style_front

Do they work in the way I was asking, meaning can I buy the lowers first and then replace my uppers later?

style_front

Bumparuski

stangjeeper

years back Tera's long arm kits for the TJ was just a set of long lowers. They did ride better but caused adverse effects such as brake dive and weird antisquat in the rear. they later changed to a true 4 long arm system. I would think the same to be true on the Jk but masked a little by the longer arms that a JK has already.

john smack

Interesting question here..... Can you put long arm suspension in the front and not the rear or visa versa? This is a question strickly just because I am interested to know. I can't see why it would cause any problems but would offer better front end geometry.

style_front

Looking at teraflex website it shows 36inch lowers and 20 inch uppers in the rear, the uppers are only 2 inches longer than the factory arms.


This means the caster of the axle is going to change a bit more during the cycling of the axle but it doesn't really matter in the rear since were not using it to stear.

The fronts however have much longer uppers and slightly shorter lower in teraflex design making the differential between arm lengths closer. This means the caster will change less during it's cycle however it still changes. When we set the caster we are setting it for the the point in the suspension travel where the axle sits naturally on flat ground. Without even length uppers and lowers it changes any time you move the axle above or below it's neutral position.

What all this means is.......putting long arm lowers in the rear, no problem. given the axle is not used to stear and it's so close to the design from teraflex it shouldn't matter PROVIDED SOME THING DOES NOT BIND OR RUN INTO SOME THING AND THE BRACKETRY WORKS which I am not sure if it does or not. The geometry, should be fine. In the front? The caster changes that will happen during the cycling of the axle will only be about 4 degrees from top to bottom given say 10 inches of vertical articulation, from 6 degrees at the top to 2 degrees at the bottom provided an original setting of 4 degrees. This can change the temperment of the handling characteristics but not too wildly, assuming my friends geometry didn't suck.


We had a hard time setting up the calculation though because I didn't know the exact elevation difference between the upper and lower front mounting positions so I plugged 8 inches in. We also didn't know at what point the axle sits in it's neutral position so we factored it to simply travel up 5 inches and down 5 inches and had 6.1 degrees of caster at the top and 1.9 degrees of caster at the bottom, which isn't all that bad. I'd venture to say it's perfectly drivable and comfortable if these numbers were right but I need to figure out how to index the axle before I can say for sure.

style_front

Considering they are completely independent of each other yes, you absolutely could.

highoctane

With the teraflex arms I would think itd be impossible since you have to cut the brackets off and weld the new teraflex brackets on further up the frame rails. That, I would think, would def pose a prob with using longer lowers and stock uppers.

style_front

Does the bracket itself require the elimination of the upper factory control arm bracket or the addition of teraflex upper control arm?

Piginajeep

no idea about tera...

If you can buy the Fulltraction Long arms in pairs and if they'll sell you the new cross member seperate


You can run the front lowers easily... then do the uppers later..

the rears you would have to do all at once...


eitherway, I'd call FT and ask. I'm not sure the geometry would work right.

style_front

So I got underneath the jeep today and found some flaws in our geometry calculations so 6 and 2 degrees caster is wrong. Not only did I not know the vertical distance between the frames bracketry but I didn't realize they are laterally offset on the axle's brackets as well. The factory brackets at the frame have 6 inches of vertical distance between them but we need to calculate the vertical distance between the factory upper bracket and the aftermarket one we would be using to determine caster angles.