don't buy lower control arms with out spherical bearings

i disagree.. Triangulated 4 linkset ups work just as well if not better than parralell 4 links w/ panhard bars..the issue is. ford designed the 4 link to be produce 5 millions times, be smooth and ride well for the DD..

the second you lower the car or change tire diameter, you have completely changed everything about the 4 link design. AS, roll etc etc...
plus the worst thing about the factory 4 link is the weak UCAs and LCA's.
i plan on taking some measurments and plugging them into my 4 link calculator to see what kind of numbers show up...

anyways...whatever

bwahl602 said:

i disagree.. Triangulated 4 linkset ups work just as well if not better than parralell 4 links w/ panhard bars..the issue is. ford designed the 4 link to be produce 5 millions times, be smooth and ride well for the DD..

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From a dynamics engineering perspective, triangulated 4 links are about the worst thing on the planet. They are, by necessity, full of compromises and they aren't particularly good at any one thing. Because the bushings have to be necessarily soft, the axle is all over the place in back and good drivers can feel this. The only rationale for using them is that they're cheap. Ford engineers were able to tune bushing durometers, for a decent ride for what the Mustang really was, a mass-market grocery getter with sporting pretensions. The need for quad-shocks should be enough to indicate that there is a lot of compliance required by that design and compliance doesn't equate to a "good" suspension. And the problem is that you can't just stiffen up the bushings to get better axle control without introducing binding and even risking the health of the torque-boxes, and you never get away from the terrible geometry changes the topology exhibits as the suspension is moved through its range of travel.

You're right that it's an okay (read "cheap") suspension for mass production and has been tuned to provide a reasonable ride but when lots of power is put to it or the driver has expectations that include track time, the 4-link needs help.

I still think that if one wants to use a live axle, a torque-arm/panhard (or better yet a Watts link) setup is the best way to decouple axle reaction and location management tasks. Even Ford did this with the S197.

plus the worst thing about the factory 4 link is the weak UCAs and LCA's.

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I don't think the arms are that bad (in fact, if you've seen the episode of Mythbusters where the guys try to rip the rear axle out of a Crown Vic like was done to that cop car in American Graffiti, you'd remember that the axle didn't come out without removing bolts and significantly weakening the control arms with a cutting torch and even then it didn't completely separate from the car...) though for aggressive driving, boxing them might help. But any stiffening of members like the control arms will always be offset by slop in the bushings necessary for this design.

The factory bushings in the front location of the lower control arms allow for lateral, axial and rotational deflection to accomodate the needs of the suspension as it moves. Putting spherical bearings there removes at least two of these degrees of freedom. If you're doing a road course car and you've set the suspension up very stiff and for very limited travel and body roll, this is probably acceptable. But for a daily driver that sees frost-heaved roads and potholes, removing these degrees of freedom while still expecting stock or near-stock suspension excursions will probably result in cracked sheetmetal at the chassis mounts. I wouldn't even put PU bushings in the front for this reason.

Gearbanger 101 said:

....busted!!!

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He's not coming back

When retaining the original four-link suspension, the best compromise between resistance to suspension bind, best control of axle position, best ride quality, and least potential damage to the chassis, is to retain rubber bushings in the rear upper control arms. This is especially important when adding a Panhard Bar. The compliance of a rubber-bushed upper control arm is required when a Panhard bar is added to the Mustang four-link suspension.





ohhh...I can cut-n-paste too

Stark77 said:

Yes - but can we change his username to JoeBiden? They both seem to be good at copying and pasting.

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Soooo true

bluelightning said:

there is nothing wrong with pasting info on this site the whole idea is to get iformation out there maybe your username should be Idiot for being stupid,most of the post is what i wrote up anyway and the post is a good description of what happens to the suspension anyway and I belive it to be true from my own experience. ,have a nice day.

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Oh don't get all You're gonna get from time to time around these parts Judging from your post count your new, so just chalk it up as a bad post and RRRRRRRREEEECOVEEEEEEERRRRRR!

Hope we didn't chase you off of the forums forever - I think we've all been the butt of the joke at least once. Do a search for Wldpny - there's a 10+ page flame of that poor guy.

bluelightning said:

there is nothing wrong with pasting info on this site the whole idea is to get iformation out there maybe your username should be Idiot for being stupid,most of the post is what i wrote up anyway and the post is a good description of what happens to the suspension anyway and I belive it to be true from my own experience. ,have a nice day.

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There's nothing with sharing the information you found, but you neglected to do give credit where it was due.

Had your post been worded something like "I found this interesting info on 'XYZ.com,' hope it helps" and then quoted the text, you would not have gotten flamed in the first place.

san~man said:

There's nothing with sharing the information you found, but you neglected to do give credit where it was due.

Had your post been worded something like "I found this interesting info on 'XYZ.com,' hope it helps" and then quoted the text, you would not have gotten flamed in the first place.

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true, always cite your source. Remember anyone can google one sentence out of a quote and determine if it's been said before. Its how online colleges trackdown plagorism (sp) haha, as you can tell I didn't go to college.


And dont feel bad I have been on and off this site for years, I got blasted when I tried to get everyone to do this Stangnet raffle a little while ago! Friggin retarted idea now that I think about it, but at the time I thought it was pure genious

It was pure crap.

But back to your original post. I am in the process of looking for new LCA's because my Generic aftermarket's are not cutting the mustard all the sudden. I will be looking into the spherical bushings, it just makes sense.