Upgrade shackle hangers or not? Alcan Springs/FWC

It would be interesting to put a dial indicator on the stock vs aftermarket hangers and watch it with a camera as you drive. I'm not convinced that there's much flex in the hangers, but intuitively it seems like a cross tube could help enough to be worth it.

 

You can flex stamped .100 wall steel by hand?? I need to see this!

 

I feel like you're just trying to bait us with your comments. But yes, when it's hanging off the frame, absolutely. And more than a little bit.

My install post for them: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/drizzohs-21-off-road-build.748190/page-11#post-28654651

 

I'm not, honestly. I'm really trying to understand how my experience is so different. When I took mine off I was truly impressed how stiff they were. Are you sure the hanger was flexing and not the frame rail twisting?

 

100%. With little to no effort those hangers bent like crazy to the point where I couldn't put them back on without having to bend them back. Was absolutely shocked how flimsy they were.

You have upgraded hangers installed? Which hangers did you go with?

 

Wow. I need to find a stock taco to molest I guess.

Yes. I have BAMF hangers and a custom cross bar with a custom Deaver pack. I can't say I noticed a difference with and without the hangers, and with and without the cross bar.

 

That is crazy to me. Might be a BAMF vs Archive thing. I know Archive has revised their hangers a few times to get the best geometry, but the Archives were a HUGE difference to me along with everyone else I've ever read a review about them from. I don't even have the crossbar since I wanted to keep my spare. I don't have experience with the BAMF hangers, but I did test out their shackles for a while before switching to Archive and was not impressed with their quality or coating (have read a number of reviews from others who weren't pleased with their quality as well). Archive is a different world. Can't say why you didn't notice anything though, because hanger upgrades are incredible.

 

Yeah I don't know. The BAMF hangers and shackles are definitely beefy, but maybe there's something subtle in the differences with the Archive hangers. As I said in my original post, it's an unpopular opinion. I have another buddy who had a similar experience as me. It might also be expectations versus the reality of a 7,000+lb overloaded, rear heavy truck. Getting the leaf pack dialed was a huge improvement for me. Beyond that everything else has been a subtle improvement at best.

 

Interesting, so folks actually run no spare tire?

 

Generally if you put a crossbar for the hangers it impedes where the spare goes so you have to relocate it in order to run one. My plan was to build a crossbar that wraps around the spare but I've not gotten to that yet (and probably won't). There should be a way, but having to rely on others with the tooling to do it and finding the time is getting in the way.

 

According to GlueTread, a spare is a waste if you have their product! I personally wouldn't feel comfortable not having a spare.

 

Springs in series work the same electrical resistors in parallel (or capacitors in series). They follow 1 / (1/a + 1/b + 1/c). In simplistic terms, springs in series behave as a single spring and the spring with the lowest spring rate dominates the displace for a given force.

Making up some numbers, lateral displacement on the rear end due to cornering is dominated by the tire’s sidewall. It might deflect 1-2 cm whereas the leaf spring hangers might deflect 1-2 mm on the high side. That’s an order of magnitude difference.

So the best bang for the buck to reduce lateral movement during cornering is tires with reduced sidewall and/or stronger sidewalls.

 

Would you call medium Dakars a "very stiff leaf pack"? Because that's what I was using when I bent my hanger.

As far as "lots of opportunities to increase lateral stiffness", call me crazy, but I WANT the flexible components of the system to do their job, so the frame (and hangers) don't have to do as much of that. For many reasons, I air down my tires when I leave the pavement, and I see lots of other apparently crazy people doing the same.

Who said anything about cornering? We're not trying to build sports cars, with "increased lateral stiffness" throughout, and "reduced sidewalls." The point is to contain the flex to where it is beneficial, like the tread footprint and the leaf springs, and, when the frame does flex, have it flex in a more controlled manner. In the best case scenario, this is with a cross tube that forces both frame rails to work together, and stay in parallel. In a compromise, for those of us who want to carry spare tires under the bed, at least our shackles won't be rubbing against the bases of our hangers because of an unseen bump that was taken too fast.

If anything, tires with taller sidewalls and lower pressures better achieve this than what you are prescribing. And that's been the common wisdom among offroading communities for decades.

 

I briefly looked into this. A crossbar under the spare hangs down too low for offroad use. (That, and it would make accessing the spare tire more of a PITA.)

Also, there’s no room to attach any sort of bracket behind the driver side hanger. The spare tire is not centered under the truck, and butts right up against the driver side shackle hanger.

I also looked into whether a crosstube or gusset might wrap around behind the spare, and even be incorporated into the rear bumper, but again, there’s not much room to work with, and at that point you might have diminishing returns. On my truck, the spare sits right up against the rear bumper: 33” spare, BAMF rear bumper. In fact, I have to deflate my (full size, 33”) spare and ratchet strap it to the rear bumper to keep it from rubbing against the rear differential when the suspension is fully compressed.

Also, in regard to structurally unifying the rear bumper and the hangers, a rear end collision might be capable of doing a lot more damage to the frame.

(All that said, you have me wanting to take another look, just to be sure. ).

 

Do it

 

Clean. What shocks are those?

 

is that the regular cross tube or is that one fabbed?

Also, what’s the worker of the two evils if I want to run Falcon shocks?

1) cut the shock hoods or

2) run wheel spacers?

 

Bilstein 5160s

regular tube offered by archive. Been a few years since I’ve done it so I’m not sure if he’s offering the same still? I’d have to check

also, I’m not familiar with the falcon shocks. Got a link?

 

What’s the worst of the two evils if I want to run Falcon shocks?

1) cut the shock hoods or

2) run wheel spacers?

https://dasmule.com/collections/sus...sport-tow-haul-leveling-shock-absorber-system

 

Honestly, I don’t think you’ll have to do anything. (Idk what your wheels specs are, but maybe at full flex the tire might scrub the resi)
Bilstein used to make 5150’s with piggyback resi’s just like those falcons. I believe they discontinued them - which is how I ended up spending a tad more for remote resi’s

I think you’ll be fine