iroc-zman17

HEY I WAS THINKING OF GETTING THE LAKEWOOD TRACTION LIFT BARS AVAILABLE IN SUMMIT RACING. DOES ANYONE HAVE THEM? IF SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THEM / HOW WELL DO THEY WORK? ANY TRACK TESTING?

Cruz'N Bruz'R

They definately work. I got a set 3 years ago. They harshen up the ride but, are definately worth it.

People have had instances where they break, but you can weld the brackets on both sides(they come welded on only one side) and they should definately last.

I haven't been to the track with them yet, but I bet with a set of stickies it would launch like a ******.

tommy z-28

iTrader: (1)

I have a set, but they arent on the car yet. They were part of a package deal I bought off someone.

They are very not recomended by this site. Since I got them new and super cheap ill use them and if they break just use the box w/poly LCAs that come with em and through on some reloc brackets.

These cannot be relocated, IIRC. One reason besides the breaking problem people dont like them.

CC89Formula

why are they not recomended?

tommy z-28

iTrader: (1)

I dunno, ask all the people that wrote negative things about them if you do a search on them. I think it might have to do with the $200 price tag to though.

BMmonteSS

This setup basically like a compact 4-link. Whith the torque arm in place you have two different parts trying to limit axle rotation and you get bind. The problem with just removing the torque arm is that these "traction bars" aren't strong enough by themsleves. Their not even strong enough to deal with the binding that takes place with the torque arm in place either. So your screwed if you do and and screwed if you don't.

Bind issues aside, they do nothing for geometry. They can stop wheel hop, but mainly because they bind up the rear suspension so bad that it can't move. Your best bet is to go with a set of stronger lower arms and relocation brackets. That should cure any wheel hop you may have, and help it to hook better by increasing your anti-squat.

Cruz'N Bruz'R

I don't see where you get the binding issue. The TA is bolted to the rear, and bushing supported at the tranny. there is no binding of the TA at the bushing, if anything it really serves no purpose anymore.

I was told I could remove my TA from Lakewood, but I didn't weld the brackets on both sides when I installed them so i'll keep my TA incase one bracket breaks.

If you have them off the car, i'd just fully weld the brackets up, and then remove the TA altogether. Some people have welded the braket clamps to the axle tubes, which will strengthen it right up, but you have to be careful when welding the tubes, and not put to much heat to them.

BMmonteSS

When you have two different devices trying to limit your rear end from rotating and they are not both rotating around the same point your going to get bind.

If you look at the lakwood bars you'll see the imaginary point where the upper arm and the lower arm would intersect is just inches infont of the lower control arm mount. This is where the rear end will rotat around with only these bars installed.

Calculating the rotation point of a torque arm is a bit more complicated, but trust me when I say it's much further forward than the lake wood setup.

92camarors5spd

i have them, and i broke them, with my stock 305tbi.

here is why i dont recommend them. first things first. ground clearance. ive hit a couple things with them. next is if you break the spiricle rod ends your screwed you cant find them anywhere.

but do they work? hell yes they do. my car hooked so well my engine would bog on street tires. before this i could light them up threw 3rd gear.

my recommendations. make sure you get some antiseeze and paint those spiricle rod ends til there covered in it. that was my problem. once i had them set up a couple launches down the track and on the street. i go to loosen them up because i heard of them breaking the bolts had stripped themselves and where stuck. so i left them there. 2 weeks later i was doing a burnout i hear a pop. and its all over.

you can still run the set up with out the adjustablility. the way these things work is it pulls the body down over the axle. esentually pushing the axle into the ground creating better traction.

but i have fixed them since then welding on bigger brackets and bigger joints and rods. so hopefully they wont break. if they do im going back to normal lcas

BMmonteSS

They increase traction by increasing anti-squat. Relocation brackets and shorter torque arms do the same thing, only without the bind. Your not breaking these things because your making power, your breaking them because the bind is so bad.

