4 link for front axle

what would you recommend for the front of an 82 k10 shortbed? my friend wants to link it up and put coilovers to get more travel front and rear. it has a solid front axle and is staying that way. the truck will be mostly a low budget desert race truck for occasional play. i understand how to do the rear, with keeping instant center in mind, but i cant picture what angles to use in the front. any input would help. thanks.

Honestly, this is one of those things that I haven't ever dealt with nor can I find any information as to what others have done. I can tell you that it is easy to generate an excessive amount or roll-oversteer if you're not carefull and the steering can be tricky too. On a rock crawler the angles are not that important because of the speeds involved, but in the desert you will need to pay extra close attention to what is going on.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Here ya go. It is pricy, but the shop is very reputable.

http://www.blitzkriegoffroad.com/?actn=viewproduct&id=18&pid=70

I was just going to recommend that. Blitzkrieg builds some top notch shit. You could always build your own based on their design if you can't swing $10K.

Edited: 12/1/2008 12:14:07 PM by edflores

ouch that was pricey. im going to email them and see if i could get any info on those coil overs. could i do a parallel 3 link i the front with the middle link offset? sort of like the rear of the toyota?i have seen another chevy like this but with the 2 bars on the side of the frame going to the top of the axle, and other link going to the bottom of the axle. it was for a crawler so i dont know how the high speeds will affect it. also, the point of this is to get a better ride on 33's, maybe 35's and not for a big lift so i dont know what clearance issues will be there.

You can do something like that, it will require a pannard bar tho.

i think any setup i choose will require a panhard as there is no room for a tri 4 link with that pesky motor in the way.
with so much travel, is there any way i can keep the panhard bar from causing too much axle deviation or do i have to live with that?

Of course you're always going to have some lateral axle movement, but that's your job as the builder/designer to minimize that. There are a couple threads about how to set up a pannard bar.

could you have room for a watts link? rather than a panhard? Although I would think a watts link would cause more clearance issues when used for offroad use