Traction Bar (1 Viewer)

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I've been doing some reading about traction bars and everyone seems to be welding the front end to the rear cross-member. PO cut the one I have in half to, I assume, make room for the tranny but i'm not sure. Is there another contact point for the front end of the trac bar to be welded? Also, I have an 87 4 runner rear axle where the pumpkin is centered would this keep me from using a Land Cruiser made trac bar?
 
mdjohnsen said:
I've been doing some reading about traction bars and everyone seems to be welding the front end to the rear cross-member. PO cut the one I have in half to, I assume, make room for the tranny but i'm not sure. Is there another contact point for the front end of the trac bar to be welded? Also, I have an 87 4 runner rear axle where the pumpkin is centered would this keep me from using a Land Cruiser made trac bar?
I had to cut the torsion tube out to make room for the toybox. I had a new one bent up at a fab shop for around $40.
You can't use the old one because the frame rails get further apart closer to the rear of the rig. Just be sure to leave plenty of room to get the t-case out, I made mine a little tight.:doh:
 
Sounds like you decided to not sell the 40. If so COOL! On topic, some people have had success with antiwrap/trac bars that run just over the springs. Kinda the reverse of the oldschool drag racing trac bars. This may be an option having the centered diff.
 
Wow...that's the first i've heard of the bar running below the axle. Makes sense because of the angle. Anyone else hear of this? Which is better?
 
trac bar photos

Here is a photo of mine, toy box, custom belly pan that incorporates the mounting point for the trac bar.

Iron Pig Off Road did the design and excution. It works amazingly well. When I went on it's first shake down run to do some measuring for shocks in the rear I got a little carried away on the trails I ran. Truck was in a position that it started to do the death bounce because of no shocks. No axle wrap at all.

trac bar compressed.jpg

trac bar close up compressed.jpg

trac bar rear view compressed.jpg

Now with shocks it is great. I would build another like this in a heartbeat.
trac bar compressed.jpg
trac bar close up compressed.jpg
trac bar rear view compressed.jpg
 
1973Guppie said:
here is some pics of mine, attaches to the frame rail using a homemade bracket and other end attaches to axle.

noah


Noah how the hell does that thing hold together? I thought using stock springs on a SOA with a single bar was just asking for pinion breakage? I thought using that idea caused your leaf spring to be the third link.

Edited. Said the wrong thing.
 
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Trollhole said:
Noah how the hell does that thing hold together? I thought using stock springs on a SOA with a single bar was just asking for pinion breakage? I thought using that idea caused your driveshaft to be the third link.


are you sure its the drive shaft I always thought the one bar designs relied on the leaf spring as that link....i can't imagine that design works at all... better then nothing but not better then a two bar design... you need to solid mounting points on the axle to stop axle wrap
 
bandy rooster said:
are you sure its the drive shaft I always thought the one bar designs relied on the leaf spring as that link....i can't imagine that design works at all... better then nothing but not better then a two bar design... you need to solid mounting points on the axle to stop axle wrap


No, it works great! Actually a friend (cruiserbrett) helped me design it. I have a V8 and 35's and am not crazy on the skinny pedal but have pushed the engine fairly hard on some uphill loose 4x4 climbs. There was a NOTICEABLE difference after installing the track bar. Before the TB it was like silly putty in the rear. I have been running this for 4+ years with no problems at all. No idea if a two bar setup is better or not but I would not hesitate to build it like this again. I would guess if you are heavy on the pedal and running huge tires then you would need something much beefier but for the general guy with a SOA and up to 37's this I think would work fine.

Noah
 
Mine is made with parts from BTF and the front hoop is removable so I can get out the tranny and transfer. The front hoop is made from 2" x .120 DOM and the traction bar is made from 1.5" x .25 DOM. I have broken a rear axle shaft but my springs are nice and straight. :D

rearbarid2.jpg

cm1.jpg
 
SO, what do you guys do....Find a bunch of metal scraps and put these together? Yes, I could go and find a specially made one but then again my pumpkin is centerline and I don't have much of a crossmember. So, I guess i'm stuck with finding scrap metal? I'm don't have the resources to do my own welding so what can I do here?
 
This is what I did, you'd still need a cross member but just an idea. It's a top lind for a 3pt hitch. It works great imo. Allows almost unihibited flex yet keeps the pinion in place. I have yet to break a pinion in 2 years. It also helps that I have a double cardain on both shafts and the pinion starts 2* below directly pointed @ the second ujoint in the cardain. FYI This vehicle is SOA on 2.5" OME springs with stock engine tranny tcase, and 5.29 gears. It's on 38.5/16/15 tsls.
 
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Jetboy said:
This is what I did, you'd still need a cross member but just an idea. It's a top lind for a 3pt hitch. It works great imo. Allows almost unihibited flex yet keeps the pinion in place. I have yet to break a pinion in 2 years. It also helps that I have a double cardain on both shafts and the pinion starts 2* below directly pointed @ the second ujoint in the cardain. FYI This vehicle is SOA on 2.5" OME springs with stock engine tranny tcase, and 5.29 gears. It's on 38.5/16/15 tsls.


Is there a shackle in there somewhere? How does that get longer when you droop?

aw
 
offrd63 said:
Is there a shackle in there somewhere? How does that get longer when you droop?

aw


Its almost a copy of the front trac bar on a mini truck except that one's done on a tower to get leverege where as I use the top of the diff. No shackle. It doesn't get longer under droop. THe pinion will shift somewhat down relative to the tcase output in angle, but not much. The front sections of the two leaves act to make the other 2 links in the system. the springs length front mount to axle under droop will effectively shorten pulling the pinion up and under compression they lengthen pushing the pinion down. It stays pretty well aligned. It does act as a limiting strap to some degree however. As a system it will not eliminate all axle wrap like one with a solid axle side and shackle, but it does enough that I never get any noticeable movement or hop. It also ensures that I will never seperate the drive shaft or compress enough to blow a tcase.

I added a pic at full droop and you can see the pinion is perfectly alligned. the other pic is to show how much droop the system has. It really does work well.
 
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