I've seen a lot of aftermarket control arms to go w/ a 4" lift....so what are your opinions on them and which ones do you recommend???

Do I need the uppers and lowers to get my ride quality back upto par? right now it's a rough commute to work on a 4" lift and stock arms
of course when I upgrade the arms I'll also have to get a longer front driveshaft since that rubs already.

 

lots of great threads full of info on this, I am no suspension expert by any means

I have the BD 3" lift in mine and opted to get the Teraflex front lower flexarms to avoid installing the dreaded cam bolts in order to fix my caster....so far with the arms adjusted the ride is great!

Some have warned that if you go for front uppers only that some don't adjust down far enough to give you the needed caster fix meaning you'll have to get lowers to combine with 'em to dial it all in properly....or you can get away with the front lowers by themselves as I did and adjust them out...depending on your tire size it may push the tires forward enough to touch the front of your fender...but Im only running 33's and mine are nowhere near touching, just be aware.

but by all means, have a search around and you'll get a ton of info...and i'm sure others will reply to this with more help

Teraflex front lower flex arms are

 

Take a look at the Clayton arms, I have these and they seem like they will take all the abuse I can give them. Have a look at their website there are lots of install pictures. Lifetime warranty on the arms themselves!

 

What exactly do you mean by "rough commute?" Is your ride "rough?" If so, I don't think that aftermarket control arms will help with this. I think that a "rough" ride would be related to coils and shocks more than anything else. If you are experiencing a flighty feeling in your steering, than adjustable control arms would help as they would allow you to add more castor.

 

The best bang for the buck is a set of Full Traction front upper arms.
These will allow you to get to 5+ on your caster making steering much better for only like $200. I was very pleased with them on my Rubicon on 35s.

If you want to spend a little bit more, front lowers instead are like another $100+ and give more adjustment but that adjustment does extend your axle farther forward, generally not a factor with 3+ lift. If doing it over, I would buy the lowers first, just to see how they would feel with the stock uppers, not that in any way was I dissapointed with the uppers alone.

I have since added all the FT arms, the front lowers set to give 7.1 caster on each side, which drives even better but may not work with the 1310 JE Reel front shaft sitting on my workbench without some vibration.
The front steers and handles extremely well with the lower arms added, and while I could get ESP to come on ripping around downhill corners if I didn't load the supension with the brakes, now it never intrudes.

But it was the rear that really impressed me with the performance gain.
The back end is now very well connected to the road, I never realized how loose the rear felt at speed untill I installed these. You gain real ability to slide or drift the rear on low traction surfaces.

I've had a couple of passengers, guys well seasoned on 4WD vehicles including Jeeps, that were as shocked at how good my Jeep drives on road as off.

 

Thanks for all the replies....
and yes I did try searching, but it is very hard to sift through all the results when you search for 'control arms', and I couldn't find a good comparison thread on the subject.

Has anyone had experience w/ the Daystar products....not a bad price???

 

I have the Superlift front lower control arms on mine. They are really beefy, but one was easy to adjust and the other was a PITA and I had to use a 24" pipe wrench to get it turned in far enough. I have no regrets now, but I had some choice words when I was wrenching on them a couple of weeks ago... I went with them simply because my lift is a Superlift and I usually try not to mix and match.

I will say that if you are running a 4" lift without front LCA's, the ride will be better with them. However, I can also tell you that my 4" kit runs a lot stiffer than my 2" kit. I personally think a lot of that is shocks, but some of it is because the spring rate is just stiffer.

 

true, it can be a pain sifting around the posts searching for the info you want,
interstingly, even when I was looking for info I don't recall reading anything about Daystars control arms yet, good luck

 

this is an excellent point...can you give us a better idea what your 'rough' ride is?

 

Currie's control arms have Johnny Joints at both ends which allow the suspension to flex really well. They are also built really well. Currie would be my first choice.