What are the differences between the narrow lower with the strut arm and the wide lower A-arm?? Pros and Cons of each..if any....I am getting ready to throw one on the front of the old chevy and what to do it right the first time... Thanks, COS
I have stock upper and lower arms with struts of my 51 F-1. F E and C-6, over 135K miles with no problems. I have seen some of the tubeular arms rip out of the crossmember.............OLDBEET
The narrow arm uses a strut rod to locate it in place front-to-back. The wide A-arm use the crossmember and all the loads go through that. The stock design with a strut rod works fine and I also have that with stock arms, many miles and no problems on my 38 Chevy sedan with a BBC. If you have to go with the wide lower arms, then make sure to brace the crossmember sufficiently to deal with the forces.
I read on here where "El Polacko" adds an extra support at the rear of the wide A arm to take the load off the crossmember. It's the way to go if you don't use the strut.
Thanks for all the info guys... It will be going on a 48 Chevy and I might loose some of you here but it wil be bagged( some of you like it some of you don't)...So I was wondering about bind with the narrow lower and the strut bar??? I didn't know about the wide one could do nasty stuff like that...How common is it???
I can't speak from experence with airbags, I know theres several guys here who know their bags, but after an unfortunate bottom out on the expressway in my '47 Chevy truck, I managed to bend my strut arm brackets (in hindsite, I had em mounted to low/long, but hey I didn't use no stinkin' kit ) When I fixed it, I went with Heidits tubular strut rod kit, which uses a rubber bushing piviot point instead of the stock donut style mount. It's worked great on my truck, bolted right to my stock lower a arms, was straight forward to install, and for $129 bucks, wasn't worth my time to fabricate something myself. I would think that this would work nice with bags in that it would not seem to bind like the stock unit. http://www.heidts.com/heip14-2.htm
Toot thanks for the Tip!! Those look like they would work great...! I have a Ch***ie Engineering Inc. cross member and wonder if those would work with that set up..?? Because those look like the way to go with Airbags!!
The Heidt's tubular strut rod kit is nice because it lets the control arm pivot around the same axis without binding. Not putting tubular A arms on a Mustang II because they'll rip out of the crossmember is like not using tires because they might blow up ... If A arms aren't installed correctly, or as 38chev said if they aren't braced properly, then sure, lots of stuff can go wrong. But I wouldn't fault A arms solely on their design. COS, if you're looking for a new set of strut rod frame brackets, check these out: http://www.welderseries.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=22_78&products_id=402
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