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Making some changes of significance in addition to what was previously done, then when more parts show up here in a few months, we’ll be making even more. Currently-
Edit for the TLDR crowd:
https://www.instagram.com/share/BAOp9M96Cu
All the suspension is being redone. This is all new mounting locations front and rear. Out back we went with new shock towers and trailing arms from Vasher. We have new coilovers from Rock Krawler flavored in 12” stroke and a custom shim stack tuned for the final 167 lb/in spring rate and 1.33 motion ratio. (222 lb/in before MR adjustment) The springs are stacked 12” 400 lb/in and 500 lb/in, though we may need to adjust those if the ride height is too tall. (The goal is to lower the height while gaining travel)
Sticking with the RK four link up top. Might need to reconsider if there is too much lateral movement with all this travel. (16” of vertical axle travel)
Old frame mounts were cut out and replaced with Vasher units. They mount outboard of the frame instead of under it. Slightly longer than factory, but mocking everything up the pinion angle won’t be an issue. (The video is mocking up for bump stops, not final pinion angle)
Big shout out to @87-Z28 for his help confirming spring rates, plunge dinensions, and pinion angles. Vasher and RK also did their own calculations and everyone matched. Nice to have three variables to compare instead of just two.
Front suspension is another story. No aftermarket options available for taller shock towers. You could run ORI’s like @BigMeatsBronco to use the stock arms and original tower with adaptors to get as much travel as your UCA's can handle. But, if you want to stick with coilovers because you're afraid of change, you'll need to use the coilover extendo-thingie to ensure the coils clear the tierod and CV. For the latter, the only thing you can do to lower the vehicle is drop the preload on your adjustable coilovers. And, well, now you're bottoming out any time you go over something larger than a dime on the road. Reallllllly inconvenient for the Starbs drivethroughs. The other option is to go up with your mounting point aka-the taller shock towers mentioned at the beginning of this post. @GreyZ came up with a pretty cool design that would weld right on top of the stock towers while accommodating our height and angle requirements, but got busy and was unable to finish it. Instead we ordered universal towers from Barnes and will be cutting them to get the height correct. That process will start next week. The plan is to retain as much of the stock towers as possible to use as additional backing to the towers we're welding on. Try to provide some extra strength without doing a tower brace that goes over the top of the engine. Rock Krawler made us custom 8" travel coils with the Bronco spacer on the bottom. RK also tuned the rebound on the shimstack to account for all the additional mass from the portals. (Yes, with portals you do in fact want to make changes to the suspension. Extra weight means they will return faster to the ground, hence increasing the rebound)
Video is wifey filling in the branding that was cut out of the towers.
Another topic on the back-limit straps. We will be running six limit straps-two on each side and two in the middle. (Three attachment points) The reason for the middle? Wifey is not a fan of super steep downhill stuff. It makes it even less fun when the suspension unloads and tips her even further forward. The limit straps in the middle will be setup to limit overall extension, but the articulation will not be affected. When deciding the best way to approach this, there is a crossmember on the frame that would work for the mount. Is it strong enough to support the weight of the axle? Maybe. I'm not certain, to be honest. It's pretty thin material. So instead, how about we add some stiffness to the frame with another crossmember? We got 2" OD (3/16" wall thickness) tubing and made our own brackets to provide additional support. The limit straps will be attached to this guy and assuming the welds hold, it should work nicely for the straps and a little less frame twisting.
The Vasher @Miketator components are well thought out. Very thorough designs and trying to accommodate holes in the frame already placed by Ford. That said, the first thing I did was spend $200 on bolts as I didn’t like the idea of not having washers on the frame mounts. They’re huge and I have 99.5% certainty they'll be fine, but it gives me Forrest Whitiker eye not having washers. The frame mounts are robust and mount the trailing arms outside the frame, instead of under it. A huge improvement over stock and way better than the APG mount that looks like an afterthought stuck on the bottom of the frame.
The system was originally designed for Johnny Joints, and while they’re great ends, RK has more misalignment. However-after talking with Rock Krawler I don't believe either should be used on the axle side for a trailing arm. They’re no longer just control arms-the weight of the vehicle is always resting on them and that will wreck the ends over time. So I requested full heim, which Vasher accommodated without issue. Whether the heims last longer than JJ or RK...I guess we'll find out
He did include heim booties like we have up front though! I didn't even request them! He also includes 3/4” bolts for the trailing arm axle end, which is the correct shank size for the heims/johnny/RK. But-the factory bolt is bigger than 3/4” and while everything is tight side to side-this is supporting the weight of the vehicle. And now bouncing up and down. The potential to oval out the bracket exists, in my opinion. I actually planned for this anyway as I had already looked into how it would all go together so I had 3/4” weld repair washers ready to go. Just needed to open up the factory holes to 7/8” and weld them in. This more than doubled the supporting surface area and fits perfectly on a 3/4” bolt. Bonus-we put them on the inside of the mount so only need two washers for the proper fit without making custom misalignments. (Vasher offered to do this without charge, but we weren't certain on whether we'd be using the factory mounts or the 1/4" mounts from Barnes. I was about 1200 miles from home and couldn't measure them either, so we turned down the offer until we knew for certain what was needed)
The trailing arms mount in place of the shocks, obviously. I'm very interested to find out how this new mounting location will counteract the moment arm of the portal, as the control arm is now slightly below the output of the portal, rather than a couple inches above it. It should be beneficial in theory, but we don't just rely on theories around here. We'll test it out and report back the results. Should have plenty of opportunities to get a idea of how it works out before we delete the rear portals.
