98+ ranger control arms

the price, you know not hardly any one is going to want to pay 500+ for arms when they prob already bought the djm to lower it 4/5. since on an s10, you dont have to buy arms to get it to be baggged and lay frame.

biggest complaint? how bout the totally fucked up design of the ford control arm suspension for the rangers? the spindle that is 90 feet long, the engine xmember that hangs down for no reason. i mean dont get me wrong, i would rather bag one of those then a fucking i beamer, but ford still hasnt got it right and probably never will. granted its a good design for a STOCK vechile, when it comes to lowering it, it just isnt worth a fuck my

I need to finished what a have already started.In the future we will talk about this more..

yeah jimbo, cuz I know all engineers, think about punk ass minitruckers cutting the hell out of them to make em lay out. damn those bastards for not thinking of us when they designed that suspension lol.

I'm an engineer you bastard, haha. Truly a suspension shouldn't get that much suspension thru it's travel due to safety reasons. Now granted a truck should really never be dipping in an emergency turn so much that the frame touches however the camber change from a good dip down in a corner would greatly reduce the contact patch of the tire.

What I'm saying is that we have all right to bitch about the stupid engineers. What cracks me up is the fact that ford knows how to make a good suspension, take the mustang II for example. I guess they follow the trend of fixing it until it's broke.

Originally posted by msturg



I'm an engineer you bastard, haha. Truly a suspension shouldn't get that much suspension thru it's travel due to safety reasons. Now granted a truck should really never be dipping in an emergency turn so much that the frame touches however the camber change from a good dip down in a corner would greatly reduce the contact patch of the tire.

What I'm saying is that we have all right to bitch about the stupid engineers. What cracks me up is the fact that ford knows how to make a good suspension, take the mustang II for example. I guess they follow the trend of fixing it until it's broke.

An original mustang two was a not so good design.In the early nintees there was a street rod guy that built a front end based on the mustang.It was so popular it spawned a entire industry.Now every front end you see is based on that one mans design.The reason he used the mustang was for the rack and the fact that the arms were equal length.

there are actually a few different ways to solve this problem. if you raise the uppers and flip the lower ball joint and tie rod you can get almost 3 inches of drop out of the stock arms. the only thing is you have to be very precise when raisng the uppers. this idea may not be the best solution but it is very effective and works on explorers since there are not really and any parts for them

the best idea i think is some control arms designed either to use a toy spindle or mustang 2 spindle with the capabilities of using the stock rack and haviung perfect steering. this would require some serious engineering but would be the best most reliable solution. in fact it couls posssible use the existing lowers and just need spindle and uppers.

either way i am intrested in seeing any innovaions for rangers

When I was messing around with the my rough autocad, messing with the design, I found that a really small spindle caused some drawbacks. Now I didn't have really any measurements to go buy when I was guessing at the height of the yota or mII spindle.

The issue I noticed though, was that for one the lower arm is going to have to come up higher, obviously. This could mean a good amount of notching into the frame in order for it to clear. The next issue I saw was that now the uppers are fairly low when laid out, this is good for camber obviously. However, if you go and try to lift it very much and they too will bottom out on the frame.

As for the spindle/ball joint flip that is done to the explorers commonly:sorry for the huge pic, but that doesn't seem safe to me. That guy is running an 18" wheel and still only has that much clearance. The lower control looks cut to shit and back. I'm sure you could brace it up, but I'm not a huge fan of that tactic.

flipping hte ball joint is NOT safe on those since it is PRESSED in, if it was bolted, there wouldnt be a problme. if customs did an explorer were they sectioned and raised the engine xmember to bring the lower control arms up and raise the upppers to match.

wow that control arm is SCARY. the only thing holding it from bending is the lower bag plate adn eventually it will fail.

LOL matt, there really isnt a problem w/ the suspension, just once u get into big rims its a pain in the ass to get good tire wear and driveablity. same thing w/ ibeams. chevy got it right w/ the s10, small spindle and an upper arm thats almost as long as the lower...

you don't need big rims for camber to be an issue, just ask my 245/40/17s, they'll tell you. lol

im saying bigger the rim, more the suspension has to go up. either way the camber is horrible and pressure to raise it ot a driveable height is insane