chickenman

Are you talking the axles or axle tubes? I have heard of tubes bending at the pumpkin but not of the axles bending...just snapping

wayoflife

LOL!! i'm sorry, i didn't think we were arguing but rather, just having a discussion

regarding the "one company", don't you think it's wierd that only one is reporting this problem? i mean, there are tons of JK's out there running large tires and to the best of my knowledge, none are complaining about axle tubes bending. sure, a lot have camber on their front wheels but then, they don't have any gussets. likewise, a lot don't and most only have gussets installed.

the problem with bending stems from tire size and not necessarily from it's weight. the taller the tire, the more leverage it will apply to the upper half of your C's when wheeling. trust me, there are a TON of people running NON walker wheels or heck, factory wheels with 35" tires or larger and they still have bending of the C's. in fact, when we bent our C's, we were running 35" procomp extreme mt's on procomp aluminum wheels - way lighter than any combination that aev has run. once we started running walkers and 37" toyos, we had gussets and saw no addition camber.

i should also add that if in fact this one company saw bending from jumping their jeep, they most likely would have seen the bending regardless of what tires they were running.

TeraFlex

We didn't measure anything, but the deflection was easy to see. R&D mentioned that the factory front bumpstops will compress hard enough up into the metal cup on a hard hit. Causing the metal cup of the bumpstop to come into contact with the axle. I'm going to see if we can get some video of this.

wayoflife

when you did this test, is it safe to assume that you had the tires off and that the front axle was sitting on jack stands? if so, where where the jack stand placed?

TeraFlex

The JK was on all of it's wheels, rear suspension was in place. There were no factory bumpstops in place so it was metal on metal contact. R&D watched the space between the knuckles and coil buckets become smaller then larger as employees jumped up and down on the front bumper.

wayoflife

okay, so are you saying that what they were observing was the knuckles bending - i.e. the upper part of the C's and NOT the tube?

TeraFlex

I've talked to R&D about this. Sounds like we will try to video this and get some documentation for everyone to see. We're thinking of doing a white background with a grid on it. I'm hoping we can do this before SEMA.

wayoflife

that would be awesome

also, i'd like to know if the bending you're seeing results in permanent failure or, if it's just springing back into shape. like anything, i can see how a long tube can bend a bit given the right circumstances but whether or not it's to the point where stays bent and to the point where it leaves permanent camber on your wheels is what i think the issue is here.

Jeepnboy

This would be great. Please do this for us.


Wayoflife - is the 2 degrees camber you mention noticable by eye or something you found from an alignement rack? I assume, stock camber set at zero on our jeeps; is this correct? I also assume 2 degrees is not easily noticed when drving on the street, correct?

My front axle on my JK is still stock but planning on adding internal EVO sleeves and Cs to be safe but want to have it checked at the allignment shop first. I know my TJ's front D30 was bent early on but never had it on a rack to verify the degrees or if it could be corrected by misalligned ball joints.

Any one found a good replacement for the stock ball joints that are failing? I know Dynatrac is working on some but have not been released yet. Napa has some misalligned ball joints that are suppose to be stronger than stock but I do not have verification of this yet.

Jeepnboy

Based on the different responses to this same question, I have come to the conclusion that I will install the aev lift and then have Offroad install the C Gussets; I suspect they have to modify the brackets slightly to accomodate the AEV brackets. I am afraid if I did things in the other order, the AEV bracket would no longer be a simple bolt on application.