School me on mid-arm vs long-arm

And it's done. Just placed an order for the driveshaft. Ended up stretching the wheelbase a few inches, seeing as I don't need the extra space for the track bar anymore. Will probably outboard the shocks in the very near future but for the time being, just wanted to get it done. Only immediate reaction is that I might want to ditch the 4.5 MC Springs and replace them with something in the 3" range. I'm sitting a bit too tall. Here are some pics of the finished product. For now. Will report back with driving impressions once I get it on the road/trail.

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Rock Toy said:
OK, I'll bite. How much vertical separation does the Savvy mount have? The Ballistic mounts give you the option of 4, 5 or 6" of separation. Looking at the pics of the Savvy mounts, I'm guessing that they are offering around 5 or 6"s as well, considering the lower mount is actually up a little higher than on the Ballistic ones. And as far as I can tell, pretty much every 4-link bracket requires at least a 1" body lift.

What I did notice though was that the Savvy mounts triangulate the lowers in a little more than all of the other mounts, which I can see as beneficial for helping locate that rear axle. So that's nice.

All that being said, I am considering the Savvy brackets if they will sell me just the frame-side rear mounts. There appears to be enough knowledge and literature out there to walk me through it without having to reinvent the suspension from scratch.

Here are some pics of the Ballistic brackets, btw. They sure are beautiful :devilish:

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I just finished my Savvy Midarm last week, and I would note one additional difference in the brackets is the "C"-channel that the frame brackets utilize instead of the "L" that Ballistic uses. I'm sure they Ballistics are sufficient but the C on the Savvy is particularly elegant because it makes just about all the load get transferred into the frame by means of mechanical interface, ie the C reacts the moment on the bracket. You could essentially just tack weld the Savvy brackets in and they would probably hold. This makes the Savvy brackets dumbed down for people such as me who have been previously been awarded world's worst welder.
 
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B00mb00m said:
This makes the Savvy brackets dumbed down for people such as me who have been previously been awarded world's worst welder.
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I'm not exactly a certified welder either so I had a friend drop some beads for me. He's a pro and there is a 0% chance of these things separating from the frame :D Overall, I am very happy with my suspension setup so far. On paper, its what I wanted. Now it time to tune. And I just picked up a rearAntirock so that needs to find its way in there.
 
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Rock Toy said:
I'm not exactly a certified welder either so I had a friend drop some beads for me. He's a pro and there is a 0% chance of these things separating from the frame :D Overall, I am very happy with my suspension setup so far. On paper, its what I wanted. Now it time to tune. And I just picked up a rearAntirock so that needs to find its way in there.
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It's not always that the new brackets "separate" but the frame separates from itself lol. I saw a guy i wheel with he had just welded on lower on the front, no C or L and actually caved in the frame.
 
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Here is a cool video I got from this weekend that shows my favorite part of the midarm. When I break traction now I spin but don't bounce. When I had just midarm front I would get super bad bounce as I tried to bump or add wheel speed to anything.
 
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That's sweet. I am actually running short arms up front and have been curious about how that is going to work with the mid-arm rear suspension. I suppose time with tell. But your TJ appears to work VERY well!!!
 
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So just figured that I would wrap this thread up with a final post on the results. I ended up swapping out the 4.5" springs with 3.5" MC Springs. Then had to cut off the reweld the lower spring perches and swap out the longer FOX shocks with a set from Savvy for the 3.5" springs. Then lined up the pinion/driveshaft, had the wheels balanced and the caster set to 7*.

Jeeps runs down the freeway like a Cadillac. Just drove it 400 miles R/T to Fordyce and back and it behaved very well on the road. Could use a rear swaybar but that's going to wait until I stretch it and outboard the shocks. Maybe even swap to C/O's.

On the rocks, the suspension worked exactly as planned. Great traction, good articulation and no rock bouncing. Walked down and up winch hills 5, 4 & 3 with no assists. Considering I was following trucks with 42-47" tires, I felt pretty good about it. And surprisingly, the rear 4 link balanced fairly well with the short arm front suspension. Still plan on three linking the front end but might choose to wait a season and Coil Over the front while I'm at it.
 
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I'm sure that I did. They are all pretty much the same with small differences that I don't think really make a difference. I most likely went with the Ballistic because they had them in stock and were able to weld them in-house. And the price was right.
 
B00mb00m said:

Here is a cool video I got from this weekend that shows my favorite part of the midarm. When I break traction now I spin but don't bounce. When I had just midarm front I would get super bad bounce as I tried to bump or add wheel speed to anything.
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Looks like an almost perfect day for weather at Naches!
 
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