Anybody have any experience building a high-steer arm for a rockwell axle? I'm working on making one from scratch. My setup will be street-driven some and I want to make it hydro-assist. I just need to know how long the high-steer arm needs to be.
Measure the length of your pitman arm from TRE hole to center of sector shaft. You want the hi-steer arm to be close to the same lenght from pivot to TRE hole. That will give you a stock like turning radius. The longer you make it the less radius and the more steering force you'll have. With a rig on rockwells I wouldn't reccomend going any shorter than the pitman arm, it'll make it too quick.
Ya that's kinda what I was getting at. The swing on my IFS chevy box is 6" across the arc. I have been told the swing on a rockwell knuckle is like 10" if you run the bumpstops in. So, I would like to try to get as tight a steering radius as possible since the truck is long wheelbase and on 53" Michelin tires.
Unfortunately leaves at this point...couldn't figure the math for a link setup...or the money. I am however stretching the wheelbase so that the tires pivot around the radiator support since that's the widest part in front.
Give Steve Gerstner a call at Differential Engineering. He bent me this one out of 3/4" plate steel, he bends it at an angle also for TRE (Chris aka Mars had to add space on mine thou b/c my lifts so high & then I had to add 3/8" plate on outer side b/c it bent down where its bolted to knuckle after Lexington mud pit throwdown).
That didn't work at all. Will try to get some pics when I get home from work. I built the suspension so low that the pitman arm is the bumpstop for the axle! Oops! As it sits right now, it looks like the only way to go is full hydro. Can it be done with my single-ended ram I bought for the hydro-assist?
If you're doing this setup on a SAS Chevy I wouldn't run the stock IFS box. The pitman arm won't be straight front to back when the box is centered - it'll be angled off the left some. What that means is you will be able to turn sharper one way than the other.
you can run a single ended ram for full hydro, but most of the time it will need to be bigger then one for hydro assist... Im not sure what size ram you got.
If your running a box i would recommend trying to have the pitman arm parallel to the steering arm, or it will do funny things when turning...
We put a wagoneer arm on it. But, even if I raised the suspension, there wouldn't be enough clearance for the draglink to run across the top of the "toploader" part of the axle. The ram is a 1.75 x 10" surplus center ram.
What kind of truck and steering box did you say this was??? Is it an astro box? I cant think of a saginaw box other than it that has a forward pointing pitman arm. If it is an astro box then just turn the pitman arm around 180* and make a new hi-steer arm that points to the rear. It'll put the steering behind the axle which looks like it might clear better.
I really cant tell from the picture but it looks like you may have already built the hi-steer arm to point to the rear. If thats what I'm seeing then you have already turned the pitman arm around from stock to point to the front which explains that.
That is correct. I have the tierod and highsteer arm in the back. Axle is about 14 inches forward of stock. I reversed the pitman arm on the stock box so it would steer opposite of the way the wheel was turned. I swapped out the stock pitman arm for a wagoneer arm and drilled that for the 7/8 heim on the draglink kit from ruffstuff. Will try to add some more pictures when I get home from work. I already have the ram mounted on the rear of the axle, but not to the tierod yet.
Ok that's what I thought. Then if you were to get an astro box that normally points forward and turn the arm 180* on it then it looks to me you'd clear the 3rd much better. The wagoneer arm probably won't work though because it'll point too high so a drop PA would be best.
one thing to take into account is that the pinion will get close to the draglink when the driverside suspension compresses, so make sure that is accounted for.
After setting the weight of the truck on the springs, I have found there is no room for steering linkages to ride under the frame. The top of the axle is above the bottom of the frame on leaf springs and there is only about 4" of uptravel before the top of the rockwell hits the bottom of the radiator. So, the question now is: Buy the PSC rockwell kit with double ended ram and all the goodies, or try to save money peicing it together from surplus center or elsewhere?
