Problem: I bought a QA-1 heim for my Skyjacker trackbar in Sept. The ball is now loose in the socket from (apparantly) too much flex. The Jeep was even down for a month during this period (and I don't wheel as hard as a lot of you).
I did some research on here, and called Avalanche Engineering - to the advice of some on here. Guess what? Their "toughest heims on the market" - built by QA-1!! Maybe I got a bad heim - dunno. I'm calling them tomorrow as the tech guy was out Thurs and Fri.

Solution (?): Anyone know if there would be a problem with changing the way the frame mount is? I'm thinking about building a mount where the bolt for the heim would go front to rear instead of up and down. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

I had a problem with that whole assembly as well some time ago. I managed to blow out the regular ball joint mount on a tera front trac bar just like you did with your heim. I ditched the tera trac bar for a rubicon express model and found that about 5 months or so latter that because the hiem didn't give, the whole iron mount for the trac bar that is welded to the frame had busted its own welds and broken off. I highly sudjest you watch that whole mount as the back wall of the frame seams to give first. Just a warning.
Rubicon Express and Rockkrawler did something similar as you were talking about, in that, they made a bracket that turns the hiem 90 degress and puts it on its side. That might help both of our problems at once.

That's exactly the mod I'm thinking of doing. Didn't know a company had done that. Guess it's time to make a few more calls.

Thanks!! :beer: :beer: :beer:

One other thing I supose I should make note of on here is that both RE and Rockkrawler use this new bracket on their long arm kits. The reasons for that are that the long arms do give you more flex, but they do this by alowing the axle to drop in a straighter line as opposed to a short arm kit that executes a kind of arc.
I'm sure if you have a short arm kit you have noticed that when you are flexed out, the short links pull the axle twords the center of the jeep when under full drop. With that in mind, I guess, you might lose some drop with one of these new brackets as the short arm would be pulling and the trac bar would then limit due to binding. Its kinda tough to say if the heim would bind and slow that up any? I think a norrmal Heim has 30 degrees of movement, so probably 15 each direction. If you put the heim on its side you might still get 15 degrees worth of "front to back" movement in the front end of a short arm kit, where it wouldn't be the limiting factor on a long arm kit because they don't execute as much of an arc when they drop. Hope I made that clear:rolleyes: ?? Any way, keep that in mind one way or the other!

Thanks. Shouldn't be a problem. I've got custom Tera-style arms (longer than stock ones) on there right now. Russ from Baertrax s going to build me some RE style long-arms (they'll be even longer than RE's) when I do my front D44 or D60 swap. The frame at the front of my Jeep has been stretched 8" pushing the front axle forward - keeping everything else (body, engine, etc.) in stock locations.

If you like making stuff here is the trackbar bracket I made...I added a back to it too.

QA1 has good heims, I believe skyjacker uses the HMR/HML series...quality joints, too bad you had a problem.

http://admotorsports.com/jeep.org/cjl-tj/march-01/boggers/P3250006s.JPG

CJ