Lca

[curtis]

You guys that are doing 3&4 link setups. Why are you not bending your LCA up like AEV does?

[inVERt'D]

Not speaking for others (not doing a 3- or 4-link) but I can think of one reason not to. When you bend the tubing, you weaken it. The tube wall on the outside of the bend is stretched and thinner. Also, geometry will put the most stress on the bent part. I would consider doing it, thoguh. As long as that weakness is engineered into your choice of design/ materials, it could work fine.

[aw12345]

The rockkrawler stuff with the bend arms seems to hold up fine but then the straight arms make pretty good rocksliders too

[curtis]

inVERT'D you may be right about stretched. But back when I did fab work,it was not a big deal when using cromoly.

[curtis]

LCA as a slider,is that not more resitance to get over said opstacle?

[aw12345]

True, but doesn't seem to hold back to many rockcrawlers

[curtis]

OK now were in to HP over resitance?

[Dukes69]

LCA as a slider,is that not more resitance to get over said opstacle?

Its been my observation that long arms are not very good sliders. They tend to stop you pretty cold.

As for your original question, don't make the arms so long that you will get hung up on them. Think mid arm . . . longer then short arms, shorter then long arms.

[curtis]

That is where I was going to go with this. I'am going to do a mid 4 link in the rear. So why not bend the arms up a little.

[Dukes69]

I'am going to do a mid 4 link in the rear. So why not bend the arms up a little.

Because they don't need it if they're short enough. Besides, you'll need a pretty hefty bender to put a kink in anything worthy of LCA material.

[RAT]

. . . longer then short arms, shorter then long arms.

Sounds like a porn star describing his junk...

Roger, I'll let you know how the Mid arm thing works here real soon.

[bails85]

the short arms i have are from rc and they have a bend in the lca's. i saw a guy that had the rc long arm kit on his rig today. i must report that rough country seems to be getting better the lowers looked pretty beefy. and just so u know if any of u guy have a rough country short arm kit u can buy the long arm upgrade for half the price as the full kit. when i bought mine almost a year ago rc didnt have a long arm kit.

[dirtman13]

[COLOR=black]Being this is my first build I went with what seemed to work well on other vehicles I have seen. I haven’t seen too many LCA bent. At least on purpose. My front LCA do not have a lot of triangulation so it's really not any different then the leaf springs I had on it before. For the rear I wanted to keep the roll axis as low as possible and my instant center as far out towards the front axle as possible. I was more concerned about this then hanging up on a rock. My rear lowers are triangulated so I was able to get them up above the bottom of the frame which gives me a little more clearance. Seems to work well with other rigs. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=black]I am by no means an expert but you got to learn some how and I felt this was a good place for me to start. [/COLOR]

[RAT]

[COLOR=black]I am by no means an expert but you got to learn some how and I felt this was a good place for me to start. [/COLOR]

We are all learning, all the time. An expert is someone who has just failed more times than the next guy!

[bails85]

i was reading some tech on this and found out that the reason they bend the lca is to try to get the geometry a little closer to the stock settings. not that it is but they try. some people put lca mount lowering brackets on.