proper panhard placement

so I'm getting ready to lay my s-10 out and I want it to handle like it's on rails as well as get low, my big question is, whats the proper set up and placement of a panhard?

flat at ride height

^^^too simple

You can use a pannard bar to tune the way a vehicle handles. Where the pannard bar crosses the center of the rearend is the roll-center and by lowering or raising the roll-center you can "dial" in the vehicle. You probably won't ever be in a situation where you can properly tune your suspension, but taking what steps you can to make it handle better will help.

To properly set up a pannard bar, you will need to do some drawings on the ground or something big enough for you to cycle the pannard bar on.

First, figure out how long your bar is going to be, don't worry about making it as long as possible, just run from the frame to the other side of the rearend to a point that is convienient.

Second, draw a line on the ground and mark that length out. On one end of the drawing, use a square to draw as close to a perpendicular line as possible up and down from the first line long enough in each direction to cycle your total travel. You should now have a "T" laying on it's side.

Now mark on the lines that you just made 1/2 of your travel up and half of your travel down. This represents your total USEABLE travel. Be realistic, if are trying to use a pannard bar with a 20" travel system it's not going to work very well. Keep it around 12" max.

Now using the point at the opposite end from the perpendicular line as a pivot, draw an arc that would represent the pannard bar through its travel, all the way from top to bottom. Now, you should have a "T" with a curve under it.

At the top and bottom travel points is the amount of pulling or pushing that the pannard bar is going to generate. Both the top and bottom points should be the same distance, if they are not, then you did something wrong. Let's assume that you came up with 3/4" the rearend IS going to move from side to side the full 3/4" but you are going to split the difference in half so that it is never more than 3/8" from center.

When you actually set up the pannard bar on the truck, do it at half travel and push the rearend over, so that the pannard bar would be pushing the rearend housing, half of the distance that you figured out on your drawing.

Make sense?

makes alot of sense to me. in using a watts link does it prevent any sideways movement at all if put in correct?

A properly installed watts-link will not have any side to side movement, but it seems that properly installed is a bit tougher to achieve on a watts-link.

It should be addressed the same way, by drawing out the watts-link's shorter link bars and cycling them to find the amount of pull and calculating that into the design. But I don't have time for that right now, I will write something up this evening.

Originally posted by BioMax



^^^too simple

You can use a pannard bar to tune the way a vehicle handles. Where the pannard bar crosses the center of the rearend is the roll-center and by lowering or raising the roll-center you can "dial" in the vehicle. You probably won't ever be in a situation where you can properly tune your suspension, but taking what steps you can to make it handle better will help.

To properly set up a pannard bar, you will need to do some drawings on the ground or something big enough for you to cycle the pannard bar on.

First, figure out how long your bar is going to be, don't worry about making it as long as possible, just run from the frame to the other side of the rearend to a point that is convienient.

Second, draw a line on the ground and mark that length out. On one end of the drawing, use a square to draw as close to a perpendicular line as possible up and down from the first line long enough in each direction to cycle your total travel. You should now have a "T" laying on it's side.

Now mark on the lines that you just made 1/2 of your travel up and half of your travel down. This represents your total USEABLE travel. Be realistic, if are trying to use a pannard bar with a 20" travel system it's not going to work very well. Keep it around 12" max.

Now using the point at the opposite end from the perpendicular line as a pivot, draw an arc that would represent the pannard bar through its travel, all the way from top to bottom. Now, you should have a "T" with a curve under it.

At the top and bottom travel points is the amount of pulling or pushing that the pannard bar is going to generate. Both the top and bottom points should be the same distance, if they are not, then you did something wrong. Let's assume that you came up with 3/4" the rearend IS going to move from side to side the full 3/4" but you are going to split t

^^^ Thats what i said!