Installing Ladder bars and coil-overs need advice!!

OK guys the rules have changed for my class in mud racing and I can now use ladder bars and coil-overs instead of the factory leafsprings so I need some help. I have ordered the ladder bars(50 inch) and QA1 double adjustable coilovers(ouch those hurt). Can you all advise me on the best ways to install these? What to look for, what not to do, best practices during install?

On a mud truck I think you will want to avoid the normal diagonal link used on a lot of drag car applications. Hitting ruts and stuff will put a lot of sideload into the rearend which may be an issue with the normal little diag links. My choice would be a watts link above the housing if you have room. Behind would work as well but then you would have to put the shocks in front of the housing. No real problem with having the shocks ahead or behind other than the spring rate will need to be higher when mounting in front. Use an adjustable lower or upper mount for the shocks to allow ride height and spring rate adjustments later.

Keep the ladder bars as far apart as possible, gussett the mounting brackets to the housing, have the housing checked for straightness after you are done welding.

On a drag car I usually shoot for the bottom bar of the triangle to be level to the ground or slightly down at the front when installed in the center hole leaving room for adjustment at the track. I would think you would want something similar but I am not familiar with what works on a mud truck. Normally the rear brackets are mounted so that the top hole is even with the top of the axle tube and the lower one is 4-5 inches below. To achieve proper geometry you might want to flip those brackets and install them with the top hole up higher? Not to sure on that one but I would look at it to see how things lined up.

dkp

The shocks are going to be behind the axle that I have confirmed and we are installing a track bar from the drivers frame rail to the passeger side axle tube to keep the rear located properly. Is this the diagonal bar you are talking about?

No the track bar is a stronger deal than the diagonal link which is usually between the ladder bars themselves. The track bar will be stronger but if your truck will see a lot of suspension travel you may find that the track bar will push the rearend from side to side as the rearend goes up and down. May or may not be an issue for you.

dkp

A track bar/panhard bar might be OK in this situation since the ladder bars are so long. But I would make the track/panhard bar as long as possible, reaching as far to the other end of the housing as possible (much like the NASCAR stuff does) to keep the arc as large as possible.

The "best" design for the ladder bar crossmember/support tree is most likely a coin flip depending on the design/layout of the 50" bars themselves & the truck's ride height off the ground. Do you have any pics of the bars so we can get an idea of their shape?

I have ordered them but do not have them yet, he said they would be adding extra bracing because of length of bars and weight of the truck. Did some measuring tonite and can use 9 inch stroke shocks. The truck is a 4 wheel drive but the rear has been lowered 3 inches actually sits lower than most two wheel drives in the rear front of the truck is raised 3 inches and has bilstien 14 inch stroke custom built 90/10 shocks. The bars are supposed to be here tuesday will probably start the install that night because the next run is the 14th.

Well after this week I know why i am not a fabricator and am glad I have some really good friends that are. We finally got the bars in last night had to build our own front cross member as nothing was working out it is 2 inch square box 1/4 inch thick with a drop in the center to clear the driveshaft(not enough room to go over the driveshaft). Going to be installing the shock crossmember tonite and adding additional braces on all the ladder bar mounts. Also have to install the new tranny tonite so I can run tommorow. I will let you guys know how this works out next week.

I just read something that someone posted on YB yesterday about how QA1 is bad. Their products suck from the beginning and then they don't do crap about it. (what a couple people said, not me) Hope you don't have any problems

bb429power wrote:I just read something that someone posted on YB yesterday about how QA1 is bad. Their products suck from the beginning and then they don't do crap about it. (what a couple people said, not me) Hope you don't have any problems

Was it a chevy guy?

I know alot of people running QA1's and havent heard of any problems and I know one guy who installed them wrong and bent his he sent them back and they installed new shafts(he had to pay for the shafts) but they did repair them.

lghting94 wrote:I know alot of people running QA1's and havent heard of any problems and I know one guy who installed them wrong and bent his he sent them back and they installed new shafts(he had to pay for the shafts) but they did repair them.

Well that's good then. I was told some bad things, and I know the one guy was a very smart Ford guy. If they are good like you said, more power to ya. It might have been a QA1 axle, I think. But I don't really know what exact parts QA1 sells, I know what kind of parts they sell though.

Well just got home from the race tonite and the ladder bars are great we went straight and hooked the truck launching at 3600 off the transbrake took the bubble with a 2.428 on a 100 foot track ended up with third after it was all over because I waited to long to make my second pass and the track got very rough. Now we get to start making some adjustments and get even faster.