JBA Offroad Upper Control Arms And Suspension MEGA Thread BS thread

Update! For all you guys and gals with no lift/ minimal lift or just dont want as high of castor numbers marlin has release a stock replacement arm. It has all the same benifits of his standard UCAs IE More clearence at the spring stronger easily replacable balljoints and bushings. Just no added castor. Check out them here. He now is also a distibuter for Kings, Billstien, OME, Fox, and a few others. And most will agree his Customer Service is second to none.

Explaining what you have:

https://jbaoffroad.com/

So a few months ago I hooked up with a guy local to me who has been in the industry for a long time who is looking to break out of the jeep world and start offering some parts for toyotas. The company JBA ( formerly Jeepin By Al) has been building jeep parts and adjustable coilovers and full suspention systems for all indepent suspension jeep since 2007. He himself has been welding and building parts for the industrial industry since 1987. The owner and myself have hooked up to try to bring some new products to our trucks that maybe solve some issues/price points out there now. He is currently in production of a set of uca's for our trucks designed for lifted trucks and I have to say so far I am impressed. Looking at some of the things people desired in these he has come up with a great product at a great price point. These allow for you to get your truck back into factory alinment after you lift your truck and I have to say my truck rides great now! No more bump steer or wandering around nice and straight and smoth now His uca have a replacable MOOG balljoint on top for easy maintnence and replacement is available through most auto parts stores. He is using toyota OEM bushing for the control arm they are very quiet riding. My alignment is now dead on with my camber at 0 on both sides and caster at 2.2 on the left and 2.1 on the right. As I test these out I will keep updating this thread I will say I gained 1.75 inches of downtravel now that my uca no longer hit the coils and if I had longer shock I would have a bit more. He is in the works for developing a host of other products as well so this is kind of a show an tell and see what you guys think. They are right in line with the LR UCA but have a replacable ball joint and these things are beefy:shock: They also have a lifetime warranty on the UCA and a 1 year on the balljoints. Any questions I would be more than happy to help and if I dont know the awnser I can get ahold of him and find out. Check out his web site and some pictures and I will keep updating but I am confident these will last a long time! Thanks for reading and let me know what you guys think I already got a few comments from the live thread and will pass anything on to him. These will be produced and available begining of march.

Great summery of the thread from @DVexile
Long thread, been following it from the start. Sounds like the design has settled. I thought for newcomers I'd provide a thread summary - please correct me where I get things wrong and I'll edit this post. I'm going to throw out a few questions at the end and add the answers as hopefully people answer them!

WHAT ARE THESE?

Drop in replacements for the stock UCAs with the following features:

• Use ball joints that are commonly available for replacement as needed in the future with zerks for easy maintenance
• Ball joint angles and UCA hoop shape allow for more travel than stock UCAs thus appropriate for slightly greater shock travel in a "mid-travel" setup using the stock LCAs
• Use the OEM bushings that are lower maintenance than fancier poly bushings used on many other aftermarket UCAs and are also unlikely to squeak
• Shift the range of achievable caster compared to stock so that lifts in the 2-4" range can get caster around 2.5-3.0 (considered desireable range for stability) while keeping camber where you'd want to prevent tire wear

Current options are for Standard or Heavy Duty design, the HD having larger tube size and some extra gussets. All current product is "High Caster" design (see development history for what legacy "low caster" would be).

WHAT ARE THEY NOT?

These UCAs are not "adjustable" like the Light Racing UCAs. Instead they are designed with a permanent offset compared to stock to end up where you'd likely adjust the LR UCA for a truck with a 2 to 4" lift. Other aftermarket UCAs do the same thing. The benefit to JBA/TC/Camburg fixed offset is there is nothing to slip and send things out of whack nor is there an unusual UCA adjustment that confuses barely literate alignment techs. The benefit to LR of course is you do have the adjustment and could run low caster at stock height or high caster lifted with the same UCA if for some reason that was important to you.

They are not uniballs like Total Chaos or a variety of other "racing" UCAs but they do still offer a very wide joint angle range much like a uniball while being lower maintenance than a uniball. Similarly they don't use poly bushings that most of the "racing" UCAs use and instead stick with the OEM bushings. Poly bushings are unlikely to tear over lots of travel and should last the life of the truck but they require maintenance (greasing) and many of them squeak too. The OEM bushings the JBA arms use don't squeak and don't require routine maintenance but you may need to replace them after many tens of thousands of miles.

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY AND PROBLEMS

Much of the first 20 some pages of this thread deal with problems in the first released versions of the JBA UCAs. At the point of this writing these issues appear to all be resolved and all new purchased UCAs do not have these issues. People who were early adopters have had their UCAs replaced or in some cases need to request a replacement if they don't like their present caster numbers.

The very first version of the JBA ended up having an interference problem on *some* trucks - but of course not on the trucks it was developed on. This resulted in bent UCAs and other suspension components for the unfortunate folks affected. The solution was to change the bend shape of the tubing to provide more clearance. The first version had a almost strait section with 45 angles at each end the second version changed this into a broader curve giving more clearance on the inside of the UCA. All purchasers of this version were contacted and their UCAs replaced with the fixed version.

This new second version had no clearance issues but many people were not getting what they considered adequate caster on lifted trucks. To many the whole point to the aftermarket UCA was to improve caster on a lifted truck and the improvement over stock was not as much as hoped for. How much of this was variation and how much was just not enough angle in the initial design is not clear, but Marlin produced another version, the HC or "High Caster" version with more angle designed in. Everyone appears happy with this HC version.

People who had the initial "low caster" version and we're happy with their alignment probably have no interested in changing UCAs again. But folks with that version who were unhappy can contact Martin to get the new "HC" version. For a brief period Marlin sold the remaining stock of the "LC" version at a discount at the same time the new "HC" version was being sold. At this time only the "HC" version is available. Again, there are standard and heavy duty versions of this same HC version.

As a note, Marlin appeared to stand behind his product and produced many free replacements to those affected by the development problems. Naturally this was still a painful experience for those that had to swap UCAs multiple times.

QUESTIONS (PLEASE ANSWER IF YOU KNOW)

• Are the ball joint angles and clearances sufficient for the various "extended travel" coil overs out there meant for "mid-travel" designs and is anyone actually using such a configuration?
• What are you "losing" by using OEM bushings vs. poly bushings?
• What kind of off road driving would people consider the threshold for moving to the HD design? (obviously this is very speculative, but for example distinguish slow rock crawling, fast washboard, hard running over whoops and so forth)

PLEASE PROVIDE CORRECTIONS FOR ANYTHING I'VE GOT WRONG!!!! I'm no expert, I'm just trying to summarize 30 pages of posts accurately to make sure I understand the product and trade offs and hopefully this will be helpful to future purchasers too.







UPDATE: The new arms produce alost more caster and are designed to provide 3 degrees of castor for up to a 3 inch lift! All new arms going forward will be these high caster arms and the older ones are on markdown till they are gone! Thanks for your guys patience enjoy the new arms!
My Truck with 3.25 inches of lift driver and 3.75 inches of lift passenger just to prove these work

JBA Now offers adjustable Adjust-A-Strut designed to give 1.4 inches of front lift for the tacomas with adjustments for compression and rebound built into the shocks. Also offering his Total Control rear shock that adds inch of downtravel over 5100's and adjustable valving built into the rear shocks as well. Armor and more to come as he expands his Toyota lineup!