Long Arm Brand Selection

[rharr]

it's was a xj they were on so different setup but it made the xj like a spider monkey climbing over rocks.

The kit for the JT looks to use a combo of rubber bushings and hemi joint. You best bet is to call them and ask them about their setup. One thing i liked was all their stuff was heavy walled and thick plates and tubes, aka very durable.

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[SoK66]

This is some good info, curious what the teraflex joint curse is lol?

Tera’s “Flexjoints” (no longer made) were a split urethane bashing with a chrome plated center ball. The axle side lowers were fairly robust, the uppers were (and still are for me) another matter. The frame side front and rear and axle side uppers are too small to handle the load of the axle weight and overall stresses. Worse, the front frame side uppers are placed too close to the exhaust, which softens them. So as the stresses mount up the joint turns to mush. Tera switched my front uppers to their Alpine joints. The rear uppers have to be replaced every 10k miles.

The Alpine IR joints are supposed to be the fix, but swap them In I have to replace the rear brackets….PITA!

 

[Dynamic Overland]

i wonder with the input provided i should approach something like a Johnny joint may be the best of both worlds in terms of ride quality/articulation.

anyone have

Tera’s “Flexjoints” (no longer made) were a split urethane bashing with a chrome plated center ball. The axle side lowers were fairly robust, the uppers were (and still are for me) another matter. The frame side front and rear and axle side uppers are too small to handle the load of the axle weight and overall stresses. Worse, the front frame side uppers are placed too close to the exhaust, which softens them. So as the stresses mount up the joint turns to mush. Tera switched my front uppers to their Alpine joints. The rear uppers have to be replaced every 10k miles.

The Alpine IR joints are supposed to be the fix, but swap them In I have to replace the rear brackets….PITA!

Are you unhappy with the Terraflex IT joints? and you said the IR's are only lasting 10k miles?!!! or am i mistaken that is the old style?

 

[bblan]

Take a look at RPM Steering new long arm kit. When i move up the long arm it will more than likely be my choice with EVO coming in second. I've been up some tough trails riding in a friends JLU that was a full build with King coil overs and EVO long arms and it performs exceptionally. I run the RPM tie rod and drag link and it is very well built stuff and the owners are awesome people and great to work with.

 

[bleda2002]

I just feel their product doesn't contain much thought, astatically, as to design i just don't know how seriously i can take a company seriously with their square shock invention contraption, i just believe there is a right way to do something and there is a way to fill grey areas, which i feel they do with some of their products which turns me off to their design engineering.

and to my surprise people LOVE MC, so i must be crazy lol, i hope im not knocking them to hard lol.

do they manufacture their own joints or are they essentially a Johnny joint?

They use a rubber/kevlar high misalignment joint called a duro joint. It's similar to the IR Bushing but much more durable and more misalignment due to the proprietary material mc uses and the design. It's popular enough that rock krawler, Barnes 4wd and a bunch of companies are starting to try to copy the MC joints since they're probably the best compromise out there in terms of maintenance vs misalignment vs nvh.

MC definitely is flamboyant but most of their stuff is actually well engineered just you know flamboyant. The square shocks have the most amount of up and down travel relative to the shock body dimensions. Probably didn't need to be square but they're actually really functional. Personally I can't stand all the gold zinc so I end up painting or vinyl wrapping it all to hide the gold. I can safely say I love their products and their CS has been top notch.

 

[Wheelin98TJ]

This isn’t necessarily true. The evo kit relocates the mounts along the sides of the frame rail and has a bend in the arm… literally gaining frame clearance.

Any pics of it installed from a side perspective on flat ground that show the arms? I looked a little and couldn't find any.

 

[SoK66]

i wonder with the input provided i should approach something like a Johnny joint may be the best of both worlds in terms of ride quality/articulation.

anyone have



Are you unhappy with the Terraflex IT joints? and you said the IR's are only lasting 10k miles?!!! or am i mistaken that is the old style?

No the issues have are with their old Flex joints, which was a Johnny Joint knockoff. They are nowhere near the capability or durability of the Currie joints. The Alpine IR joints are a completely different beast, I have no experience with them. Their firmer Alpine joints were a clevite style bushing that at their suggestion I have on my front uppers. They’ve been on there about 20k miles and so far have held up ok.

 

[SoK66]

i wonder with the input provided i should approach something like a Johnny joint may be the best of both worlds in terms of ride quality/articulation.

anyone have



Are you unhappy with the Terraflex IT joints? and you said the IR's are only lasting 10k miles?!!! or am i mistaken that is the old style?

Sorry, I missed the first part of your post. Currie Johnny Joints are the best I've seen. All the other vendors have tried some form of knock off variation. Currie sells the joints to outfits like EVO and Clayton, but in trying to hit a cost target with their kits most other vendors try a workaround, usually with garden variety urethane in their bushings.

My experience that made me a fan of Currie joints came about when a Clayton sponsored local guy, who raced his LJ in the Everyman class at King Of The Hammers, sold his old Clayton long arm suspension to one of our club members. He had beaten on the suspension at KoH and rock crawling events for three solid years and Clayton gave him a completely new suspension FOC.

When we cleaned up the parts of the old suspension to get them ready to install on my friends LJ I examined all of the Currie joints on the eight arms. Given my prior experience with Teraflex's Flexjoints I expected we'd have to replace quite a few of them. The seller had given my friend a complete set of new Currie rebuild kits and the installation tool. I was astonished to see that not one of the eight needed to be replaced. Impressive to say the least.

 

[Escape.idiocracy]

Any pics of it installed from a side perspective on flat ground that show the arms? I looked a little and couldn't find any.

???

 

[Wheelin98TJ]

???

The clearance there is impressive! I’ll have to retract what I said earlier about loss of clearance.

My only gripes would be running a bushing at one end to keep the arm from flopping over and the strength loss from running a bent arm.

 

[Escape.idiocracy]

The clearance there is impressive! I’ll have to retract what I said earlier about loss of clearance.

My only gripes would be running a bushing at one end to keep the arm from flopping over and the strength loss from running a bent arm.

So, Mel and his Daughter race their gladiator with this setup up front and trailing arm rear. I mean, things can break- and things Definitely break when you are racing… I just don’t think I’ll be going that hard with the gladiator/jeep… side by side ? sure! Jeep nah.

 

[piroman683]

Study up on the pros & cons of long arm conversions. While there are some benefits in terms of ride quality and stability, you enter that black hole of expense vs benefit when you take the plunge. I’ve run a long arm on my JK for the last 11 years. Without going into it all, as cool as it is, were I to face the decision again I’d just opt for quality (not AEV) front drop brackets and call it good. With the drop brackets you get about 75% of the benefits without the complication and cost. JMHO, of course.

Were I to do another long arm the only companies kits id consider would be EVO, Clayton or maybe Metal Cloak. The first two because they are using Currie’s Johnny Joints. A lot of these other outfits’ proprietary joints are suspect IMHO, and I’ve suffered the joint fix curse with Teraflex for the last 11 years.

What are the cons?....

 

[ParatusExpeditions]

Check out the guys at RPM steering they now have a long arm kit for the JT

 

[SoK66]

What are the cons?....

Cost / benefit, loss of clearance (you'll smack them on ledges, rocks, etc.).

 

[MaximusTX]

I know you said you don't like the RK kit but I am running the Rock Krawler 3.0 Adventure No Limits Setup. I like it and am getting about 44 inches of flex on 42s and so far I haven't found anything I can't get over. It rides good. It has been my daily drive for the last 6 months.

JT 3.0" Adventure X2 "No-Limits" Diesel Long-Arm System

JT 3.0" Adventure X2 "No-Limits" Long-Arm System

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