Joints. Stock vs Giro vs Johnny in Clayton arms.

[j.o.y.ride]

I started with the @Clayton Off Road ride right kit which had one set of front upper Giro control arms to adjust the front axle and that's it.

Then later added both rear control arms upper and lower also with Giro joints.

I finished swapping the rear joints to Johnny, and added the front lower arms in Johnny. All I have left now is one set of front uppers to swap from Giro to Johnny, the original set of arms that came with the kit.

Separately I also added the bump stops and longer break lines to make this a full conversion from ride right to premium. So ask me questions about the differences.

Ok getting into it. First pic is stock poly vs Clayton Giro. I did not really notice any difference in on-road performance from the bushings but it definitely helped with axle positioning to have adjustable.

It is easy to see the Giro will articulate more than the stock poly based on its design. But ride quality was indiscernible between the two.

Now to Johnny versus Giro. There's a lot of forum posts and videos about Johnny joints being more susceptible to NVH and reduced ride quality. So now that I went from all Giro to Johnny how's it ride?

Much better imo. Noticably better. The discussion of NVH that the Johnny can transmit I understand and maybe if you have something like a hot rod or a Johnny on both ends that could happen but you still have a Giro axle side to dampen, and the Johnny lets the axle move much easier. The truck feels more planted, like it's adjusting to the road better. The NVH I was expecting seems to have just disappeared by the fact that the axle can just move freely to begin with.

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[ACAD_Cowboy]

:: creeking rocking chair:: I remember when poly bushings and delrin sleeves were all the rage, everyone had to have them. Replace every bushing with poly, every link with a heim joint and sleeve everything with delrin. And while you're at it box every control arm and frame rail.

You could make an early 70's A body handle like it was on rails and you felt every moment of it.

Suddenly your somewhat plush street machine that would flex and twist under load was like an alloy plank riding on roller bearings and all the guys cried that while it was faster, it wasn't comfortable, road noise went up and every bump caused everything to jiggle, mirrors were a joke.

So, the lesson to be learned is sometimes you need to sacrifice some of the performance you were't using anyway to make the schlep to work less of a horror. I was guilty of this crazy quest for every last ounce of performance and had a twitchy road race and autocross machine that could pull over 1 on the skid pad but long drives would beat you up from the constant jiggle and twitch. On my jeep the quest has been the inverse in a way, springs are just stiff enough, shocks are not dialed to plaid, I'm okay with a sway bar that itself has some wiggle, all so when I get to the trail I have enough left in me to run it. My new performance metric is how fast can the family fall asleep.