92camarors5spd

exactly, its a stock 305 which means no power. i know that these things binded until they broke. i was just say they suck. if i could do it all over again. i would just get some nice boxed lca's

Wayne's 383Iroc

I like mine, they will make the ride stiffer. You can look at the modifications I made to mine on the UMI sfc G/P thread. I would not use them as they are, even if adjusted correctly a car with any power could pull the threads out of the rod ends.

niceroc

iTrader: (2)

you loose an entire pivot point at the rear of the lca axle joint and that is what causes the bind and eventually break

Cruz'N Bruz'R

Would removing the torque arm get rid of the double binding problem?
Because when I emailed Lakewood about this. they recommended removing the torque arm when running their Traction action bars.

BMmonteSS

Yeah that will remove the bind, but the catch 22 is that the traction bars aren't strong enough to be ran this way for very long. You can weld the brackets to the rear end and that will help, but you'll eventually tear out the front lower pivot point.

Shagwell

- Why would you want to remove the torque arm? It has more leverage on the car to transfer weight than those things could ever dream of. In stock form the torque arm plants the tires, the control arms move the car. Great set-up, stock pieces just aren't up to the task.

- To eliminate the binding issue, put in a good torque arm and good lca's/relocation brackets. The 3-link will plant much harder than those things will.

- All rear suspension systems work off of "point of center" 4-link, ladder bar, and 3-link. The further forward you move that point of center, the more leverage you have to hook the tires. - In all-out racing, you have to find the line between weight transfer and moving forward, that's why a 4-link is prefered(infinte positioning). So tell me why with a car that is nose heavy as all hell you would want to move your point of center further back?

btw - I go 1.6X 60fts on 17's...I'm shooting for 1.4X on the chassis I'm building(still utilizing 3-link)

BMmonteSS

You almost got it right, a torque arm setup is not considered a 3-link per say. A real 3-link is what comes on the new mustangs and what a lot of mustang guys are converting to, and what I’m converting my Monte to. On a torque arm setup, the lower control arms locate the rear end forwards and backwards, the torque arm just keeps the rear end from rotating, and the panhard locates the rear end laterally. Bind happens when you have more than one link trying to do the same job. Which is what happens with the traction bars, they and the torque arm are both trying to keep the rear end from rotating and their doing it at different arcs, one arc is about a 24” radius and the other is around a 40” radius. A 3-link and a torque arm suspension have only one link locating the rear end in every direction, so they inherently don’t bind. A true parallel 4-link won’t have bind in a strait line, but will bind up in roll. A non-parallel 4-link a-la mustang and G-body binds up tighter than Scooter Libby’s sphincter in a congressional hearing in both roll and vertical articulation. If you remove the compliant bushings in a converging 4-link it will bind so bad you can remove the springs and the car will sit in whatever position you tighten the controls arms in. That’s why they say poly bushings are bad for 4-links.

The second half of the equation is where there is traction to be found. Your correct in saying that every rear suspension has a “point of center” better known as an instant center. This is the imaginary point in which the torque of the rear end lifts on the car. You’re incorrect in thinking the further forward the IC the better. How the IC effects the car depends on where it is in correlation to the center of gravity of the car (CG). If the IC is forward of the CG you’ll get a squatting effect, where the back of the car will actually squat down under power, which will transfer more weight to the back of the car by simply tilting the body rear ward. Think of this as if you were to push up on the car in front of the balance point, the car would tilt backwards. If the IC is behind the CG, the back of the car will actually rise under power. Same theory of putting your finger behind the CG applies here. Here is the traction secret, by using excess engine torque to raise the back of your 3500 lb car, your actually forcing the tires into the ground while the body of the car is in motion. This effect also known as “anti-squat” only last while the body is being raised and diminishes once the body of the car reaches its “maximum altitude”, over all weight transfer is slightly less since that back of the car is now higher than it was, but this effect is usually enough to get the car out of the hole. Watch a really fast pro stock car, you’ll the back end of the car drop at launch, but if you look closely the wheel never gets any closer to the body, the tires just get driven into the pavement. They have the IC setup as close to the CG as possible, so you get no wasted movement of the suspension in loading the back tires. Weight transfer via the pure acceleration of the car and the IC lifting on the car stays with you as long as you’re putting down power. The anti-squat effect is just additional “artificial” weight that can be generated by using the inertial weight of the car to push down on the tires. Think of it as you standing on a bathroom scale with a 50lb weight, now quickly push the weight above your head, the scale will temporarily increase while you’re lifting and eventually level back out.

