Outer Limits 4x4 Board

hey guys, been doing alot of reading on this and other forums (pirate, ih8mud etc) and was looking into custom front suspension.

the goals are clear;
car will be unregistered (no need for engineers etc)
solid axle front
coilovers etc

the aim is to compete in the finke, gascoyne dash, victorian offroad class 8 etc
also cliffhanger and anything else that comes up.

my option are;
radius arm setup - cheap & easy

5 link - more travel, more control over castor diff angles etc

3 link - seen them used at hammers etc and seems very strong, but never run one so don't know how it handles at high speed and not sure how it will handle the big hits

what are the opinions??

any other options??

thanks guys

Why not an IFS front, better at speed etc

if it were me, i would look at radius arm + panhard, 3 link + panhard and double triangulatred 4 link...

one thing you will need to consider is "packaging" this is where the radius arm is good, you have nothing over the center of the axle to foul with the sump etc.

everyone will say the radius arms will bind, which is true to a point. but if you custom fab your own, you can make them nice and looooooooong, use big rubber bushes at axle end(like patrol ones) and use a pin bush at chassis end (like rover) this will give you good flex.... you can control axle rotation with the seperation distance between both bushes at axle...

what will be important on any panhard front end is getting the panhard and track rod parrallel to each other and as level as possibe at road hight...

just remmber that with the 3 link and the radius arm set up, if the angle of the bottom link/radius arm is down hill to the axle, then when you get up travel, like going over bumps etc at high speed the axle will actually travel up AND FORWARD.... which isnt the best for high speeds, thats why the top stuff is IFS, they can get the wheels moving up and down in a straight line, not an arc, and they can get them to travel backwards as they come up....which is what they would want to do naturally when hitting bumps at speed...

i think that radius arms havent seen there full potential, but that may be because no matter how good they are, they arnt better than 3 or 4 link?????

theres guys here that know wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than me, so keep asking and go to pirate and search for "triaged" and "bigger valves"

Serg

Long arm IFS if your doing Finke, its fast and rough. Live axle for Cliffhanger and the like.