Anybody ever try building their own long travel arms?

Just curious. I know there are some careful angles that must be met and maintained for proper alignment, but I'm sure there is somebody out there that decided to give it a go.

 

I'm pretty sure I've seen it done. And they were very set up shop/material wise. I would just buy from the big boys or used. The time involved without the step by step R&D behind it sounds horrific.

 

Yeah, but man, saving all that money and taking on the challenge sounds interesting to me. I'd try it just to try it. See if I could pull it off.

the only thing preventing me from trying is time. I have none.

 

Finally a thread up my alley! I've designed three long travel setups, built two of them myself. They were all for 4Runners though. https://www.instagram.com/fish_built/ on instagram has done a lot of custom work on his Tundra, though I think he's using off the shelf lowers and then designed and built some billet uppers. Much fancier than anything I've done since I'm cheap.

This one I made for myself in college since I couldn't afford anyone else's stuff. Still have the arms on the wall in my shop





This one was more recent and an improved design that I built for my buddy. Went from nothing to designed and welded in about 3 days!







And then starting to play with a new design:




Most of the stuff I've done personally was at the end of the day the price of joints and some steel plate, plus time obviously. So couple hundred bucks. A Tundra wouldn't be any different.

 

This makes me think it is more possible than I thought. I think the most difficult part for me would be managing warping from the welding.

 

You're probably a way better welder than I am. I have never had warping as a consideration. What's the worst thing that happens from a bit of warping? Alignment is off? The design should be able to compensate for any warping of the geometry within reason. I've never had any issues with anything being out of wack by more than maybe .050" and that's not using a jig. Jig it and it should be dead on. The design is the hard part in my opinion (and that's coming from someone who works as a designer every day). The fabrication is just cut some plates out and weld it together. Making sure it cycles correctly, that you're getting the geometry change you want, that CV plunge is accounted for, etc. is the time consuming part. And you ideally you have a 3D scan, or you have the suspension fully disassembled to get accurate measurements. So if it's your daily driver that can complicate things since it's a bitch to measure stuff on the truck.

 

Yeah I have no 3D scanning or software ability at all. If I were to do it, I would have to do it the old fashioned way, using the truck as the jig and making measurements with a tape measure and maybe some calipers.

 

That's how I've done all of mine until I had a friend send me a frame scan for a 4Runner! If you want to use CAD, Fusion 360 from Autodesk is free for individuals last I checked. If you don't want to do CAD, that would make things very tricky but not impossible. My first design in college I was limited to an angle grinder and a welder essentially, so I made everything out of square tubing and then welded a plate on the bottom. I still designed it in CAD, but you could do it with pen and paper if you're committed with minimal resources. The newer suspension I did everything was cut on a plasma table which made it easy.

The other issue is knowing how strong to make everything. Lots of people build their own shit with no engineering experience let alone analysis or finite element support, but it shouldn't go without stating that if you're completely winging it to make it extremely robust since if it fails at 80mph on the interstate you could kill others or yourself.

 

My motto when fabricating is "If it isn't overbuilt, it ain't built right."

I have a 12.5k winch on my 4200 pound jeep grand cherokee, mounted on a 5/8in plate, in a bumper I made out of 1/4in plate steel, mounted to the unirails by inserting 12in long 1/4 wall 2x4 box tube into the frame rails then sandwiching the outside with 1/4 plate and held together with 5/8 grade 8 bolts.

So yeah, I make things strong.