Anti-wrap bar
To help fight spring-wrap, protect the driveshaft and yoke from grenading, and put the power to the ground where it belongs, I had to make an anti-wrap bar.
After doing a TON of research, including reading John Nutter's excellent article at www.outdoorwire.com several times and looking at all the different types of designs available, I finally settled on basically copying the famous Sam's Offroad traction bar, which can be seen and purchased here.
|
|
The basic building blocks for my bar are these 2 tractor 3-point hitch top links. I got them pretty cheap from the local John Deere dealer. They are big and strong, and the spherical rod ends in each end are right and left threaded for length adjustment. The bolt sizes for the rod ends are 1". To avoid having to use a huge 1" bolt, I pressed some steel and rubber bushings into the ends with 1" OD and 5/8" ID. |
|
|
The front end attaches to my custom transfer case skidplate with a shackle I got from Parts for Trucks in the trailer-building section. The lower bolt in the shackle is greasable, the top is not as it attaches through a rubber bushing. Note that this picture is of initial mock-up, in the finished product the shackle is vertical. |
|
|
The rear ends of the bar attach with brackets, the lower end to the axle tube and the upper end to the axle truss. |
|
|
DOM tubing was used in the middle of the bar as the top links were not long enough by themselves. |
|
Just a view from the passenger side. |
| After installation, I have no axle wrap at all, and there was a noticeable increase in "off the line" acceleration as power is transferred to the ground instead of wrapping the springs into an "S" shape. With the shackle, rod ends. and bushings, there is no bind or interference to limit articulation. | |