Clayton front arms
- Thread starter Sugarbear
- Start date
Sugarbear
New member
And that's for uppers and lowers ??
JKUx
New member
X2 on this^^
Just did a 3 inch lift on my JKU with RockKrawler adjustable front lower arms and they were turned all the way in to shortest length @ 23 1/8,
maybe the Clayton arms allow you to adjust to factory length and go from there but I used Eddie's recs. from our previous discussion and everything turned out great, the jeeps handles great during initial road tests @ 50 mph, no rubbing issues present as well!
Hope this helps and good luck on your build!
Just did a 3 inch lift on my JKU with RockKrawler adjustable front lower arms and they were turned all the way in to shortest length @ 23 1/8,
maybe the Clayton arms allow you to adjust to factory length and go from there but I used Eddie's recs. from our previous discussion and everything turned out great, the jeeps handles great during initial road tests @ 50 mph, no rubbing issues present as well!
Hope this helps and good luck on your build!
Sorry, that's just for the lowers and that should get you close to the caster you are wanting. If you have adjustable upper arms as well, you can actually set your lower arms a bit shorter and the uppers will just need to be set until you have your caster set correctly. If you stick with 23" eye to eye on the lowers, the uppers will need to be set close to factory length.
Sugarbear
New member
Thanks Eddie
wwood
Member
Ok, but I am still not clear on this subject.
If you set the front lowers to 23 and the front uppers to 18.75, what caster does that give you? And what pinion angle?
Stock caster on a JK is 4.1*. But I cannot find an solid spec for front pinion angle. I am running a Coast 1310 front shaft on my JKUR and my front pinion points up 2* which means my caster is 4*. (There is 6* of separation (angle difference) between balljoint centerline and pinion centerline on the factory Dana 44.)
I am pretty sure Eddie says pinion angle must take precedence over caster so running more than factory caster of 4* is presumably bad.
According to Metalcloak's website setting front lowers at 23 1/16 and front uppers at 18.75 (factory length) will give me caster of 5*. But this extra caster makes pinion angle worse (only up 1*) so it sounds like the front uppers need to be longer to reduce caster to 4*.
What do you guys think?
Thanks.
cozdude
Guy with a Red 2-Door
you want your caster to be as close to factory specs as you can which is 4.2*. this will help your ride quality and handling. your pinion angle in the rear is important is you get an aftermarket driveshaft.
While I would have agreed that 5° of positive caster was a good thing 6 years ago, I would not recommend you do that now. Depending on what gear ratio you are running, this will cause driveline vibrations and over time, will lead to transfer case housing failure. How do I know, it's happened to me and I have personally seen it happen on 2 other JK's. Since then, I would only recommend that you restore your caster back to stock which is about 4°.
Having said that, you cannot just set your lowers and upper arms to fixed lengths and expect your caster to be some exact angle. To suggest that is just stupid. If that were true, you could install any lift you want with stock arms and nothing would change and that's just not the case. The amount of lift you actually have changes the angle you need/want and that's why adjustable control arms are nice to have - so that you can make changes to the angle. If you have both upper and lower adjustable arms, you'll want to use your lower arms to set your axle position and your upper arms to set your caster. I do use 23" as a starting point but, depending on how much lift you actually have, I often find that they need to be set them a bit shorter. With the upper arms disconnected from the axle mounts, use a floor jack to raise or lower your axle angle from the pinion until you have the caster you need. One of the easiest ways to do this is to take an angle finder and place it over the flat spot on the front of your differential where you would normally attach a case spreader as shown below...
When you have a reading of 0° here, you will have 4° of caster. Set your control upper control arms so that you can get one installed on the axle, measure it's length and then set the opposite side arm according. Getting the second arm installed can be tough and using your floor jack to raise or lower your pinion will help to make this possible.
This is what too much positive caster can lead to...
Running 5.13 gears, your front drive shafts spin really really fast. For every one turn of your tire, it will spin 5.13 times and even the most balanced shafts will experience a slight vibration if your caster is set just a bit more than it should. But, however slight, it will eventually fatigue the metal of the transfer case housing and eventually lead to a break.
Running 5.13 gears, your front drive shafts spin really really fast. For every one turn of your tire, it will spin 5.13 times and even the most balanced shafts will experience a slight vibration if your caster is set just a bit more than it should. But, however slight, it will eventually fatigue the metal of the transfer case housing and eventually lead to a break.
cozdude
Guy with a Red 2-Door
soo after seeing this i have a question. how much positive caster is to much positive caster? i ask since i have 5.13's and i dont want this to happen to me lol
If you were to have asked me this 5 years ago, I would have said +6° was about as high as you want to go. Today and after what I have seen, I wouldn't recommend anything more than a stock +4°. The more caster you have, the better your Jeep will feel especially at highway speeds but, it will lead to vibrations.
cozdude
Guy with a Red 2-Door
ahh ok thanks eddie. so i assume being at 4.2-4.5ish degrees is perfectly fine and anything more than that you would consider to high?
That is correct. So long as you stick to around 4°, you should be okay.
I did ask you then and thats what im running, i will have it changed, Thanks for the heads up and honesty:thumb:
Yes. 4.10's will be ok with a bit more caster. Stock drive shafts use rzeppa joints and they will be fine as well. The problem with rzeppa joints is that the front shaft will get damaged on an 07-11 with an auto or on any 2012-up when running long enough shocks that allow for too much droop. EVEN IF you install a y-pipe or exhaust spacers, the CV boot will still fail prematurely - these are the reasons why you want to upgrade to a u-joint style double cardan shaft. You only really start to see vibration issues when running too much positive caster and/or 5.13 gears or higher.
TheStick
Member
Got it, thanks. :thumb: