lateral traction bars

[smoothandlow84]

Well...finally finished fabricating and installing my lateral traction bars on my square yesterday. I did a little road testing yesterday with great results. Now that the weather is nice, I could finally mark this project off of my "to do" list.

All I need to do now is make some final adjustments on the lengths and snug up the spherical rod ends (heim joints).

Sorry, no in progress pics, but if there is enough interest I will include a parts list and some basic measurements in case anyone else wants to make their own set. I may need to reinforce the forward mounts on the frame. I also need to clean up the axle mounted brackets in order to remove the sharp edges so I don't gouge myself when underneath the truck.

I have about $70 total in parts invested.

 

[J Knight]

Looks pretty cool, but you would think the front pivot point should be even with the front leaf spring bolt.

 

[Georgeb]

Looks pretty cool, but you would think the front pivot point should be even with the front leaf spring bolt.

I agree. And would add that as the suspension flexes the spring will want to get longer but the bar will prevent the front half of the spring from doing so without rotating the axle. I have seen bars like this done with a shackle of sorts in place on the front to allow for the change in spring length during suspension travel.

 

[smoothandlow84]

I didn't want to mount the bars under the axle. As far as leaf spring length, I took all of the meaurements under load and there is very minimum movement. They do a good job of limiting wheel hop. On my offroad truck...that's another story. I need articulation offroad for rockcrawling. I mounted both of those lateral bars on top of the axle and triangulated them a bit more to allow maximum axle movement while articulating trails.

 

[Georgeb]

I didn't want to mount the bars under the axle. As far as leaf spring length, I took all of the meaurements under load and there is very minimum movement. They do a good job of limiting wheel hop. On my offroad truck...that's another story. I need articulation offroad for rockcrawling. I mounted both of those lateral bars on top of the axle and triangulated them a bit more to allow maximum axle movement while articulating trails.

Ahh, sounds good. The ones I built years back were for off road and I also did the same.

 

[bucket]

I like it. Simple and effective. True, they will cause some binding, but considering the application, that binding will be extremely minimal.