Range Rover front arm conversion...

[Mieser]

How about some information on the Range Rover radius arm conversion you did on your RHD white diesel LJ. The conversion looked really clean and provided great clearance! The arms where 90-85 Range Rover arms right?

[AEV Dave]

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I'd have to go back in my notes a bit. I thought they were 2002 or 2001 Range Rover. The older models as well as 80 series Toyota LandCruiser arms would probably work fine though. The arms seem to work really well and solved an oilpan issue we had with the 2.8L CRD. They are a forging and bent like our Nth Degree arms. I've wheeled that car pretty good and the front seems to work great. If you watch the video of it on Pritchet canyon in Moab on our photos page you can see it work. That was the first time we had taken the car out and at the time it was using the shorter OME shock (N66, N67) which limited the travel pretty severely. I'll be updating that car soon, once the Nth stuff is up and running, but I'll leave the arms.

dh

[Mieser]

Do the arms you use have an outward bow or just a downward bow?

I like the arm system. Its simple and clean. The Nth stuff is nice, but a little bit of overkill most of the time. A complete nth degree lift kit is pretty heavy too.

Could you please post up some more pictures of the conversion.

[Laurie]

That's some great CAD work Dave!

[Mieser]

I wish I had all the factory jeep cad files ;)

As far as I can tell the radius arms come from 1996-2002 Range Rovers. I like this option because it keeps the arm mounting point above the frame and are a cleaner install than the Nth degree style arms. The RR arms do require a good deal more fabrication though.

What kind of steering angles are you getting? Do these arms allow more steering angle than the stock lower control arms?

Any more pics Dave?

[Laurie]

Any problems while flexing?

With the axle flexed, the left and right radius arm are going to be at different angles - does this put stress on the axle housing as it tries to twist it?

What are the major benefits in doing it this way?

[AEV Dave]

The spread between the bushings is about the same as a TJ, its just horizontal instead of vertical. It flexes fine. The G-wagon, 80 Series Land Cruisers, Range Rover and Defender all use similar arms. One little known fact is the first prototype (XJ) Cherokees started out with the same style suspension, but because the XJ was so much lighter it didn't work as well as on the other vehicles (primarily the Range Rover at the time) and the Quadra Coil suspension was born. On my diesel (528lbs), it seems to do just fine, the reason I did it was I liked the Nth arms that were bent out of the way (they are bent in a very similar way) but I couldn't really use the upper control arms because of how tall the diesel is.

dh

[Laurie]

Height clearance makes sense...

I guess I was wondering if there's any handling benefit (in theory at least?) of if it's just two different ways to achieve the same result?