Edit for the TLDR crowd:
https://www.instagram.com/share/BAOp9M96Cu
All the suspension is being redone. This is all new mounting locations front and rear. Out back we went with new shock towers and trailing arms from Vasher. We have new coilovers from Rock Krawler flavored in 12” stroke and a custom shim stack tuned for the final 167 lb/in spring rate and 1.33 motion ratio. (222 lb/in before MR adjustment) The springs are stacked 12” 400 lb/in and 500 lb/in, though we may need to adjust those if the ride height is too tall. (The goal is to lower the height while gaining travel)
Sticking with the RK four link up top. Might need to reconsider if there is too much lateral movement with all this travel. (16” of vertical axle travel)
Old frame mounts were cut out and replaced with Vasher units. They mount outboard of the frame instead of under it. Slightly longer than factory, but mocking everything up the pinion angle won’t be an issue. (The video is mocking up for bump stops, not final pinion angle)
Big shout out to @87-Z28 for his help confirming spring rates, plunge dinensions, and pinion angles. Vasher and RK also did their own calculations and everyone matched. Nice to have three variables to compare instead of just two.
Front suspension is another story. No aftermarket options available for taller shock towers. You could run ORI’s like @BigMeatsBronco to use the stock arms and original tower with adaptors to get as much travel as your UCA's can handle. But, if you want to stick with coilovers because you're afraid of change, you'll need to use the coilover extendo-thingie to ensure the coils clear the tierod and CV. For the latter, the only thing you can do to lower the vehicle is drop the preload on your adjustable coilovers. And, well, now you're bottoming out any time you go over something larger than a dime on the road. Reallllllly inconvenient for the Starbs drivethroughs. The other option is to go up with your mounting point aka-the taller shock towers mentioned at the beginning of this post. @GreyZ came up with a pretty cool design that would weld right on top of the stock towers while accommodating our height and angle requirements, but got busy and was unable to finish it. Instead we ordered universal towers from Barnes and will be cutting them to get the height correct. That process will start next week. The plan is to retain as much of the stock towers as possible to use as additional backing to the towers we're welding on. Try to provide some extra strength without doing a tower brace that goes over the top of the engine. Rock Krawler made us custom 8" travel coils with the Bronco spacer on the bottom. RK also tuned the rebound on the shimstack to account for all the additional mass from the portals. (Yes, with portals you do in fact want to make changes to the suspension. Extra weight means they will return faster to the ground, hence increasing the rebound)
Video is wifey filling in the branding that was cut out of the towers.
Another topic on the back-limit straps. We will be running six limit straps-two on each side and two in the middle. (Three attachment points) The reason for the middle? Wifey is not a fan of super steep downhill stuff. It makes it even less fun when the suspension unloads and tips her even further forward. The limit straps in the middle will be setup to limit overall extension, but the articulation will not be affected. When deciding the best way to approach this, there is a crossmember on the frame that would work for the mount. Is it strong enough to support the weight of the axle? Maybe. I'm not certain, to be honest. It's pretty thin material. So instead, how about we add some stiffness to the frame with another crossmember? We got 2" OD (3/16" wall thickness) tubing and made our own brackets to provide additional support. The limit straps will be attached to this guy and assuming the welds hold, it should work nicely for the straps and a little less frame twisting.
The Vasher @Miketator components are well thought out. Very thorough designs and trying to accommodate holes in the frame already placed by Ford. That said, the first thing I did was spend $200 on bolts as I didn’t like the idea of not having washers on the frame mounts. They’re huge and I have 99.5% certainty they'll be fine, but it gives me Forrest Whitiker eye not having washers. The frame mounts are robust and mount the trailing arms outside the frame, instead of under it. A huge improvement over stock and way better than the APG mount that looks like an afterthought stuck on the bottom of the frame.
The system was originally designed for Johnny Joints, and while they’re great ends, RK has more misalignment. However-after talking with Rock Krawler I don't believe either should be used on the axle side for a trailing arm. They’re no longer just control arms-the weight of the vehicle is always resting on them and that will wreck the ends over time. So I requested full heim, which Vasher accommodated without issue. Whether the heims last longer than JJ or RK...I guess we'll find out
He did include heim booties like we have up front though! I didn't even request them! He also includes 3/4” bolts for the trailing arm axle end, which is the correct shank size for the heims/johnny/RK. But-the factory bolt is bigger than 3/4” and while everything is tight side to side-this is supporting the weight of the vehicle. And now bouncing up and down. The potential to oval out the bracket exists, in my opinion. I actually planned for this anyway as I had already looked into how it would all go together so I had 3/4” weld repair washers ready to go. Just needed to open up the factory holes to 7/8” and weld them in. This more than doubled the supporting surface area and fits perfectly on a 3/4” bolt. Bonus-we put them on the inside of the mount so only need two washers for the proper fit without making custom misalignments. (Vasher offered to do this without charge, but we weren't certain on whether we'd be using the factory mounts or the 1/4" mounts from Barnes. I was about 1200 miles from home and couldn't measure them either, so we turned down the offer until we knew for certain what was needed)The trailing arms mount in place of the shocks, obviously. I'm very interested to find out how this new mounting location will counteract the moment arm of the portal, as the control arm is now slightly below the output of the portal, rather than a couple inches above it. It should be beneficial in theory, but we don't just rely on theories around here. We'll test it out and report back the results. Should have plenty of opportunities to get a idea of how it works out before we delete the rear portals.
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