Long Travel BS Thread

I never wanted the uniball conversion. I had 4 LBJ failures and all of them where bolt related not cup and ball related. I stepped it up to 10.9 zincs way before @SpikerEng did his incredibly epic and useful test of the various LBJ bolts. Since stepping it up to 10.9 and using red loctite I never had another failure.

I just got in the habit of changing out the LBJ's and bolts every 6 months as a cover my ass policy. I also used Pro-Forged instead of OEM since I was changing them so often. Never had a problem with them.

 

very interesting. May hold off on the unis until I see if it’s a big issue for me. Will do the bolt upgrade though. That seems like a good move regardless.

 

Love it, especially w/ LT. I beat the hell out of this kit so far and steering is one thing I'm not worried about. Paired it with Dirt King Inner clevis kit and some kartek tie rods and this is a stout setup.
Once I finally have my racksaver installed its going to be about as bullet proof as 1st gen steering will ever get

 

Haven’t seen that racksaver before. That’s pretty cool. I think I’d look into full hydro if I got tired of the current rack. Mostly just to not fight the steering wheel in the rocks. Looks like a decent amount of room to fit a ram back there.

 

I started piecing together the parts to try and attempt that, only to realize that I wouldn't want a full hydro setup on anything other than the trail. You want some sort of mechanical failsafe in your steering system if it's gonna see any street action imo

 

I don’t think it’d be that bad on the street if set up properly. From a safety standpoint, if the car stalls you’ll lose steering, but you can still muscle it to turn a bit and it’d be easier to do so at speed I’d think. An extra hose your longest length and fluid would be great spares though. Not arguing that a mechanical link wouldn’t make more sense, just not sure it’s a deal breaker

 

Too bad the rear steer would be so hard to swingset. Power of full hydro with a mechanical link and return to center still existent. Rear steer is one of the absolute hardest to make durable and reliable.

 

Took me a while to figure out what you meant by rear steer since I just had a rear steer bouncer, but I got it haha i vaguely remember seeing a swingset on one of these forums, but i think it hung down a bit low.

It’s a tough call for what we do down here. If you need full hydro you’re probably on 37+ and don’t need ifs any more. That’s the line I’d like to not cross again, although doing a SAS with yota axles and a streetable 3-link is more appealing than going overboard with tons again. Kinda a “as it should have come from the factory, but better” build lol.

 

TMR found that out real quick a few months ago at KOH. sad to see such a solid run turn into a DNF so close to the finish.

 

Not sure what you’re referencing. “Rear steer” is often used as the reference for a steering arm that is behind the spindle like 1st gen Tacomas vs front steer like 2nd/3rd

 

He meant no shit
Steering the rear tires on his bouncer

 

Kind of what I figured. And can see it easily mistaken as something else in an off-road group lol.

 

Same thing here. They’re hype. For the price of oem x3 there’s really no reason than the bling factor for getting them. Countless thousands of hard miles have been drive on oem ball joints without any failure of the joint itself. They’re a 100k part and few and far between are those who actually put those miles on a truck. 1st Gen guys in the mountain states thrash on these things and long travel guys abuse them in the desert and besides the bolt failures which the uniball doesn’t fix at all. The pictures people see of the ball joints failing are on trucks that aren’t maintained.

 

People will argue this, and they do get away with it, but full hydro is not actually legal for use on public roads unless the vehicle came that way from the manufacturer.

 

Correct ish. But for instance, Michigan has no lingo indicating it’s truly illegal in the state.

I have a jeep in the shop and the customer was instant on full hydro, against my advice. I know he’s going to street it. I made him sign a legal document stating he is going against my advice/recommendation and I am not responsible for anything that may happen.

My assumption is even though the lingo doesn’t exist. If he kills someone, a lawyer is going to have an absolute field day.

 

Yeah like literally rear steer haha

 

Yep, my bad. Didn't go back far enough to see you were talking about rear of the spindle, not rear axle. Your statement about reliability seems to ring true universally however. Rear (axle) steer is horribly unreliable.

 

The TC uniballs have been nice. I was going through lbj's about once a year, so these make sense to me, I can just rebuild them now. I do like how they key into place also. I wish I would have gotten the kit to go with the heim joint steering. I'm happy otherwise , they were super stiff in the beginning. I guess time will tell how well they hold up.

 

It’s interesting to me that nobody ever came up with a kit that converted to front steer. In the car world, many old school muscle cars are rear steer factory. It’s always common place to install a rack and convert to front steer as it’s just all around better.

I guess I haven’t spent enough time looking at a first gen to see if it’s even feasibly possible. But like many things in life, it’s possible. But at what cost.

 

The way TC made that index basically takes every bit of stress off of the bolts. It’s essentially impossible to tear off unless you somehow manage to break the center bolt, which isn’t a very likely situation. It may be significantly more than a ball joint replacement. But you’re also getting very significant strength gains along with it.

Ball joints are still ball joints. Made at some factory in china, Taiwan, or Mexico. Having very poor QC and a lack of precision.

Uniballs are everything a ball joint will never be.