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ICON Billet Rear Upper & Lower Control Arms

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Dusty

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Thank you Dusty...yes, these and the RPG ones are definitely works of art! And the VMC and the cutting tools to build these are not cheap either!
I saw the RPG ones and yeah those are nice too. The aftermarket is stepping up its game for the Bronco :)
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Icon makes some excellent components. What is the material on the rock sliders on the lowers? Aluminum inserts?
UHMW ultra high molecular weight polyethylene . High strength low friction plastic. Great for sliding across rocks. When it wears out just replace it.
 

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Hmm...you can replace / change / etc ball ends with DOM (the tubing has a threaded insert welded in). Skids are definitely a plus to this style...I guess I am struggling the function is "better"? The DOM route would be considerably less expensive. @goatman where you at?

Lots of bling there. They are pretty cool looking. I agree, they won't work any better than steel tubing doing the same thing. I think I said this in another thread, but you have to really want the rod ends, rather than bushings. The noise and harshness will be different, though maybe not by much. These are cool, and I wouldn't mind having them on my Bronco, however to the question of functionality to me they are bling. The Bronco doesn't have enough travel to make rod ends necessary. So, what is being gained besides looking cool, and being part of a later total suspension package. It is yet to be determined how much actual travel any new suspension can get. And to be determined how much abuse the stock arms and bushings can take. These arms are stronger, no question. So would thicker DOM arms with Johnny Joints that would allow the same movement and not be as harsh, and much less expensive.
 
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Lots of bling there. They are pretty cool looking. I agree, they won't work any better than steel tubing doing the same thing. I think I said this in another thread, but you have to really want the rod ends, rather than bushings. The noise and harshness will be different, though maybe not by much. These are cool, and I wouldn't mind having them on my Bronco, however to the question of functionality to me they are bling. The Bronco doesn't have enough travel to make rod ends necessary. So, what is being gained besides looking cool, and being part of a later total suspension package. It is yet to be determined how much actual travel any new suspension can get. And to be determined how much abuse the stock arms and bushings can take. These arms are stronger, no question. So would thicker DOM arms with Johnny Joints that would allow the same movement and not be as harsh, and much less expensive.
Good analysis. Yes, just by themselves, on this Bronco, these arms are something akin to tits on a boar. I can't see a good use case for installing them by themselves under normal circumstances, unless you just want jewelry (which I alluded to LOL). In this case though, they were installed to test fitment and get a little bit of road and trail time on them just for testing purposes. They will eventually be part of a more complete suspension system, where, the hope is, they will work in concert with ICON's coilovers and other components to provide great performance. ICON's engineering department shared with me some pretty impressive travel and articulation numbers that they believe they can get out of their complete suspension system, based on the 3D CAD models. I won't get ahead of them and repeat any of those numbers before they are able to confirm them with actual parts on the car, which should be coming soon. But the heim joints used in these arms are part of that strategy of milking as much travel as possible out of the factory suspension geometry, in other words, with bolt-in parts that don't require cutting off brackets and welding in new ones to change the pivot points. For the front upper control arms, they have designed a brand new version of their Delta Joint to squeeze even more travel out of the front than their current ball joint would allow. The limiting factors will then transfer to other systems such as drive shaft and CV joint angles, and, in my and other non-Badlands owners' cases, sway bars. I don't know if they are working on a sway bar disconnect but I've suggested it.

For the question of ride harshness or road noise due to the heim joints, I haven't noticed any in the 24 hours or so since these have been put on. In that time I've only driven it about 50 miles though. Heims can wear over time though; I replaced the ones in my Rubicon at about 50K miles. But there's no readily apparent difference in noise and ride harshness out of the box. These arms do have a "multi-durometer" bushing at one end so perhaps that is enough to mitigate.

As for whether these billet arms would perform any better than a tubular arm of similar specs, no they probably wouldn't. Geometry is geometry, it doesn't care what the stick is made of, as long as it's strong enough to handle whatever forces are applied to it. That's why ICON usually offers their components in both tube and billet styles, and I'm guessing they will eventually have tubular versions of these Bronco control arms as well. I will say that I've had bushing housings split apart on steel tubular control arms before. but I don't know whether these would be any stronger or weaker in that regard. They do look beefier around the bushing area.
 

Raptor911

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A ton of companies are making these >> RPG, SVC, ADD .. etc ...
 

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Good analysis. Yes, just by themselves, on this Bronco, these arms are something akin to tits on a boar. I can't see a good use case for installing them by themselves under normal circumstances, unless you just want jewelry (which I alluded to LOL). In this case though, they were installed to test fitment and get a little bit of road and trail time on them just for testing purposes. They will eventually be part of a more complete suspension system, where, the hope is, they will work in concert with ICON's coilovers and other components to provide great performance. ICON's engineering department shared with me some pretty impressive travel and articulation numbers that they believe they can get out of their complete suspension system, based on the 3D CAD models. I won't get ahead of them and repeat any of those numbers before they are able to confirm them with actual parts on the car, which should be coming soon. But the heim joints used in these arms are part of that strategy of milking as much travel as possible out of the factory suspension geometry, in other words, with bolt-in parts that don't require cutting off brackets and welding in new ones to change the pivot points. For the front upper control arms, they have designed a brand new version of their Delta Joint to squeeze even more travel out of the front than their current ball joint would allow. The limiting factors will then transfer to other systems such as drive shaft and CV joint angles, and, in my and other non-Badlands owners' cases, sway bars. I don't know if they are working on a sway bar disconnect but I've suggested it.

