anyone build their own a arms?

[rubbersdown]

Anyone ever build their own a-arms? Ive been pretty bored lately as there seems to be a lack of blown up bikes for me to fix and I was thinking of building some +2 a arms for the 400ex. Thinking of buying a pair of nice (houser, leager, roll or something like that) a arms and making a jig for them and just copying them. Wondering if anyone on here has ever done this? Figure its only going to cost me about $100 worth of heims and bungs and I believe I already have some moly at my shop. I was (still do it for money occasionally) a metal fabricator in a previous life so please dont bother hassling me about the safety side of it or any of that because I am more than capable of doing the work and doing it right, im just curious if anyone else has done this and if they got pics of how they turned out? I am sure these companys put a lot of R&D into their suspension as far as geometry and what not but no way im paying $1000+ for a set of arms I can build for $100 lol.

[CJM]

Dont use heim joints, use ball joints. Not only will they last longer but they will be easier to align with. I hear VW beetle tie rod ends work well.

Figure it wouldnt be to hard to make if you can weld good enough and have the materials.

[togup]

I have no experience building a arms for 4 wheelers but heims are almost always used on three links and four links on every type of racing vehicle .my a arms use a ball joint at the wheel but heims at the frame. Your jig idea is excellent but maybe buy some used ones to lower your cost investment,I bet some of the guys here would even buy some from you. We could really use some good tec posts around here if you know what i mean.

[rubbersdown]

Ive always liked using teflon heims with a shank more then ball joints. Just seem to last longer for me out here in the desert with all the sand sense they are teflon lined and have no grease. My ball joints just seem to get full of sand and when mixed with the grease its like freaking laping compound inside the balljoint just grinding away on it. This is my experience with linkages on a few trucks I have built anyway, maybe ill have better luck with ball joints on the 400 sense they are so much smaller. I got some time to figure it out.
As far as the money I would just buy a used set on ebay, build my a arms then sell the originals for what I paid for them. It would be fun to bust out a few sets to sell but I doubt whatever company I copy them from would like that lol. With my terrible luck they would sue me and id be screwed lol.
It would be fun to try and develop my own set to by just building an adjustable jig off of a stock a arm but I just feel like id be reinventing the wheel sense these high dollar companies already did all the work for me lol.

[CJM]

Maybe in your case heims would work better, not really sure. But in every case I have ever heard of they just dont last as long on an atv it seems.

The better companies tend to use ball joints. I do know mine have held up fine over the years and where I live is pretty much sand and not much else.

Im sure if you made them you could sell them, all of the designs are almost the same.

[jcs003]

i would like to get aluminum upper a-arms. i have searched with no luck. probably 5-10 lbs savings.

[blaster12s]

yeah its not that hard build up a jig. and personaly i love hiem joints there on all my bikes ifyou keep up on maintnece they will never fail you.

[rubbersdown]

Originally posted by jcs003
i would like to get aluminum upper a-arms. i have searched with no luck. probably 5-10 lbs savings.

hmmmm that would be interesting. I actually doubt there would be any weight savings though. Problem is there is no way you can make them out of tube aluminum. They would be way to weak, first time you hit anything on them they would buckle or more then likely just snap sense sense aluminum is so stiff. Only way to do it would be to make them billet or cast, which they do make those for some atv's but it is also heavy (not heaviER but about the same weight) do to the amount of material. Or you would have to make them "boxed" like the new dirt bike frames are. Doing it this way too sort of defeats the purpose though because this design would also need a lot of extra material to make them strong enough so the weight would be damn near the same. Almost anything structural you make out of aluminum is damn near a wash in weight savings because you need so much more material to reach the same strength as steel. Even with frames on mx bikes being aluminum is pretty much a wash on weight savings. you save about 2 lbs over the old steel frame, thats all. Even if you could make upper (or both) a-arms aluminum I doubt there would be any weight savings at all and if there is its going to be OZ's not LB's. I personally think moly is going to be the best/lightest you can get unless you go all out custom cast some out of magnesium or something like that.

[supertrooper90]

if you buy quality heims, they will generally outlast a ball joint. I run them on my 3 link in the front of my jeep. Been 2 1/2 years of hard wheelin and they are still super tight.

[rubbersdown]

Originally posted by supertrooper90
if you buy quality heims, they will generally outlast a ball joint. I run them on my 3 link in the front of my jeep. Been 2 1/2 years of hard wheelin and they are still super tight.

