« Reply #5 on: February 13, 2012, 04:29:34 PM »
Most Eagle owners do not have welding skills and are overwhelmed by the thought of lowering our IFS or even installing a solid axle. They want a bolt together solution for about 3 inches of lift. If this company could offer that for less than 2K I think they would have sizeable sales.
The bare minimum kit to accomplish that would be a custom top A arm, a crossmember to unibody spacer, and a custom control arm bracket.
Its true that everything from the top A-arm up is identical to all the other AMC's after 1970. Their kit shown on page 5 of the link would be a good place to start. Its apparent that they used original ball joints so our Eagle spindle and wheel bearing assemblies would be directly compatible. It would be easier to modify their kit than to make your own from scratch. The catch is that if you had the skills and resources to do the necessary modifications, you would probably not be willing to spend the money they want for their kit and you would then just end up choosing to make the whole thing.
Their upper arm is intended to have the coilover shock go through the center of it and attach to the lower control arm. That would not work because we have a CV shaft in that area. We would have to add a landing area on the top A arm for the bottom of the shock. Then we'd need to use a stock shock and spring or push their shock up higher into the original shock tower. The Eagle lower control arm is very similar to the Spirit one they based theirs off of except that it is flatter because the entire cross member is thicker and lower on the Eagle.
I think this company would see sales to Eagle owners if they offered a bolt together only kit that raised an Eagle 3 inches while keeping the CV shafts straight and using the original crossmember and axle supports. This is rather possible but also rather complicated because you would need to use the original upper control arm bolt locations. One person here on the nest pulled that off but had to machine a custom spindle that was longer than original. Ideally it would be better to change the A arms than the cast spindle but it takes much more work to maintain the original geometry.
In my future projects I plan on replacing the entire front subframe and incorporating the upper control arm bolts to solve that issue in a different method. I could incorporate a minor lift easily by welding in a new subframe and lower shock tower instead of changing the original hardware or geometry. That is a better solution for a rusted out Eagle that already needs subframe reinforcement. Obviously it would be much more involved than a bolt together solution like this company could potentially offer.
Thanks for the great link! Its inspirational.
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Topic: Tube A arms (Read 4749 times)