possible longer travel shocks

[ccobra8]

While making my winch mount with the front bumper off I may have come up with a easy way to put longer travel shocks on red. This will unbind the front shocks and take out the harshness of it's ride. The way I see it the ball joints want let the A-arms go down any farther. From what I remember from dirt bike day and on the ranger a third of the travel should be taken up by the machines weight. This way when the wheel goes over a small hole the wheel go down into the hole and then comes back when it passes over it. On red when it goes over a small hole the wheel does not go down but about an inch. This makes the whole machine tip towards the hole and then hit the other side. I believe Honda did this so we could not jack it up. While I have been sitting under the front end studying the winch mount I got to looking at the A-arm mounts. The ball joints want travel down any farther. With the shocks at bottom the cv axel never really gets that close to straight.

All that said the simple way to fix this would be to move the shock mount in front of or behind the a-arm and move the mount down. I really don't think this would work. I think it would brake or bend the a-arms. The other way I see to fix this would be to move the a-arm mounts down which should be hard to fab up. But the way they made the frame it would be a peace of cake. this would change the angle the ball joints work at and let the a-arms go down a lot farther. It really does not make sense to me to build a machine and have the ball joints work and stay at there maxium angle all the time. That is where a ball joint is the weekest.

All this is just theroy at this point but my red is going to get on my car lift and a shock is comeing off. I am going to put a transmission jack under that wheel and see what the angles look like. I am going to get some more angle and fab up a bracket to move the a-arms down and see what the results are.

If I am right you may be able to jack red up 3 to 4 inches and add that much travel at the same time. This would make red the most adjustable of all the utv's including the rzr.

[sfrankland]

Okay I follow most of it but will await a few pics to see your whole process. Hopefully it works but I still don't see how you would get the extra 3-4" of lift.

[Cenflrider]

Ok, we need pictures Alex! While I haven’t had my shock off, BR sitting on all 4’s in a static state my ball joints are in the center of travel.
Ball joints in general have the same strength at it maximum allowed travel as it does in the center. Where we run into problems is bouncing on and off the maximum travel stop much like dislocating your shoulder when it’s under stress at it’s maximum reach.
While I haven’t studied the underside of BR it seems to me A arm relocation would be the way to go. This would not change the suspension geometry. This would also necessitate the need for longer axles with 3-4 inches of lift. The 4 wheeler mags are full of these kits (for 4 wheelers) and longer axles. Check this site out http://www.gorilla-axle.com/index.php they really have some good stuff.
Nuff said, I will await further pictures and your assessment of the situation before I type anymore. Sorry if I appear to be ranting

[ccobra8]

IF I am right in the way I see this when you move the a-arms down 2 inches it will move them in about 3/4's of an inch. This should compensate for the longer travel. Now I am not looking lift mine four inches. As long as I have 12 inches I am good. I have seen a Ranger drive over a five galloin bucket and never touch it. I rode with this guy several times over the years. He broke a lot of gorilla axels. The last time I talked to him they where going to coustom make a set of front axels for him. I am not into that kind of extremes. When you mod it to the point it breaks you have gone to far. just my .02's.

I am going to put it on my lift and remove a shock and find out what the maxium travel is. That wll tell me wheather I am on the right track or not. I plan on moving the a-arms down as much as an inche to unbind the ball joints any way. It must be able to move down so it can soak up the small bumps. When I installed my lift kit it pushed the it down to the ball joint stops. I had to compress the shock to get the blots in. I knew this was not good.
I can fix this! I think!

I was looking in summit and saw coil over shocks. I think I can get a set for around 500. They have longer travel than the stock ones.

[Cenflrider]

Big Red is my first SxS so I only been a rider o a few other machines. The ride of
BR is much better than what I've been on in the past.So I really have no plans to raise mine. I will get wheels and tires after the stock ones wear out.
Multi-mount, I hope to have the the layout complete this weekend. I will take pictures along the way for posting. I will try the photo-bucket idea. I was just reducing what I had posting it.