While making my winch mount with the front bumper off I may have come up with a easy way to put longer travel shocks on red. This will unbind the front shocks and take out the harshness of it's ride. The way I see it the ball joints want let the A-arms go down any farther. From what I remember from dirt bike day and on the ranger a third of the travel should be taken up by the machines weight. This way when the wheel goes over a small hole the wheel go down into the hole and then comes back when it passes over it. On red when it goes over a small hole the wheel does not go down but about an inch. This makes the whole machine tip towards the hole and then hit the other side. I believe Honda did this so we could not jack it up:rant:. While I have been sitting under the front end studying the winch mount I got to looking at the A-arm mounts. The ball joints want travel down any farther. With the shocks at bottom the cv axel never really gets that close to straight.
All that said the simple way to fix this would be to move the shock mount in front of or behind the a-arm and move the mount down. I really don't think this would work. I think it would brake or bend the a-arms. The other way I see to fix this would be to move the a-arm mounts down which should be hard to fab up. But the way they made the frame it would be a peace of cake. this would change the angle the ball joints work at and let the a-arms go down a lot farther. It really does not make sense to me to build a machine and have the ball joints work and stay at there maxium angle all the time. That is where a ball joint is the weekest.
All this is just theroy at this point but my red is going to get on my car lift and a shock is comeing off. I am going to put a transmission jack under that wheel and see what the angles look like. I am going to get some more angle and fab up a bracket to move the a-arms down and see what the results are.
If I am right you may be able to jack red up 3 to 4 inches and add that much travel at the same time. This would make red the most adjustable of all the utv's including the rzr.
All that said the simple way to fix this would be to move the shock mount in front of or behind the a-arm and move the mount down. I really don't think this would work. I think it would brake or bend the a-arms. The other way I see to fix this would be to move the a-arm mounts down which should be hard to fab up. But the way they made the frame it would be a peace of cake. this would change the angle the ball joints work at and let the a-arms go down a lot farther. It really does not make sense to me to build a machine and have the ball joints work and stay at there maxium angle all the time. That is where a ball joint is the weekest.
All this is just theroy at this point but my red is going to get on my car lift and a shock is comeing off. I am going to put a transmission jack under that wheel and see what the angles look like. I am going to get some more angle and fab up a bracket to move the a-arms down and see what the results are.
If I am right you may be able to jack red up 3 to 4 inches and add that much travel at the same time. This would make red the most adjustable of all the utv's including the rzr.
