School me on front 4 link

[RockMonkey]

Yeah I had to add the pic afterwards it should be there now, and yeah if I were to do it I would have the axle end link be adjustable/threaded. But that makes a good point about the axis of the rod end. I guess ideally it would be with the bolt running vertical, and making sure that even at fyll droop/compression the joint would not run out of flex and transfer the extra load to bolt shear.

You got it. The joint at the end of that link should be vertical. There can be a great deal of force trying to push the ball out the side of that joint. Also, you will get bump steer with that setup if you are running a drag link. The drag link will always travel in an arc, and the axle will always travel straight up and down with that link configuration. A flat and long drag link will minimize the bump steer, but you will always get some. The only way around it is full-hydraulic steering, which would not be street legal.

 

[queetereater]

I am also looking for the 4 link vs 3 link question too.

I know this is an old thread but I am also curious on opinions pertaining to roll center height in a 4 link setup. Notice that crawling specific buggies, single seater comp rigs and such usually go for the 3 link with trac-bar/panhard bar because this setup is much more conducive to a high roll center height which helps with stability in off camber situations. The only triangulated 4 link that I have ever set up we ran a lot of vertical separation to try to get the roll center height up pretty high in the rear of a tacoma and it still was pretty sway happy. I know a lot of this is spring rate/dampening and shock location/overall setup, we ended up putting a very mild swaybar setup on it and that seemed to alleviate a good deal of the body roll. I'm thinking I still prefer panhard style suspensions for crawling/on-road situations because I think they help control body roll a little better. Obviously for high speed whoops, bumps, jumps etc... Full hydro and triangulation is the only way to fly. You don't want your axle wagging under your body when you are doing 65 through 3 foot whoops. But then we can open up another can of worms with the independent suspension pros and cons. One consideration I wonder about is link location both axle and frame. If we can keep our link mounts on the axle further out in our four link does that change stability at all? I think that it stands to reason that in this case the links are reacting better to the conditions of that particular wheel instead of the center of the axle. My .02