I have been looking at Ladder bars for a while now cause the Fummins Hops BAD and its gonna break something. I was thinking about These
They look purty good. I may end up building my own but these are an option for sure.
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1997 F350 CrewCab XLT 4x4. ?hp/?lb-ft Intercooled, BTS Trans, BTS Dual HPOP, Big Full Force Diesel Jectors, Big Turbo, Ford AIC, Rockin S Custom 5 inch Exhaust w/AeroTurbine Muffler, AFE Stage II Intake, Total Diesel Performance 4 Positon Chip, White Face Gauges,
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the 55" ones would work , but there si at least 1/4" of fore and aft suspension movement taht you need to allow for, I beleive Dusten had pro-comp bars, real pricey too $600 adn he took them off. I made a set for the white truck which worked very well, and I will modify them soon to put int eh new truck, teh front shackle is required for everythign to work properly.
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1997 F250 FireTruck Red,CC SB,auto( Prescion TC, HD-2Tugger),5" exhaust, custom Swamp 195cc Hybrid injectors, TWildman 4-pos chip,open air cleaner, I/C w Banks intake, 225,000km,AIC,dual electric fans,Sky mfg RSK w/ D60w/ARB locker,Ramsey 15k# winch, BFG/AT 315's, F450 rear springs, home of Craig's Performance Diesel pictures
" lying is a cheap way out of reality, the real cost is the loss of respect and trust"
I have always had a serious case of axle wrap and hop. Once I got my injectors, it was totally undrivable.
Here is what I did to make mine stop hopping without ladder bars.
First, I noticed that my pinion angle was slightly up. I mean the nose of the diff was slightly up. Since the axle will push the nose even further up under acceleration, this is was preset in the wrong direction. I shimmed my axle so that the nose of the diff was just a slight bit DOWN. I suppose maybe 3*-5* at rest? this way when I step on it the axle will have to work through the 'pre-load' before moving upwards and an angle that will likely start breaking parts.
Next I torqued down my u-bolts to 120 foot pounds. I was amazed how much slop I had before I did this.
Last, I created some clamps that I bolted to the back of the spring pack so that the bottom leaf is tight with the rest of the pack.
Doing all this eliminated nearly ALL of my problems.
What hop I have left I will be eliminating with a set of home built ladder bars modeled after some I see in the offroad community. Sam's Offroad sells them for something like <gasp> 500 bucks. (longer ones for a truck are more than the listed price on the web site) I figured I could make them for less than half that. (you would be surprised how much some of the parts cost) Notice the shackle on the front. Without this shackle, the rear suspension would bind and ride terrible. Additionally, if you put two of these on a truck, once again the rear end would bind and there would be no articulation. So... in summary, use a ladder bar of this design, and only use one if you do anything other than hard pavement street driving.
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You do not have to use a shackle if you properly set up the link geometry with respect to link angle and length. Or even just get it close and it will still be fine with minimal pinion angle deviation through full cycle.
Obviously if the link is the same length as the forward half of the leafspring from axle to hanger, and it is the same angle, the axle will fully articulate with the pinion angle never changing. But you want the pinion angle to remain constant with respect to the t-case output yoke, so it will need to actually rotate downward as the suspension compresses in order to remain consistant. To do this you could either make the forward attachment point for the link the same point as the leafspring hanger as a many do, or you could make the link slightly longer than the forward half of the leafspring, or have it at slightly more angle than the leafspring, any of these would make the pinion tip down slightly as the suspension cycled. But none of the correct approaches include a telescoping section or a hanger to accomodate bad link geometry.
If you put rediculously long links (as so many do) you will have to use some sort of hanger or a telescoping section. But if you simply get the link angle/length even close, the pinion angle will be close enough through full cycle and the suspension will not bind.
Charlie
On another note, I just put airbags on the rear of mine for towing, and with them even at the mildest pressure, the truck rides BETTER, lol, and the suspension is much tighter and wheel hop doesn't happen.
That one simply places the forward link mount using the same point as the leafspring hanger, just as I suggested many do. This will make the assembly act like a radius arm design as far as pinion angle changes. Assuming the front of the leafspring is relatively close to the t-case output yoke (as is very often the case on cars) this design will be nearly flawless. But on trucks where the distance between the t-case output yoke and the leafspring hanger can be quite large, the pinion angle created by this design will not be "right", but will still work exceptionally better than really long links no matter how they are set up.
