alternate to the trac bar

[rowdyram]

so the other day I was working on a Chrysler aspen and was looking at the watts link rear suspension set up.... got me to thinking about using it on the front to eliminate the trac bar thus eliminating axle swing, death wobble sloppy response and tons of other problems. so I threw this rough drawing together to see what you guys have to say. think it will work? would you try it? any problems im not considering?

so the design would be a plate shaped to fit over the diff housing and held to the axle tubes and pinion area via U-bolts. an articulating arm fixed to that DOM tubing and heims for the links. brackets made of plate would be bolted to the frame.

 

[MagSport]

While I'll be the first to say, this is awesome, do you know if adjustable links can be manufactured? My only concern would be that, with a lifted vehicle, the links that worked at stock ride height would be to short. My biggest issue with the stock track bar wasn't death wobble so much as it was dog-leggin after I put my lift on. My biggest concern with this design would be the stress put on the system if you tried to lift it with too short of a link. Other than that it looks like a very feasible project and something that I would want to do lol.


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[jwheeler]

You want to eliminate death wobble and sloppy response. But you went from having two joints or bushings to having 5 joints or bushings to wear out and cause death wobble. The wobble and slop is caused by worn parts, not the trac bar. They use this system in the rear of the durangos too though.


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[Stangshcky12]

Watts link are very hard to home engineer
There is a TON of geometry to them which is why they usually end up binding and limiting travel

The most important thing I would say is keeping the roll center close to the same spot as factory or closer to the center of gravity as the factory track bar

 

[rowdyram]

You want to eliminate death wobble and sloppy response. But you went from having two joints or bushings to having 5 joints or bushings to wear out and cause death wobble. The wobble and slop is caused by worn parts, not the trac bar. They use this system in the rear of the durangos too though.


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A lot of the death wobble comes from track bar to drag link swing angles. When the front compresses the axle swings right causing the steering to be pulled slightly left which shifts weight to the right and unloads the left side pushing steering back right. And good heims don't wear like a ball and socket in the track bar.

And ya I was thinking adjustable heims to account for difference in ride height and would probably be OK up to about 3" lift after that I think lower frame brackets would be needed.

Ya I'm no engineer so getting the geometry right would take some trial and error but I've built quite a few 4 link systems that have came out nice.

I'm seriously considering building this just to see how it goes

 

[Stangshcky12]

I started digging a little bit about this last night
There's a pretty reputable company the makes a watts link kit for Jeeps, they really hyped it up when they introduced it a few years ago and it still hasn't caught on. I'm sure there's more reasons behind it including what I mention with roll center. They used to have a video explaining how it worked with a 2" lift and the travel was really unimpressive

 

[rowdyram]

Interesting. Thanks I'm gonna look into it some more