For the question of ride harshness or road noise due to the heim joints, I haven't noticed any in the 24 hours or so since these have been put on. In that time I've only driven it about 50 miles though. Heims can wear over time though; I replaced the ones in my Rubicon at about 50K miles. But there's no readily apparent difference in noise and ride harshness out of the box. These arms do have a "multi-durometer" bushing at one end so perhaps that is enough to mitigate.

As for whether these billet arms would perform any better than a tubular arm of similar specs, no they probably wouldn't. Geometry is geometry, it doesn't care what the stick is made of, as long as it's strong enough to handle whatever forces are applied to it. That's why ICON usually offers their components in both tube and billet styles, and I'm guessing they will eventually have tubular versions of these Bronco control arms as well. I will say that I've had bushing housings split apart on steel tubular control arms before. but I don't know whether these would be any stronger or weaker in that regard. They do look beefier around the bushing area.
If there is a bushing on one end, that would take care of nearly all noise and harshness. And, you wouldn't really notice any on normal streets, it would be rougher street and pot holes and dirt roads. Pics don't show both ends of the arms. I would be happy with an arm with some type of good bushing on one end and rod ends on the other. It's all pretty cool to see so many top companies jumping on products to make the Bronco better.

I am so interested in aftermarket sway bar solutions, since I'm backing off getting a Badlands back to a basesquatch to save money to potentially put into suspension stuff. I'm used to kicking Wrangler ass in my XJ's and I want to continue that with my Bronco. 😁 :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 
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Pics don't show both ends of the arms.
Oops, let me remedy that oversight :)

Ford Bronco ICON Billet Rear Upper & Lower Control Arms IMG_0747.JPG


I am so interested in aftermarket sway bar solutions, since I'm backing off getting a Badlands back to a basesquatch to save money to potentially put into suspension stuff. I'm used to kicking Wrangler ass in my XJ's and I want to continue that with my Bronco. 😁 :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
Yeah even a manual quick-disconnect would be fine, IMO.
 

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Camburg is through production. Same kind of setup.





😁😁
 

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Lots of bling there. They are pretty cool looking. I agree, they won't work any better than steel tubing doing the same thing. I think I said this in another thread, but you have to really want the rod ends, rather than bushings. The noise and harshness will be different, though maybe not by much. These are cool, and I wouldn't mind having them on my Bronco, however to the question of functionality to me they are bling. The Bronco doesn't have enough travel to make rod ends necessary. So, what is being gained besides looking cool, and being part of a later total suspension package. It is yet to be determined how much actual travel any new suspension can get. And to be determined how much abuse the stock arms and bushings can take. These arms are stronger, no question. So would thicker DOM arms with Johnny Joints that would allow the same movement and not be as harsh, and much less expensive.
Ok same as I was thinking and yes they are very sexy. My eb I run 1/4 wall dom with Johnny joints also. I like the bling but if significant $$ difference I am fine with tubing and applying the savings to something else! I will just have to accept I won’t win any show and shine contests! Lol
 

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WOW, those are nice.
I'm new to this game, ICON is a new name but I kept hearing of their great reputation for quality parts.
Now I see why the more experienced keep suggesting to wait a year or so for the HQ aftermarket companys to catch up vs buying some of the stuff you see available now.

Their wheels are on my short list also... ICON, Method, Fuel and RTR.
 

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WOW, those are nice.
I'm new to this game, ICON is a new name but I kept hearing of their great reputation for quality parts.
Now I see why the more experienced keep suggesting to wait a year or so for the HQ aftermarket companys to catch up vs buying some of the stuff you see available now.

Their wheels are on my short list also... ICON, Method, Fuel and RTR.
I run Icon on all my Superduties. Great parts and great customer service. Highly recommend.
 

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Oops, let me remedy that oversight :)

Ford Bronco ICON Billet Rear Upper & Lower Control Arms IMG_0747.JPG

I do really like the double adjusters, that is very functional and a great way to do it. The arms are adjustable, and can be adjusted without removing the arms. So, pinion angles can be adjusted and the axle can be squared up without removing the arms. Nice.
 

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ICON , I think, bought Donahoe years ago… my Tacoma coilovers. those things were top quality. Assume Icon CO’s are now also top quality.
 

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@Dusty
Any updates on these or any more info from ICON?
 

Dusty at ICON

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Any updates on these or any more info from ICON?
I'll answer under my ICON account. Yeah these are getting close to release. That might come shortly after Thanksgiving. There have been some slight changes in the design and installation procedure that they were finalizing this week. I'm not sure if you've seen any of the third party reports from SEMA, but some of them showed off our show Bronco there which has these arms as well as prototypes of some of our other upcoming items. The production version of these arms is actually a bit updated from the early prototype that's on my 2-door, that you see in these photos. We'll go over all the info when we do the product release on them.

As for other products in the pipeline, we're also working on a tubular version, which will come in at an easier price point than these machined billet arms, along with both billet and tubular versions of our front upper control arm utilizing our patented Delta Joint. All of these items will eventually be part of complete suspension kits including our coilovers in several "stage" levels. We're also working on some more affordable, entry-level components including the Level-Lift spacer kit I'm running on mine, which will be released very soon. On top of all that we also have bumpers and armor in development.

I wish I could give you more specific dates or details on our Bronco roadmap, but I can't at this time.
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