Malburg114's 3Link go fast SAS

The old knuckle, the threads are waved so I got new knuckles. But will try to remember to chase them. Definitely using red loctite and will be checking them often. What arms do you have?

 

TG, got them new for a steal with new trunnion eliminators.

 

How are the trunnion eliminators on the street? Any issues? Know when they first came out they where offroad only. Stuck between them and marlins 25 mm pins and bearings

 

Don't know of any issues, maybe the offroad only was just so that TG covers their asses?

I grease them every 5k, no issues. 7,200 miles on them now. The trunnion eliminators do stop the return to center on the steering, but HA does about the same thing. That was easy to get use to.

Can't speak for the the Marlin 25mm.

 

You would have to call. No biggie though.

 

That's what I assumed. Didn't know about the return to center. Shouldn't be a big deal. We will see.

 

Buy them!

Way better than screwing around with trunion bearings. Knuckles pop on and off in a breeze and mine have been flawless on the street. The PO had them on for who knows how many miles and I've got at least 15k on them since with no issues.


Fwiw, I'm using cast steering arms with oem Toyota studs, hydro assist and no issues on them ever coming loose or breaking.

 

@malburg114
Made LowRange's newsletter. Check it out.
http://blog.lowrangeoffroad.com/mar...dup-trip-report-by-lror-tech-james-blackburn/

 

Haha that's pretty cool! Thanks for posting it. Probably the only pictures of us fixing it.

 

So we have been messing with this for a few days now and want to get some other opinions. The problem we are having is that the steering bars (Tie rod and drag link are what we have been calling them) rub on the passenger side when the driver side is up and passneger is down basically making so we cant steer and the weight of the axle and tire is sitting on the steering arm and springs. We narrowed it down to that we rotated the spring perches and pointed the 3rd member at the transfer case causing about a 5 degree difference between a stock axle and the axle under it. That 5 degrees seems to equal about an inch that the knuckles where turned foward since we didnt rotate the knuckel the balls. I had some 5 degree shims laying around so I took those and threw them in and flexed it and it seems to help as with using a skys flat pitman arm. So our plan is to get skys high steer arms since they are shorter and hope everything clears with the shims. If they do, then I will take the second axle I have, truss it and move the spring perches out but dont rotate them (leaving it with stock settings). If they dont clear with the shims and skys arms, we are not sure what to do and want to know what you guys think. COuld also pull a leaf out but trying to avoid doing that right now. We where also thinking about limiting the down travel to right before the steering touches the spring. Any ideas what else we could change to avoid doing that? Thanks guys.

@ToyRyd04 @slander @Snowy Anyone else?

 

The pinion should be parallel to the tcase output if you are not running a cv, and especially if you are not driving in 4wd at high speeds on the road. I would bump stop it lower to keep the steering from fighting with the springs, then again im a lazy ass. The problem with shims up front is you will start messing with the caster angle and really make it shitty to drive. You could also cut a re weld the spring perches, i would much rather be dragging the pinion on stuff then having my steering binding.

 

Front has a cv. We would have to bump stop and limit down travel to make it work right now. Shims is just temporary to figure out what angle we need on the perches which we think is zero off of the trunion bearings? Thats what a stock axle is? Once we figure that out, we will cut and reweld the perches.

 

Mine rubs a smidge on the same side.(only found out since there was paint scraping off). I have alot more aggressive pinion angle rotation (22°) with the factory spring mounts cut off using longer ruff stuff ones. Sounds like you need to have taller arms. Have you looked into Front Range Offroad arms? They have a regular and tall boy style that can bring your tie rod and drag link up higher.

Kill two birds with one stone by getting them machined to be keyed off the knuckle preventing shearing the steering studs.
@malburg114

**Also, rotating the knuckle balls is a breeze. Did it with a big pipe cutter (bought it off eBay ~ $45ish)

Running a 31.5" spring perch spacing vs. the factory 29".

Post up a pic just to get a better idea with what your dealing with.

 

I really considered front ranges arms but pretty much ruled them out when I called and they said they where taller but an inch longer than other arms. That would cause more problems we thought. Said they mainly for full hydro setups.

The key was Also why I wanted them but $800 plus shipping was a lot to spend on a set of arms.

Good to know about the knuckle balls. After we found that, we may try to do it. Did you just set your knuckle balls and spring perches to the same degree after you rotated the pinion?

My perches are also 31.5

I'll get a picture today

 

Ah okay, haven't looked too much into the FROR arms, thought they might of helped. Agreed sounds like they would hinder the situation more.

The knuckle balls were cut first and left loose, then the old spring perches were cut off. From there I setup the pinion angle for the front cv driveshaft. Once that was in place, the new spring perches were trimmed to fit on at the new width. Next we placed jackstands underneath the axle and put the weight of the truck on the axle with leaf springs. This would be the ride height to set the right caster angle for the knuckle balls. IIRC stock Toyota axle is about 1*, reading over at Pirate between 5-7* is what you want to shoot for to keep a good caster angle with the lift and bigger tires. Personally set them to a hair over 6* and have been great road manners wise. (Been north of 80mph without any death wobble.)

I should have a few pics of the cut-n-turn in the build thread.

 

Thats what we figured as well. I was totally sold on them and ready to drop the coin since they where keyed and taller but oh well. Then it was between skys and marlin since they were machined so we can do the 5th stud on it just in case.

Sounds good. Thats pretty much how we did it the first time just without rotating the knuckle balls. Mine is just a touch over 5* and has good road manners as well just has problems when it is dropped to the passenger. I will get some pictures to help clarify.

I will go read your build again lol. Yours has been a great help haha.

 

I noticed a lot of similarities when looking at your build, even down to the same steps on certain things haha, Keep it up !

 

Haha I think thats just how they go. But yes I did use your build a lot when trying to figure things out. And am still using it

 

Some pictures. Hope they help clarify everything. With the shims in. @ToyRyd04

Clearnce at ride height
20161003_112914 by Harrison M, on Flickr

20161003_113000 by Harrison M, on Flickr

Passenger down, Driver just before bump. Notice the tie rod pulled out since they arent tight now.
20161003_113055 by Harrison M, on Flickr

20161003_113102 by Harrison M, on Flickr

20161003_113110 by Harrison M, on Flickr

And full lock passenger down, Driver up.
20161003_113136 by Harrison M, on Flickr

 

Well there's your problem, take those blocks of wood out and you'll have a ton of room .

Looks like you could cut down the spring perches to being almost flush on the axle tube, but that would only help some what (1/2 -3/4").

Rotating the knuckle balls back some would definitely help clear the tie rod and drag link vs. using shims.