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Bent Radius rod


Scott in Bellingham
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well Ive bent the radius rod twice on one car and once on another

 

 

 

Bent_Radius_rod.jpg

 

had this idea of modifying the stock rod , basically free up the plate that pushes against the rubber donut , add a heavy spring onto the rod and welding up another plate at the other end of the spring, what this would do is absorb the shock of hitting into a obsticle , the tire would come back into contact with the inner fender well which threw the tire would adsorb more shock, I want to fab 2 up and put them on my present rig

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Personally, I think eliminateing the rod, and making the lower arm an A arm with another pivot point on the cross member would be the way to avoid both bending them, and to get rid of the whole radius rod plate assembley.... Actually it wouldn't be too hard to just make custom control arms from some tube with flat bar for the ball joint mount. I saw some pictures not too long ago of some custom control arms someone made.

 

GD

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Personally, I would not use a spring for any road-going vehicle. It would be allowing the possibility of fore-aft oscillation of the tire. (The leading-links job is to manage braking and acceleration fore-aft movments.) Allowing too much movement, or movement with its own low harmonic, would not be wise.

 

I agree with GD, that eliminating the leading-rod altogether and replacing the control arm with and A-arm structure would produce better wheel control. (For offroad, though, you would merely be shifting the part that gets damaged from the leading rod to its mounts.) The Legacy lower control arm might be a good model.

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i personally don't like the rubber mounted radius rod.....seems to wanna occalate when you start digging in....... what if a guy was to make radius rods with good quality heims and moly tubing doing away with the rubber bisquets? :eek:

If the rubber bushings are new/good, there shouldn't be much trouble. But the rubber ages rather quickly; I have to replace my 510's every 4-5 years.

 

Regarding heims, check out:

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=22332

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If you made it rigid, i'd worry about having something that could give when you hit something, at least with the rubber bushing you have some give, with a heim joint if you bump something a little bit too hard its gonna break, and not flex.
With the trailing rods on my 510, when I hit something the rod could not stretch, so the rod mount tore off of the unibody. Bent rods don't sound too bad...
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I have never actually bent a radius rod. I do carry 2 spares in the back of my wagon just in case.

 

Personally, I wouldnt make them any stronger or stiffer than the stock setup is. The reason subaru made them that way, they are a crumple zone if you hit anything.

 

The radius rod is the first thing to bend, and the control arm twisting is the second thing to bend. I would much rather change a radius rod than change a control arm.

 

It takes all of 5 minutes to change out the radius rods. Keep a 17mm gear wrench, 17 mm deep well socket and a pair of vice grips in your tool box and carry 2 radius rods and you'll be set

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had this other thought maybe run a cable from say the bumper mount back to the front radius rod bolt , then the force might transfer threw the cable and prevent the bar from bending :eek::headbang::brow:

 

I've thought about doing that too....

 

and torxx..frequently the control arm twists with it. and I don't think it was engineered to be the first thing to give, it just wasn't engineered to do what we're doing...

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the reason why I said what I did, I work at a auto body shop. we fixed wrecked soobys. I've seen two or three taht actually twisted the control arm with the radius rod. most of them were just a bent strut and a bent radius rod.

 

Either way, both components are the weak link in the IFS on a subaru. I say they need double wishbone IFS, that way there is no need for radius rods. Hell for double wishbone, ball joints would be more spendy, but the ride would be AWESOME

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had this other thought maybe run a cable from say the bumper mount back to the front radius rod bolt , then the force might transfer threw the cable and prevent the bar from bending :eek::headbang::brow:

a mate of mine was running chains from the front to the control arm.over here we can mod ford[local model] radius rods which r stronger to fit ,but them the next weakest link is where the mounting plate bolts to the floor which can be rienforced.

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I made a-arms for my subaru, with ea82 control arms reversed (swapped sides) to make the radius rods stick forward. I then heated and bent the radius rod to form an A, and plated the center to make it rigid. Mounts were welded onto the front xmember for the new bushing location. It worked well, but I didnt make my xmember mounts strong enough, and the whole design reduced approach angle. I scrapped the design, but the concept was solid and could be improved.

 

Heres an in progress pic, the a-arm is not finished, and the xmember mount is not fully welded but in the final shape.

 

129100_0350resize.jpg

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