That is real close to the style I ran mud racing for years alittle different by same concept, mine were home made so we could customize what ever we wanted to fit our needs. Works awsome and still have that style on my 79' in my sig.
I will be attempting these on my 99'PSD soon prolly in the spring.
Charlie, I used 6 foot ones on teh white truck to minimize teh ampoutn of movement and to better match the drive shaft angle, but I found that if I loaded teh truck w 2000# teh bars tightened up, also if left without teh front shackle then it limited teh articulation I could get in teh rear, as teh axle moves fore & aft in realation to teh frame, due to teh leaf spring movement. the caltrac bars would be nice if you could make the front hanger, possible but not easy. As soon as I can get an axle to do a disc brake conversion I will also do a center section skid plate with traction bar mounts and bars out to teh frame . A four link and coils would be great or airbags, but that si far too much work for me to do by myself and I don't have teh tiem.
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1997 F250 FireTruck Red,CC SB,auto( Prescion TC, HD-2Tugger),5" exhaust, custom Swamp 195cc Hybrid injectors, TWildman 4-pos chip,open air cleaner, I/C w Banks intake, 225,000km,AIC,dual electric fans,Sky mfg RSK w/ D60w/ARB locker,Ramsey 15k# winch, BFG/AT 315's, F450 rear springs, home of Craig's Performance Diesel pictures
" lying is a cheap way out of reality, the real cost is the loss of respect and trust"
The forward portion of your leafspring from u-bolts to hanger is one link. There's no getting around that. It's also on a certain angle depending on the lift you're running and the load on them. Imagine placing a solid rod between the leafspring perch and the hanger, that is the "link" geometry that you must work with when adding another link to control wrap.
By placing your lower link (traction bar) mounting location so far forward of the upper link (leafspring forward section) you create serious issues for travel. Assuming the leafspring foward section is at a greater angle than the bars and the bars are near level (as is so often the case) you will see the mounting point for the bar at the axle cycle nearing perfectly up and down with nearly zero movement front to back with respect to the frame. But the leafspring (if it's angled down (as it should be assuming it's not overloaded) will cycle up and down the same amount, but it will also have to cycle rearward as it compresses due to the arc that the forward (fixed) portion of the spring must travel through, this is why the shackles swing rearward when the leafsprings are compressed. Problem is, that with lower links (traction bars) so long that they are cycling with near zero rearward movement and the upper links (leafspring forward section) having a good bit of rearward movement through full cycle, the suspension will attempt to rotate the axle, tipping the pinion UP through full cycle. But since the leafspring is not mounted with a heim or a polyjoint (single point) in order for the axle to rotate tipping the pinion up, the leafspring has to actually wrap just for the suspension to compress. Obviously certain spring packs will be less resistant than others, but the end result is little suspension travel due to substantial binding.
This is why the lower link needs to be much closer in length to the leafspring from u-bolts to hanger in order for the suspension to still work exactly the same, minus wrap. The long links you describe will probably not allow your truck to compress the leafsprings nearly like it used to. I bet you can actually notice the stiffness(binding) even when you take a turn or hit bumps.
hard to tell now, teh bars are removed from that truck and I have not driven it in over a year, it had F450 front springs and reg rears whcih made teh front hard and the rear soft. New truck has F450 rears and rear fronts so teh rear is super stiff and the frotn soft , with teh RSK kit too, so it si totally different. I do not get axle wrap now, but the rear is voliently stiff. need to soften up teh rear by removing springs.
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1997 F250 FireTruck Red,CC SB,auto( Prescion TC, HD-2Tugger),5" exhaust, custom Swamp 195cc Hybrid injectors, TWildman 4-pos chip,open air cleaner, I/C w Banks intake, 225,000km,AIC,dual electric fans,Sky mfg RSK w/ D60w/ARB locker,Ramsey 15k# winch, BFG/AT 315's, F450 rear springs, home of Craig's Performance Diesel pictures
" lying is a cheap way out of reality, the real cost is the loss of respect and trust"
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