Quote:
Originally Posted by Ziegelsteinfaust
I am not the best at suspension mods as I have always followed preordained formulas, and I could feel what they were supposed to do.
In your last paragraph you pretty much say what is wrong with 2 links. They ride fine, haul weight fine, but the have effectively no side to side articulation. Since the whole rear axle assembly now is effectively like a large sway bar. I described the issue when I pushed the truck quicker down a small twisty road. As i don't remember it being awkward rolling in to a driveway. The C10 had almost 4" of ground clearance.
A sperical joint still wont rotate due to its locked in postion due to the axle. A large rubber bushing will have some give, but like you said it may not last. That is why when I did it we used nearly 4 foot bars. I have read short 2 links have issues at much lower thresholds then long bars. The kid had it on his truck for almost a year, and nothing seemed beat to s***. He had a Vortec 4.3 V6, and drove nearly 20000 miles in the year.
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I have wanted to respond w/this info but needed to wait until I had the images to back up what I'm saying. A spherical joint will work w/o bind (within limitation) in a 2-link/Billy-Bar arrangement to allow some ability to articulate. No, not as much flexibility as a 4-bar but definitely movement w/o bind vs. a standard rubber or Poly bushing.
I set up a jig on my fab table to lay out the parts for the test:
*The front hangers are @ 42" for the inner flange (outside width of my table). That should be close enough in the range of truck rails give or take.
*My '99 has the leafs @ a 51" center-line width & this set-up put them @ 47" which made it easier to set-up for the pics.
*I used 4' All-thread @ the front hanger flanges to help keep things aligned & square above the table surface.
*The inner flange of the front hanger brackets were tacked to my fab table to keep the lower edge of the brackets from moving/shifting).
*I put 2pcs of electrical contractors Uni-strut behind the center-line of the rear axle dimension (32" from the front hanger bolt to the approx. center of the rear axle tubes on my '99/OBS). The top & bottom of each piece sandwiches the 2x2x.250 wall 2-link bars that were squared to match the front dimensions.
*I added a 48" long piece of 4" structural C-channel used on pallet racking & double clamped it to each sides link/bar. I positioned this C-channel directly in front of the Uni-struts @ axle centerline. This piece was strictly for locking the bars in parallel @ the axle center-line.
These first images give you an idea of the set-up on the table. It's basically replicating the layout as it would be installed in place of a leaf-spring set-up.