lift was done, the instructions said to drill a new hole 3/4" of an inch to the right of the original track bar axle mount. This proved to be impossible as the bracket is cut on an angle and there was no way I could drill a hole. In my estimation it was too much of a difference to simply re-attach the standard track bar in the orginal hole, so I installed the adjustable bar. I'm glad I spent the money up front for the adjustable bar.
IMHO drilling a hole in the bracket would be acceptable, but installing the adjustable bar just made complete sense , and I feel like I have really done the job "properly".

There is definitely enough room to hold.
A lot of other people who wheel harder than I do have done this with no problems, so I decided to give it a shot. It recenters the axle as needed, no compromises or secondary problems, death wobble is gone, and it cost practically nothing. It has held up on the trails just fine.
I had the same dilemma of wanting to do it "right", but money just would not permit. If money is no problem, and you intend to switch around lift heights often, then by all means go adjustable. For me, Im happy at 4ish inches and 100+ dollars saved for beer/tools/audio/lights/etc etc...