| Author | Message | ||
     Phatkidwit1eye |
The reason I posted this here is b/c it seems alot of you are engineers. I will be tearing in to my Bronco and upgrading different things. Right now I'm getting into the steering set up on my ride. I'm unsure if it would be a good idea to try a different set up or stay with the oem tire rods. This different set up seems pretty stout but I'm unsure of the different joints they use. So I was wondering what your take on the strength or weakness of this set up would be. http://www.bulletproofsteering.com/main.html | ||
| R1DynaSquid |
Whats wrong with the stock setup? I put mega miles on my fullsized 80 Bronco & my 90 4X4 Ranger has over 140,000 miles with no issues. I do a bit of offroad in the Ranger as well as a lot of snow plowing with it & the stock steering works fine. | ||
| Firemanjim |
What year Bronco is it and does it have p/s ?They upgraded and changed the way the tie rods were set-up on the later style like Dyna has .Early Broncos had a rep for funky steering and would do some scary things with bigger tires. | ||
| Phatkidwit1eye |
It's a 1970 Ford Bronco. So lord only knows how long those rods have been on there. I will have to replace them no matter what for safety reasons. One of the many owners decided to replace the castle nut with a regular nut and it almost looks like they cut off a bit of the tire rod end for whatever reason. What sucks about the whole set up now is that instead of making two removable tire rod ends like they are now.Ford made it so you have one that you can replace and the other side is part of the bar. I don't know if you can rebuild it or not but with something as important as steering I don't wan't to take any chances. The old ones when not lifted correctly suffer from a serious case of bump steer. Alot of people will run larger tires and lift kits and not take into account how they just drasticly changed the steering geometry of the truck. Alot of it can be fixed with a drop pitman arm and a adjustable track bar. I'm in the middle of upgrading all the important stuff (ie brakes,steering). Nothing like no power steering and 4wheel drum brakes to get the heart pumping. I guess my main question is about the use of heim joints and what part of it is prone to failure. If I remember correctly Buell tubers have this joint on them as well. | ||
| M1combat |
Heim joints are pretty strong. They are used in watts links for fabricated rear suspensions on race cars. AS I recall they were originally designed to operate control surfaces on WWII fighter planes. | ||
| M1combat |
A good place to ask would be Corner-Carvers.com, although they are race car guys. I'm sure they have a LOT of tech on this subject as well though. | ||
| Phonemanjustin |
This place has all the stuff you will ever need for a 70's Bronco http://broncograveyard.com/ | ||
| Bluelightning |
Phatkid, Like Justin said, go to Jeff's Bronco graveyard!! Those guys are great with any help you may want. Now if you are mechanically inclined and handy with a welder, you can make you own setup for a ton less!! I made my own steering setup for my 95 F-150 that has a solid D44 from a 72 F-100. I got a set of chromoly rod ends from Rod End Supply (on the web) with the jam nuts and weld in bungs, then got some chromoly DOM tubing that is 1.125 diameter with a .095 wall thickness. This setup rocks!! At slow speeds, it will flex up to about 6" (I've already tested that on a rock) and will flex back into shape fairly easy. Also you can use 1026 DOM that is 1.125 diameter with .120 wall will work well for you. Shoot me an e-mail and I can discuss this more with you. Karl |
