The amount of misalignment each joint can provide is more marketing than it is an advantage if your are comparing between the two.
Clevite vs Rubber vs Poly
- Thread starter Eddie Greenlee
- Start date
your right , never heard of a bent upper. but never ran into an aluminum control arm, so that tricked me into asking about strength. . I talked to Marty at Savvy earlier and he explained to me that the rod is solid except where it is machined to accept the currie JJ. and its much lighter.., and many other technical characteristics that i wont be able to share, but it impressed me. One was that this type of aluminum has the need to stay in the same shape it was manufactured in, so in case of a sharp rock hit it will resist the urge to bend and stay bent making it easier to bend back into shape. Pretty damn cool if ya ask me.
@mrblaine still waiting for your thoughts on the duroflex joint vs the jj. Some input from someone with experience with both would help a lot with my decision to go with the other 6 Metalcloak arms or replace the 2 I have with all eight savvy arms. Any help?
Anyone else with input is obviously welcome to chime in
Anyone else with input is obviously welcome to chime in
The Savvy race rigs have run the JJ for several races without ever wearing one out or needing to rebuild one or replace one. That exactly mirrors my experience with them to the letter and I've been running them for at least 15 years. In that time, the ones on my rig that I take to JV have been through the trails out there 100's of times with never a single issue. If you dig around online for failures of the other one, the info is out there.
Lastly, don't let anyone convince you that the JJ doesn't have isolation or that it transmits NVH because that simply isn't true as Chris will attest to. I currently have 4 rigs with JJ control arms on them so I can readily speak to the amount of NVH transmission especially considering one of them is bone stock and I removed NEW sub 1000 mile stock control arms and replaced them with Savvy JJ arms simply to do a comparison. The JJ transmit less, far less NVH than stock arms at stock height and ride and steer better.
@mrblaine I started this thread a little confused with the types of material used inside the bushings. thanks for clearing that up for me . Can you also tell me the importance of getting new adjustable control arms (savvy) especially the rear uppers . The last thing i want to do is waist money on a piece of equipment that is not needed and then regret it. My rough country 4" lift came with stationary lower control arms and no upper control arms. The upper control arms are stock. i know ive asked this before ( so yall please forgive me for repeating myself) but am ready to pull the trigger on this and other mods over the next several months. ex. adjustable track bars , sye , CV drive shaft and maybe an 8.8 , Aussie locker on front dana 30.
my jeep is running great with the current setup but i am wanting to improve it for articulation and safety and reliability.
my jeep is running great with the current setup but i am wanting to improve it for articulation and safety and reliability.
Simple... Because you can adjust them.
Those fixed length control arms (garbage BTW) that come with the RC (and lower quality) lifts are garbage, seriously. They assume you need a certain length control arm, but that doesn't take into account that it sometimes differs from vehicle to vehicle.
There's no way you can fine tune your pinion angle (and therefore get of vibrations or improper driveshaft angles) which leaves you in a pretty shitty situation. The adjustable control arms are the professional way to do a lift. You have 100% adjustability over your pinion angles and the position of your axles.
In addition to that, you get a joint that is rebuildable (among other things).
There is a common myth on the internet that you use adjustable lowers for wheelbase and adjustable uppers for pinion angle. That little nugget of misinformation overlooks the fact that due to both arm mounts being above and below axle tube centerline, it is impossible to adjust either without changing both wheelbase and pinion angle.
As stated above, the importance of adjustable arms in either or my preference, both places, allows me to adjust pinion angle and then move the axle forward or back at full stuff to dial in the relationship of the tire and axle to the wheel opening.
Much lighter than what? The Savvy aluminum uppers are heavier than the Currie DA arms built the same way. Currie uses a threaded steel tube that is smaller and uses smaller shanked JJ's. The steel arms are in fact lighter.
My favorite was the guy who said he was switching to get rid of micro-vibrations. Uh, if they are micro, how do you know you have them?
We don't externally grease them. I hate the mess. We pull them apart, clean them out and grease just the ball with red moly. Not for everyone but I work on enough over-greased JJ's and the mess I have to clean up when I work on suspensions that it's worth it for us.
I'm guilty of over greasing to the point of ruining a bushing half in the process. Treating a JJ like a tie rod end or ball joint is NOT the way to grease them.
So if my jeep is not getting drive line vibs and the wheel is in the center of the wheel well, is it necessary i move onto the fully adjustables at this point in time? now when i change over to the 8.8 i feel like its a necessity i have the adjustables .
Is the difference in the flex of a stock vs the Savvy/Currie enough reason to change ?
I wish I had the jeeps and cash laying around to do all the comparisons you get to do! But I don't think my apartment complex would be very happy if I picked up a fourth vehicle to take up parking spots.
I think when the time comes I'll be going with jj's for the other six arms, and if ever the duroflex joints give up the ghost I'll stick some jj's in their arms.
Thanks
I design and manufacture parts for Jeeps. Everything from steering, to suspension, to brakes. I need to know what works, what doesn't, why it works, what the differences are, and how to make it work with the least amount of effort possible. I can't guess at it, I have to know. If someone says that JJ's are worse than stock, I'll take the stock arms off with no other change, put on a set of JJ control arms and then my helper and I will drive the rig over a period of several weeks on a known course that we use that has varied terrain, pavement conditions, etc. and evaluate the difference until we know them well.
We did the same with the mid arm suspension and outboarded shocks on his rig. It is a far more labor intensive way to do it but we needed to know the answers. We did the mid arm on the rear and made no other changes and he drove it for a week or so. Then we did the front and the same driving. Then we outboarded the rear shocks. At the end of it with each successive mod, we knew the changes in rig performance each made and then we stretched the wheelbase with no other change.
We learned a bunch.
mrblaine, would you say that in most every evaluation of control arms with JJs that the JJs were superior over the stock arms and rubber bushings??
That's awesome. And shows dedication well beyond what one would find most anywhere else. It's too bad you and your shop aren't close by, for when the time comes that something jeep related is way over my head. I will be hard pressed to find anyone with the knowledge and passion that you seem to have in abundance
my Savvy rear control arms will be in Friday, So until i get the 8.8 in i guess I should just measure the pinion angle then the stock upper control arms,, adjust the new Savvy arms to the same length and install them. Then check the pinion. is that about it?
PStov98TJ
TJ Enthusiast
Yep. If you don't have vibes now, that's how I'd set them up.
Just do them one at a time. No measuring necessary.
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