Yah I have built a couple pre runner trucks and always used hems where I can, linked rear ends, cross beam fronts, even on the steering linkage and things like that.

[togup]

Originally posted by supertrooper90
if you buy quality heims, they will generally outlast a ball joint. I run them on my 3 link in the front of my jeep. Been 2 1/2 years of hard wheelin and they are still super tight.

My other favorite forum is pirate4x4 this months web cast has a segment on heim joints you 4x4 guys will enjoy and Jessie combs is teaching tig welding ,she is no pro but shes fun to watch.

[beags86]

Originally posted by rubbersdown
Anyone ever build their own a-arms?

yep, been there done that. used mild steel, not moly. you do not want to use moly for a-arms. good call on the teflon heims, very good. we had used teflon heims. also had ended up useing a chevy truck steering ball joint for the outer ball joint. wasn't what i had wanted to use but i wasn't funding the project, just building them. the guy that was wanting them had the parts and i just built them. went on a yami 450 which was raced mx for 2 years after completion of the project and everything held. shocked me, but i guess you never know.




Originally posted by rubbersdown
I was (still do it for money occasionally) a metal fabricator in a previous life

why are you asking on here, if you have the experience, and you seam to have a plan, get that welder fired up!

if you want more help feel free to pm me.

[rubbersdown]

what gauge mild steel did you use? I was planning on using moly just for weight savings. I know it can be brittle but its the wifes quad so its not going to be ridden hard and will be ridden in the dunes 75% of the time so theres not really anything for her to hit them on lol.
I just figured id see if anyone on here had done it before and see how they did it. You have any pics of the setup you built?

[honda400ex2003]

this has been done by a guy or two in the past. he made some +2s i think and they came out great. i am not really sure on the specs of it but it would be worth a search to see what you can find on it. Do you have any specs yet? i seem to recall that he did not move the mounting location in relation to the frame pivot point but he extended the ends of it accordingly to get the 2 inches. this let him run the same shocks but was able to valve them according. this would be a great way to use 450r shocks to get them softer. ill see what i can find on a search. steve

[honda400ex2003]

http://www.exriders.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=403505&highlight=custom+arms

that is the one i was thinking about, it really didnt get into the specifics on the first page that i saw and i didnt really go through the whole thing. steve

[CJM]

Im pretty sure I remember seeing the same setup steve. He basically extended them with some tubing of some sort. Worked rather well if I recall

marc

[honda400ex2003]

yeah lol seemed to work out well for him and were much stronger by the end of it with the double tube design he used. steve

[00.400ex#55]

Those a-arms are still on the quad, straight and not cracked. I did brake a tie rod but kind of expected that, the tie rods on there now are basicly peices of angle iron, they were going to be temporary but i traded the quad for a sled.

My buddy i traded it to has wrecked it a few times and there still holding up. Got one wreck on video too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x8Nxj-yBqc

[rubbersdown]

Thats a cool thread, looks like they worked out pretty well for you. I just want to go 100% custom so i can have the adjustability. Your thread has my exact same thoughts, why spend $1000 for a-arms when there is only $100 or so in material. It will be next summer when i start to work on my design because thats my down season. I ride all winter then put the bike away in the hot months sense it can easily get up to 115 degrees out here. to hot to ride so might as well mod the bikes lol.

[beags86]

Originally posted by rubbersdown
what gauge mild steel did you use? I was planning on using moly just for weight savings. I know it can be brittle but its the wifes quad so its not going to be ridden hard and will be ridden in the dunes 75% of the time so theres not really anything for her to hit them on lol.
I just figured id see if anyone on here had done it before and see how they did it. You have any pics of the setup you built?

sorry no pics of them, they were built in 06 and my buddy had traded the quad for a dirt bike in 08.

we had used 0.180 wall. moly would be ok for the type of riding i guess but i wouldn't be useing it if i was going to be racing. we used housers to build our jig.

i believe they cost about 150 -200 done. (heim joints aren't cheap)

[rubbersdown]

Originally posted by beags86
sorry no pics of them, they were built in 06 and my buddy had traded the quad for a dirt bike in 08.

we had used 0.180 wall. moly would be ok for the type of riding i guess but i wouldn't be useing it if i was going to be racing. we used housers to build our jig.

i believe they cost about 150 -200 done. (heim joints aren't cheap)

.180 wall is about what I was thinking, I thought most of the housers and roll arms were made of moly? Yah heims are pretty expensive but my cousin is a "dealer" for a company that sells them so I can get them at almost cost which is a pretty big price difference.