I am confused regarding the topic of control arm replacement along with a lift kit.

What determines whether the upper or lower control arms should be replaced?

I am close to installing a 3" lift, with driveshafts to come in the near future. I have been told that it is best to use the uppers for the adjustment of caster.

Is there another school of thought that might be worth considering?

Thanks

Jeff

 

uppers = pinion angle
lowers = castor

front lower to help with steering, rear upper to help with rwd pinion angle, should be first replacements

 

Front lowers and rear uppers is a good place to start.

 

you can use uppers up front to adjust caster so long as they can be shortend enough to give you what you need. i have seen a few arms that cannot do this so i typically recommend getting a set of lowers instead. with them, you can easily make them longer and that will give you what you need as well. for the rear, all you really need are adjustable uppers so that you can set your pinion angle. there really isn't a whole lot of adjustment that you can do with lowers as moving your axle too much one way or another will give you rubbing problems.

 

I'm a little confused, if front lowers and rear uppers is a good place to start why does David recommend Currie front uppers with the OME long travel kit and not front lowers and rear uppers???

 

Those are both directly related to each other .

The lowers and uppers can do the same things.

The front uppers are less expensive and they can be shortened enough to fix the castor/ drive line angles.

David

 

The Currie front uppers are adjustable to be short enough for castor to be corrected and they are typically about $50-$100 less than lowers.

 

I just went through a death wobble issue. I had factory wheels w/ Spidertrax 1.5" spacers and a TeraFlex 2.5" coil lift.
I brought the JK to be aligned and they found the caster was at 2.5 and 2.8 degrees.
Factory is about 4.5.
I stopped by Clayton Offroad(a JK-Forum sponsor), who were just down the street, and talked to them for a while.
Clayton and Adam suggested front uppers to adjust caster.
I questioned this vs lowers and they said the way their's are designed it is best to adjust caster with uppers.
Saturday I had Clayton install their uppers and he brought the caster back to 4.5 degrees. Friday I had new wheels
and tires installed also, rmoving the spacers. Now I have not had any death wobble issues.
No idea what the exact cause was for me, but I'm guessing everything I changed added a bit to the cause, or amplified it.

This is just what seemed to work for me, your results may vary.

 

So how do you know which uppers will adjust short enough?

 

X2
Is Currie the only brand that will adjust short enough?
I have the 4.5" BDS kit and the lower fronts are fixed with flex.
I really need to adjust my castor to remedy the flighty steering.
It's intuitive that a shorter front upper will do "pracicaly " the same as a longer lower, but I'm just realizing that not all will adjust short enough.
great thread, this probably saved me some cash from buying upper CA's that wont do what I need them to.
Thanks for the heads up.