I had a crazy idea to ghetto-fy a traction bar.

I have a set of Innovative Mounts front crossmember bushings as shown below:



Basically the bushings make the forward and backward movement of the radius rod harder to do, thus limiting wheel hop.

If you took it one step further and replaced the stiff bushings with solid metal washers, would this effectively kill wheelhop? Production traction bars use heim joints so I can't imagine they allow any more movement forward and backward.

The only issue I see here is upward and downward movement. The radius rod pivots on the front attachment point and having nothing but solid washers here may snap the threads off the end if you hit a bump.

This is merely speculation, just throwing ideas out there.

 

There is a thread about this somewhere on here, couldn't readily find it. But i remember you need the up and down flex afforded by the heim joints, eliminating all flex with solid washers will more than likely break suspension components. There were personal experiences in the thread. I know i recently broke my traction bar and had to reweld it, so i would say the "ghetto traction bar" idea wouldn't be a good idea. Just my 2 cents.

 

search "diy stock traction bar idea"

 

they do already make large metal joints to go in the stock crossmember. I think progress makes them, washer would not allow any movement, bad for a suspension designed to move.

 

Good point

and the sheer size and weight as well as lay out of the X member is a problem still so I don't see why you'd even bother really.

 

you could build new radius rods similar to the radius rods they use on a traction bar fairly easily, and then just set them up to work with the stock crossmember. I remember some obscure jdm aftermarket company was already doing this.. but they stopped making them long ago, and their page was all in japanese. Ill try to find a link, but it was a damn long time ago.

Ive contemplated doing the same, just buying a bunch of parts from the chassis shop to put together some radius arms, but the full race traction bar just looks too clean..