Torsion Bar Relocator Kit?

[Hokie]

The bar is no longer being put in pure torsion.. well, it never was to begin with, but now its even less in pure torsion. As the a arm rotates up, the bar was supposed to just twist... no it will be pushed along an arc with a radius of the length of the realift piece.

 

[Nfuriate]

yeah, i thought about that after i posted, but what kind of effect will this eventually have on the bar?

 

[Hokie]

Originally posted by Nfuriate
yeah, i thought about that after i posted, but what kind of effect will this eventually have on the bar?

You are placing stresses on the bar that it was not designed for. If it can take it, or how long, who knows. Could be fine, could blow up the 19th time that you hit a bump...

Failure can be guesstimated using finite life element analysis, but you would have to make too many assumptions.

 

[GJarrett]

Well doh again, I was thinking of using it once a 4" lift kit dropped the lower control arm down, but it would put the torsion bar right through the axle (unless someone fabbed up the rear of the control arm to accept it, as has been suggested).

While we are brainstorming, I have often thought of doing a cheap 3" suspension lift. The front axle is held to the frame via three attachment points. You could drop the front diffy 1" before the axle would hit the torsion bars. It should be relatively easy to fashion three 1" drop brackets for the front axle, drop it down, and then you could add another inch to the 2" torsion twist without messing up the CV angles, since the axle would be an inch lower. Voila ~ a true 3" suspension lift, no dropped rear torsion brackets to hang up on stuff, and all it would cost is $20 in metal to make the drop brackets with, some time in a machine shop to fab them, and a few new bolts to bolt them on.

I never got around to doing it though.

 

[TarHeel085]

hmm, not a bad idear there Gerald. maybe someone that is good at autocad (ahem - CALLING JEFE) and draw up some drop brackets. ima try and figure out a design. what kind of metal would be best to do this?

 

[Jefe]

It is a common thing among the IFS Isuzu guys to drop the diff 1/2-1". (have a friend with a Rodeo)
However, there are problems to overcome:

First, I'm assuming that you've already found a way to extend your shocks our you wouldn't even be thinking abou this mod. Shocks are almost always the first to limit the travel.

1)the upper ball joint is the next to max out. this is a major issue. The Isuzu guys run ball joint spacers, but their ball joints are held on by 4 bolts, so they throw in a flat spacer and some longer bolts. Ours is the pinch bolt design, so you'd have to run a spacer similar to the trailmaster, which scares me. The other thing would be to run custom upper control arms, which could also help with aligning this 3" TT.

2)the inner tie rod max's out pretty soon after the upper ball joint. The isuzu is still a gear box rather than R&P design, so they don't have this problem. Even with the ball joints being my drop limiter I still wore out 2 sets of inner tie rods. I'm not sure what you could do about this one.

3) The Isuzu diff is held up by three bolts going straight up, so they just put some spacers in. Our mounts would reqiure either a) frame mods or b)droping the diff at least an inch to use the stock holes on both the diff and frame.

4) while you're no longer maxing out your CV's and then replacing them every 10k miles like i did. You are now adjusting geometry, so there is still a large possibility that your cvs will not last as long as you would like.

anyway, there's my 2 cents. . .don't know why I'm even bothering with you IFS guys anyway j/k

 

[Stic-o]

anyway, there's my 2 cents. . .don't know why I'm even bothering with you IFS guys anyway

Ah! Thats not cool!

Your just try'n to help us all out cause you use to be there.

Stupid CV'S

 

[Nfuriate]

What about smaller locators? It would help out somewhat especially with a stock truck or body lfited. Since the bar isn't in pure torsion, the travel of the bar rotates around a point (yellow dots) If you relocate the end of the bar to be in the same path (green circle), the bar would be in the same amount of torsion (red dot) or at least close to the same.

 

[Premier]

Here is my e-mail responce:
The rangers have a smaller hex size which is actually the same as the G.M. s-series models. All the full sizes are larger! We have had alot of people with Rangers/Explorers ask about this.
Relocators can be made for this application, but we have been unable to find a within reason way to move the torsion bar cross-member back! It would need to be moved back ~ 12"s.
Thanks,
Realift1