Questions with long arms
 

Thinking of making long arms for a 6.5 lift on my 97 xj my question is can I weld 1/4 or 1/2 plates on each side of the frame directly in front or behind the cross member instead of making a new one? And pros or cons of this with suggestions or bad thoughts.

Also it would be a y link not a true four link

Weldding 1/2inch plates to the thin "frame" sounds like a bad idea to me. Making your own long arm kit sounds like a bad idea also when you feel the need to come here to ask questions about it. Buy a kit and copy it may not sound so bad.(then sell the one you purchased). Not trying to rain on your parade but you asked for it.

Thanks for the info not worried about making the arms made multiple suspension sets ups on hot rods before guess I'll just stick with buying a cross member and making the arms.

Look up hudfab mid-arm build. i think thats who it was.

you need a crossmember of some sort

Why?

you probably could get away without building a crossmember ive seen link set ups like that but i think it would be stronger with the links mounted to a crossmember.

That's how most if not all make their set ups.

ok, you dont NEED one but its much easier/stronger.

http://www.polyperformance.com/shop/...t-p-20680.html

Copy something like this...

Crossmember is needed to keep the stress off if the unibody frame in the area of the articulation. The frame is just sheet metal formed and supported by the body.

There's a person selling a practically new clayton long arm crossmember on the suspesion classifieds thread for $225 obo

While i don't reccomend it, I ran some longarm brackets welded directly to my stock framerail for quite some time. No issues. In fact it was a gen 2 rockkrawler system, and I do believe they still have the same method of attaching the lower arm brackets to this day. If it was so bad I'm sure they would have changed their design.


Anyone who has the offroad needs for longarms should plate the framerails at the least anyway. And if they just want longarms for a street driven mall cruiser, then they don't need the extra strength anyway.

This. Unibody stiffeners should be needed before longarms anyways but this is cherokee forum so let the "omg longarmz and pvc roofrack on the cheap" convo's continue.:euro: