Custom Pitman Arm

Opinions on Coilovers for Daily Driver Expo Rig

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As some of you may know I have a 95 Tahoe with an ORU SAS and Alcan Leaves up front. The thing flexes great and I'll drop a few pics for reference. The only issue I have with the leaf springs is the bump steer. Everything else is excellent. I have looked into adding a panhard with the leaf springs similar to a super duty ford to minimize the bumpsteer. The next option is to go to a custom linked front suspension with coilovers. Now I know that is a large price tag, but my main question is on durability and maintenance. I'm looking for any feed back from anyone that may have run coilovers (King, Swayaway, Fox, Bilstein) on the street or for many miles. Most people only use them on competition type trucks that don't see 13k miles on the street a year. My leafs have no "real" problems, but I can't leave well enough alone sometimes. My gut feel is to add the panhard and call it good. The durability with leaves is dead simple and the panhard will be next to no cost for me. Bump steer is caused from the drag link not being parallel to the ground, or as close as possible. Any angle in the drag link will cause bump steer when the suspension cycles. It is difficult to tell from your pics but do you have crossover steering? Not the drag link attached to the tie rod design, or the typical short steering arm design. With the solid axle you have can you go high steer? Yes I have crossover steering with the steering arm on the knuckle, not inverted Y or T. The draglink is flat as it can get, but it will always exist in a leaf sprung truck with crossover. The draglink swings in an arc and the springs move straigh up and down. It isn't bad on the road, but on dirt you pretty much have to let the wheel dance as the alcans and bilsteins soak up the bumps. High steer won't change anything other than move my tie rod up and I'm not on that wagon.

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When the car hits a bump big enough to force the pitman arm up, ... you're forced to install used parts or custom, hard-chromed ones as replacements. ...

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On many Jeeps, the Pitman arm is dropped 2.5 inches for a 4-inch lift. ... This is a custom setup done by All- J Products on a KJ Liberty using what looks ...

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He turned to California's Valley Custom Shop with an order to ... pitman arm and other equipment and should drop as abruptly as possible without loss of ...