Long Arm Suspension Upgrade
The suspension of a vehicle is an important part of it. A good and properly tuned suspension will keep you comfortable while going over rough terrain. Any time a vehicle's suspension is lifted from the OEM design, there will be geometry changes and sometimes they are quite significant.
In my case, the control arms that keep the axle attached to the frame/uniframe maintained the factory mounting locations which resulted in steeper angles. These angles would negatively impact the ride quality as the axle would now have to move forward some in order to go up over a bump. Because of this, often those bumps would be transferred to the body and thus the passengers.
Here is an example of the lower control arms in the factory location with a 4-inch lift. The more parallel to the ground, the better.
I had measured an angle of 11º on those lower control arms. So, what's the fix? One way is to add a control arm drop bracket that attaches to the frame rail where the control arm attaches and then attach the control arm to the bracket at a lower spot. The downside is that mounting point can get hung up on rough terrain.
The other option (which I chose) is to replace the short control arms with much longer ones. This will relocate the control mounting location further back on the frame rail which lowers the angle and increases the ride quality. The other added benefit to the long arms is they can provide more axle articulation.
Once installed, I measured the angle at 6.5º and road tests yielded a much softer ride.
The kit also had a skid plate for the transfer case so there's more protection now.
