Rockwells make your sac swell!

How do you guys feel about this suspension set up?

I thought about that setup when redoing mine but thought that it would be to floppy felling

Would cutting off the c's and moving to the opposite side with the knuckle to put the steering in front of the axle fix the Ackerman issue?

No. The ackerman is built into the outer knuckles. You would have to make your own steering arm to fix it.

I thought since all the forces of the tires getting traction coming from under the axle center line at the ends of the axle you would want your links to attach at the ends on the lowers. What say you? Anyone run this setup

Mine is the more standard way, but wasn't fat girl like that picture.

I went back last night looking at OEM's knuckles and it looks like his steering arms are straight, how is he getting his to turn right or are they not really "correct"

Got my chassis on table. Getting ready to hard mount motor and build sub frame for links to mount to. Anyone got any suggestions if they were back at this point in their build? Any thing that came back up later in the build that i might overlook now?

Just build everything strong

Set your drivetrain where your shafts are level and equal length from front to back, where you can carry one drive shaft for a spare .

I'm going to make the third on front axle, go in front of the motor. So if they are equal length I think it will put my when at 145. Kinda long but ill try to keep them close.

Mine has a carrier bearing setup on the front and my axel chunk is in front of my motor pulley and my wheelbase is 147" :****: and it gets around no problem.

Eddyj said:

My old driveshafts are set up for 1350 u joints on the axle end. Who sells a good flange to attach driveshaft to axle? Should I upgrade to 1410. I don't see the need to.

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Just buy the stock drive shafts from the 2.5 ton truck the rocks came out of. They cost $20 bucks a piece and have 1410 joints and flanges on both ends or take the flange off of the t-case end and just use the 1410 with a yoke set-up on the t-case.

Why would you put the third in front of the motor?

Elliott said:

Why would you put the third in front of the motor?

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My third is in front of my motor because; the third , at full droop, fits between the balancer and the radiator . The balancer drops between the top link bars. that
Keeps your rig low with no interference with anything. The only issue I had was I had to make fender well headers because the drive shaft contacted the exhaust at full droop.

Wouldn't that make the front driveshaft a pain to run around the oil pan?I run mine as a passenger side drop with the driveshaft straight and one piece, just had to run that sides top 4 link bar straight tho. I haven't noticed anyone running them centered up like that, if the driveshaft clears and holds up well that would be easier to work around I guess.

He's not saying that the driveshaft is directly in front of the motor, just that the front axle is far enough forward that the 3rd comes up in front of the motor on uptravel.

You know, like most custom built rigs. Either the front axle is hung way out front, or the drivetrain is moved back (according to how you want to look at it, and chassis design)

And unless you are running a super short trans and tcase, that usually leaves you with a really long front driveshaft, making a 2 piece front shaft necessary sometimes

Sometimes the driveshaft does come close to the motor or trans. But with the axle way up in front like that it gives you enough driveshaft length to use a carrier bearing to get around it.

My front axle is an inch or two in front of my motor. At full compression the pinion is completely above my crankshaft pulley. It comes within an inch or less of my LS2 t-stat housing, or rather, what was once a t-stat housing. Because now it is just a flat plate since the driveshaft flange would have hit a t-stat housing. My front drive shaft goes out and then back in to clear the trans and starter using a carrier bearing. Lots of other PITA customizations also to get it low with rocks.

I run a sbc 350 turbo and a 205 with 123"of wheelbase .and my my drive shafts work out to be within a half inch of each other. With no carrier bearing. But I do only have 6" or so of up travel.Also sitting on 44's with 23" of belly clearance.Its not really that hard to build around the chunks once you've done a few.There is a little more thought into building a Rockwelled rig but there is a lot of upsides also IMO.If you think about it how many do you see ever having drive shaft of u joint problems.

Not saying never, but between the two rockwelled rigs I have, in the past 7 years I have had very little driveshaft or Ujoint failures , also I rarely ever look under or worry about driveshafts hitting rocks in a rock garden , when I ran tons I was constantly lookin for better lines so they didn't hit, me and yankster talked about it before , the design of the rockwell must somehow absorb a lot of the shock load from the tires and doesn't put it back in the driveline like a conventional ring and pinion