Cut and turned beams

[coco944x4s]

A week ago i lifted my 94 Ex a few inches with some spacers and home brew shackles. I now WANT MORE!! I was wondering how many of you are running cut and turned beams. I want to keep ground clearance at a maximum so i dont just wanna use lift brackets and new coils. Cutting and turning should also save me some cash on brackets. I just need to know if it has caused any adverse effects. i plan on driving it on the road too since it has a/c and can haul more people than my old pickup can. Does the added angle of the diff make the right side bearing run low on diff fluid? Does it create road handling issues or make it unsafe to drive at highway speeds? Thanks all.

 

[4x4junkie]

Done properly it should still be perfectly fine on the street.
However you might notice a little more instability on extreme offcamber side hills because you would effectively be raising the suspension's pivoting point within the chassis, which would increase the jacking effect of the suspension to some extent.

Are you just looking to improve trail performance? Or are you wanting to take it over some jumps and whoops at high-speed?

 

[coco944x4s]

Trail performance mostly. There arent any deserts where i live so i dont do any prerunning or anything like that. I need more ground clearance overall for trail riding and using drop bracket would take away from that some and i would prefer not to be running the axle beams into anything and bending them as my explorer is driven almost daily.

 

[4x4junkie]

What I would do in your situation is get a good quality bracket kit, but also set the suspension up so you're running 1 or 2 degrees inward on your camber bushings (running 6" lift coils with 4" brackets is fairly common). This will still get the diff up a little higher, but won't raise your pivots up so much where any instability would become too great.
If you're worried about damage to your beams, maybe install a skidplate... You could in addition weld a brace across the front of the driverside beam to make it more rigid as well.

I run unmodded beams on mine (outside of having some reinforcements). An occasional rock hit to the diff just comes with the territory. Mine is a 2nd DD, though I'd still wheel it the same even if it were my primary.


IMO, I just think some of the tradeoffs at slow-speed (off-camber uphill crawling in particular) are not worth the benefits if you're not jumping it or doing any other high-speed running. I s'pose there may be some who would disagree though.
I've not heard of them causing any issues with lubrication of the bearing you mention.