Upper and lower control arm lengths with drop brackets?

I am just curious to hear what upper and lower control arm lengths you are all using along with drop brackets, and with how much suspension lift you have.

I have 7" with Rusty's adjustable upper and lower control arms along with Rough Country drop brackets. I followed the instructions for upper and lower arm length to correspond with how many inches of lift i have. This gave a great pinion angle but made my coil buckets, along with the shock mounting points, pointed forward....which in turn makes my coil bowed out to the front of the vehicle.

So basically the lower arms need to be lengthened or the upper arms need to be shortened. Although I will have much more adjustment lengthening the lower arms as the upper arms are pretty much at their minimum length already.

http://www.yuccaman.com/jeep/re_db.html
There is a chart at the bottom.

Yes I know, that is the same chart (at least the third set all of the way on the right) included with the Rough Country drop bracket instructions.

Using their recommendation I end up with a coil bucket and shick mounting point at an angle pointing towards the front of the vehicle which bows my coil out foward. Although a perfect pinion angle, aiming the front pinion at the transfer case output.

I was going to test some other lenths like 15.5" UCA length and maybe 18" LCA length (for example)...just to extend the lowers out further and hopefully get my coil bucket pointing straight up.

In order to get my springs & shocks back to the correct position after installing the drop brackets(RCX).4.5" lift--I had to return the upper arms to the stock length.Then adjusted the lowers to get the best pinion angle.Still have the caster at the upper max 8*.
I have the JKS arms.

Wayne

Pinion/caster angle should be set to 6-7* if your coils are bent forward then the angle is too steep, the front pinion does not need to point directly at the TC to work well, as does the rear. You can also cut some of the treaded part off of your upper control arms with a bandsaw to shorten them. I have all RE superflex arms, only the uppers are adjustable, I have them set at 1" from fully collapsed.

What are the length of the factory upper and lower arms, eye to eye? I took my stock arms to the scrapper in August without even measuring! Heh.

I'm at 6.5" of lift and using 16" fixed LCA and stock UCAs. I need to fix the spring bow as well. Looks like I need to save up for ADJ CAs

robsjeepxj said:

Pinion/caster angle should be set to 6-7* if
your coils are bent forward then the angle is too steep, the front pinion does not need to point directly at the TC to work well, as does the rear. You can also cut some of the treaded part off of your upper control arms with a bandsaw to shorten them. I have all RE superflex arms, only the uppers are adjustable, I have them set at 1" from fully collapsed.

Click to expand...

Glad I ran into this thread. I just read up on DS angles but for the rear. For the front, does the pinion angle have to be 2deg less than the front DS angle? That would be for the double cardon shaft.

I messed with the control arm angles again, 15.5" for the uppers eye to eye with 17.0" lowers eye to eye. Caster is around 5-6 degrees using an angle finder on the front diff cover bolts and subtracting that number from 9 (high pinion)

Coils are still bowed a small amount but it is much better. Whatever bow is there I believe is caused by the axle being pushed forward maybe 1 to 2 inches or so. Alot better looking coils! Not so much dumb looking bowed out coils anymore.

Coil is straight enough for me to be happy now! Pics...