Congrats on the impending kiddo and the two bucks! What a great way to wrap up 2023.
My buddy hooked up with a velvet buck on opening morning. We went the rest of archery season without seeing another legal buck. Rifle season starts in 10 days.
Nice buck, good luck out there for rifle season.
Congratulations you guys! I'm sure you are already making camper expansion plans.
I bit the bullet and ordered new actuators for my camper so I will have spare old one for you.
What actuators did you go with, synchronized? - might be shopping for some new ones if I have to build another one of these. Thanks for the offer, I'll keep that in mind if another one quits on me.
Thanks for all the good words above guys. Definitely an exciting and scary time, the boy is due in approximately 4 weeks and we couldn't feel any less prepared haha. Another truck & camper project is imminent with this somewhat recent change of course.
Back to regular updates,
Sometimes we do it nice because we do it twice - or at least I do...
This front bar has not been working well for several reasons: it's too stiff, and still hits the frame...
So round 2, smaller sway bar trials. I went from a 1.4" bar to a .9" bar off an early 90's explorer.
Before I committed a bunch of time, I wanted to do a proof of concept first. Literally bolted it up with the explorer end links and bad geometry just to "field test".
The old 1.4" bar was so stiff it wouldn't let the front flex at all. It had great onroad manners, it handled like it was on rails. Not so great for offroad where this truck spends the vast majority of its time. Decent front articulation with the new smaller bar below. Previously that back wheel would be squished into the bed.
Concept proven. With the previous bar all flex was transferred to the rear. The front axle was almost completely locked up. This translated to very poor offroad manners, if you hit a pothole on one side, both coils were trying to absorb it and it was not absorbed well. Going through uneven terrain the front being locked from articulation made it feel like the truck was trying to kickflip the camper off it's back...
Random visitor out front while working on this swaybar.
Now that I knew I was on the right track I pulled some better links, off a WJ.
Also, cut down and modified the sway bar mounts to correct the geometry. It's not quite 90* between bar & links, but it's close. This style of link allows for significantly more droop than the previous balljoint style link I was running.
This was a huge win, now that the front axle can move, it rides 40% better offroad. It doesn't handle like it's a race car on the hwy anymore but it still has decent road manners with both a front and rear bar, I would say better than previous to the SAS.
Edit ** I had considered going with a stiff bar and disconnects but from what I've read disconnects are fairly clunky and I'm lazy. I would prefer a more balanced front and rear bar that allows full articulation without the need to disconnect/reconnect links. Also, this was cheap $50, any aftermarket bar with disconnects was pushing $400+.
