building LCA's School me

glockman

glockman

I hate Jeep trucks
Location
Pleasant Grove
I am going to be proactive and replace my stock lower control arms before they fail. I know I want to build my own but need input. Here is the plan/options/questions.

Both front and rear will be adjustable at the flex joint only.

Joints- Axle end will be either a Johnny Joint or Ballistic Fab flex joint. I am thinking of going with the 1.25 forged joints in either. Is one better and is this overkill, with the 1" shank be sufficient?

For the frame side I am going to use a weld on bushing.

For link material I am going back and forth between 2"x.250 wall DOM and 2x2x.250 square tube. Any reason one is better than the other? Ballistic has tube adapters for either and they are the same price.

Where is the best place to buy all my materials, joints, tube adapters and lock nuts. I am leaning towards poly pro or ballistic right now but am totally ignorant and don't have a reason for either source other than I found them quickly searching the web.

Thanks in advance.
 
I would get your stuff from Summit Machine. Top quality stuff. I think they are still having a sale on their Large flex joints.

I bought both the ballistic Forged flex joint and the billet polyurethane bushings both with the 1.25" shank. I havnt finished my jeep yet so I have not been able to test them but I am pleased with the quality of them so far, but I kind of regret and wish I would have spent the extra on Summit Machine stuff, (better quality and keep your money supporting a local company)

I personally would go 1.25" just for the extra piece of mind rather than the 1".
 
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Round DOM or square will both be strong enough. Pick one it doesn't matter. Word on the street is the square is stronger, but looks funny :-) you could also buy some DOM that has a inner wall thickness smaller than your shank and have it tapped. Then you can skip the adapters all together.

Summit machine has super high quality stuff. You can't go wrong with and of their product.

Either 1" or 1.25" will be fine for what you are doing. If you are going with 2" material though you may as well do the 1.25" just because, but 1" is plenty strong. I am running 1" on my buggy with 40s and haven't had a failure yet.

Another option is trail-gear creeper joints. You can get the adapters from ruffstuff. I would check them both out as well.
 
Thanks guys for the quick advice. I looked at the Summit joints but they are 2x the other joints I looked at. I would like to keep my money local but don't know if I can justify spending that much more. Plus their web store has been down for more than a month. I know I can call them but most of my purchases happen late at night when I finally decide to pull the trigger on something I have been looking at for weeks. I know it's a strange complaint but makes a difference to me.

I think LROR sells the Trail Gear joints. That is another option I hadn't considered. I like dealing with LROR but I am assuming the joints are made in China since they are TG. The Ballistic joints being made in the USA, being easy to order and being competitively priced is kinda pushing them to the top of the list right now.

I think I'll go with the 1.25 joints and square tubing. I think they will look cool if for no other reason than I have rarely seen them on a Jeep, plus the link material is cheaper.
 
I have read they had a bunch of problems filling orders on time. How long ago did you have issues with them? I haven't made up my mind yet. If it takes them a couple weeks to ship that isn't a big deal. I read some people were waiting over a month, that is an issue for me.
 
I havnt had any issues with ballistics shipping. In fact the last time I purchased from them I made a purchase from RuffStuff Specialties on the same day, and both packages arrived the same day as each other.
 
No current experience, I did buy a battery box a year or so ago and it arrived in a timely manner but Im pretty sure ballistic got banned from pirate 4x4 for lousy customer service(in the past at least) and such if that carries any weight.
 
I've been looking some more and Poly Performance is starting to look better. The off an on customer service from Ballistic is not a plus. Johnny Joints from Poly are a bit cheaper and seem to be pretty well reviewed. Their poly bushings and tubing adapters are way cheaper too. One stop shop.
 
Team1k said:
No current experience, I did buy a battery box a year or so ago and it arrived in a timely manner but Im pretty sure ballistic got banned from pirate 4x4 for lousy customer service(in the past at least) and such if that carries any weight.
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They got banned for that and mostly not paying their advertising bill.

Personally, I will support locals even if it costs more. Being able to deal with people personally means something to me, and Summit has been supportive of local land-use issues as well.
 
^

Tacoma nailed it, but didn't mention the factor that is the biggest in my book: quality. Do some googling on Balltastic, not only will you find pages and pages of people who are pissed at them for being shady, but also people who have made their joint decision based soley on cost, and are now replacing them with better joints after realizing that they are cheaper for a reason.

Buy good spherical joints, and buy them only once.


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That just got me thinking, as this was a couple years ago, but now on that same car we had Summit Machine neck the tie rods down in the middle section since everything that was destroyed around them in the wreck was more expensive than a new pair of tie rods. In fact, that's Mike from Summit on the left. Talk about product support!

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reddman said:
^

Tacoma nailed it, but didn't mention the factor that is the biggest in my book: quality. Do some googling on Balltastic, not only will you find pages and pages of people who are pissed at them for being shady, but also people who have made their joint decision based soley on cost, and are now replacing them with better joints after realizing that they are cheaper for a reason.

Buy good spherical joints, and buy them only once.


View attachment 79120View attachment 79121View attachment 79122
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OK, you just sold me. I am not one to way overbuild things but it is impossible to dispute these images. That is about as hard core as it gets.

I don't know where I got my numbers mixed up but I was thinking the Summit joints were about double the Currie and the Ballistics. Looking again they are way more comparable. I prefer giving money to local business when they are in the ball park and they are, easy choice. Thanks for the input. This forum is by far the best bunch of people on the internet. I have never had so much good advice with an absence of ridicule.
 
Nice! Oh and if you are still working out mounting points and suspension geometry, get a thread going on that. I've been jonesing for a conversation on the subject.
 
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