Keep reading about people complaining about the rear end being squirrelly. I am pretty stable on 3" of rear lift with the stock track bar and stock bracket. Things to consider is the nose dive generating to much rear lift. The stiffer the front end becomes the better overall stability I have in my bronco. I actually enjoyed the 5100s with non-sas springs the most for road stability, I did feel every crack in the road lol.
The factory rear bushing looks to be in-between a full Johnny Joint and a bushing. The factory design has some lateral rigidity which I think is an important aspect to the road handling. People swapping the rear links might be chasing a self inflicted problem. I think the rigidity of the design is key to the bronco on road driving characteristics. I think this also factors into the reason the upper rear link frame mounts cracked before the frame change.I would love to see some real world data on the increased amount of articulation by the rear axle when going from oem 5 link to this 4 link. It is hard for me to imagine a significant improvement if 5 link panhard is level at ride height and flexible Johnny joints are on all links. I do think the 4 link may be better, just how much and is it worth the effort.
There are definitely drawbacks to this design - we really need longer arms and different mount points. I have discovered all of these issues myself.I am hitting the gas tank skid and just kissing the exhaust. I'm not going to worry about the exhaust for now. For skid clearance, I am putting on an Adam's DS this week...hopefully it will address most of those clearance issues.
I will say that I do see a huge improvement on road. I was using a RJ track bar and relo bracket before and my track bar was level, but I was still experiencing bump steer. I have no bump steer on road with this 4-link. Where it was down right scary was when panic braking - really had to concentrate to keep it out of the ditch. If budget allowed I would definitely go with the APG solution.
Haha! Good eye!!So I was looking at APG over the weekend because of the rumor they were building the ADV tops now. Of course I was investigating their long travel kit. I was baffled at the CGI of the rear system because it is not complete. It just leaves the arms connected to nowhere. One side lower is on the stock mount and the other is their new mount.
What I'm getting at is when you look at the upper mounts they are still in the stock location. I expected that because of the location of the gas tank. I was genuinely curious how they were going to approached that.
So in conclusion I'm even more baffled than before. We have custom coilovers mounts and longer lower control arms. But yet it has the stock length upper control arms. I don't get it, am I missing something???? How does this make it a long travel kit.
I've seen the APG Bronco in action and it looks impressive, but it should it has bypass shocks AND coilovers on all four corners. But I just question how much longer the travel can be with this sort of hodge podge setup.
You DEFINITELY get bump steer when your shock breaks through the top hat and thru the back floor of your Bronco. Ask me how I know! LMFAO
@BAUS67
@BAUS67
9 inches of OEM shock travel gets you about 6 inches of axle centerline travel at an imaginary point on axle midway between the upper and lower link axle hard points. So 9” of shock articulation moves one end of axle up 3” at this imaginary point and the other end down 3 inches. The figure shows the oem link configuration in the for-aft and up-down plane of motion at this imaginary point. The upper link is about 15” long. It looks like max for-aft motion you will get out of the oem links is <1”. Probably closer to a 1/2”.
also shown is a hypothetical long travel configuration compared to oem. Seems like this may be similar to what APG is doing. You can squeeze out some extra length from the upper even if keeping frame hard point by moving axle hard point aft and getting upper more level. 15” of long shock travel now produces about 10” of axle articulation at the link/axle hard points. Not much room to get 2 additional inches of up travel so axle ride height needs to probably move down 2”, causing increased pinion angles. There is probably room to play with lower link geometry and increase length some, not sure how much that helps. Lower is already fairly long at 26”. You can probably get axle for-aft motion <1”.
Mostly getting the long travel out of the shocks downward and carefully evaluating axle out of plane motions to minimize adverse consequences. Hopefully they have done their homework. They are asking for a crap ton of cash.
most definitely agree. Using the oem frame hard points for the upper is lazy. Never going to get an optimal design and difficult to increase link length. You end up just chasing and reacting to adverse consequences instead of controlling them. a very reactive design philosophy and a bit disappointing for the dollars spent. Will be interesting to see if they can make it work without too much pain. I agree with snacktime, I am on the sidelines till some of these get more proven. I don’t think I will ever go the long travel route anyway.
I believe they also push the axle back a tad to gain some length that way as well….obviously it isn’t a a lot.@BAUS67
9 inches of OEM shock travel gets you about 6 inches of axle centerline travel at an imaginary point on axle midway between the upper and lower link axle hard points. So 9” of shock articulation moves one end of axle up 3” at this imaginary point and the other end down 3 inches. The figure shows the oem link configuration in the for-aft and up-down plane of motion at this imaginary point. The upper link is about 15” long. It looks like max for-aft motion you will get out of the oem links is <1”. Probably closer to a 1/2”.
also shown is a hypothetical long travel configuration compared to oem. Seems like this may be similar to what APG is doing. You can squeeze out some extra length from the upper even if keeping frame hard point by moving axle hard point aft and getting upper more level. 15” of long shock travel now produces about 10” of axle articulation at the link/axle hard points. Not much room to get 2 additional inches of up travel so axle ride height needs to probably move down 2”, causing increased pinion angles. There is probably room to play with lower link geometry and increase length some, not sure how much that helps. Lower is already fairly long at 26”. You can probably get axle for-aft motion <1”.
Mostly getting the long travel out of the shocks downward and carefully evaluating axle out of plane motions to minimize adverse consequences. Hopefully they have done their homework. They are asking for a crap ton of cash.