Calculating the IC is a bit complicated and not exactly commonsensical. One would think that it would simply be the point at which the torque arm attaches to the body. It’s not, you draw a vertical line through the torque arm mount and then draw a line through the two points of the lower control arms, where the two lines intersect is your IC, if the lower control arm line intersects the torque arm before it gets to our vertical line drawn at the mounting point, then you use that intersection point. The lower control arms also control the rotation of the axle. This is why relocation brackets work. By putting the lower control line at a steeper angle, you move back the point at which it intersects the torque arm. In stock form at stock ride height the IC of f-bodies is very close to the CG, but just slightly ahead of it. If you lower the car the IC moves forward and you get more squat. Relocation brackets moves the IC back to the rear end side of the CG. Also a shorter torque arms will do the same. With a 4-link or 3-link you draw a line through the upper control arm like you did with the lower arms, where the two lines intersect is the IC. The problem or the benefit of doing this with a link setup is that your IC moves when the body moves. You can setup the car to have the IC in front of the CG, but move rearward to the other side of the CG as the body moves down so the body never really bottoms out on the bump stops under power, the anti-squat eventually counteracts the movement. The flip side is that your IC can move wildly and not in the direction you desire. A torque arm seems to be much more predictable and stable. 3-links with long links are the hot setup, they allow you to have some IC movement without it going nuts with 5” of suspension movement.

Another myth, and a hotly debated one, is that anti-squat and relocation brackets cure wheel hop. They aren’t the cure for the problem, they just sort of bypass the cause. Wheel hop happens when you tires start to break traction and all the “give” stored up in your torque arm, lower control arm, bushings, and tires lets loose and then regain traction once they have sprung back into position. This chain of events repeats itself until you finally get moving and the available traction is enough to keep the tires from breaking free, you let off, or your rear end shatters. Adding anti-squat or moving your IC back covers this up by adding more initial traction to the equation and keep your tires from breaking loose in the first place. It can also load the tires differently and change the way they spring back. The real cure for wheel hop is a suspension that doesn’t give. A stiff torque arm and lower control arms that don’t flex are the way to fix the problem. Some times tires are the only cause of wheel hop, usually tall stiff side wall tires are worse about it. I had a set of Falken zx-502’s that would wheel hop through 2nd gear, I switched to Nitto 450’s and the hop is gone, those tires have a much softer side wall.

You asked for the 5 cent tour and got the 50 cent tour. I really wrote this for myself because I haven’t always understood it, I used to think that anti-squat worked all the time, but I was just confusing it with basic weight transfer. A graphical explanation of how to calculate Anti-squat is much easier to understand. There are some posts on how to do it with good drawings. Also Carroll Smith’s “tune to win” is an excellent read for a more advanced mechanical engineering look at suspension systems.

Shagwell

I know that going further and further forward is not the way to go. The more time you spend trying to transfer weight is time wasted not going forward. - I was thinking that unless you've lost your marbles, you're not going any longer than stock length(torque arm) and this length, or slightly shorter, works well in these cars. - But removing the torque arm all together(to eliminate bind w/ the "traction action" bars), you would be making your point of center at the control arm mount, wayyy to far back. - I do understand CG, just voicing my opinion on why not to eliminate the torque arm.

Shagwell

the less weight you can transfer while still keeping the tires planted the better.

BMmonteSS

I agree with you completely, please don't take my long winded post as an attack on you, it wasn't. Just more of a way for me to organize my own thoughts on the subject.

Like you said having your IC that far back is not a good thing at all. In theory if you had enough power you could lift the back end of the car up till your shocks bottomed out. I've seen cars do that with way too short ladder bars.

Shagwell

...its all good

actually your thoughts were really good, and right on the money...

maxrochatansky

Hello guys. ok, you are all far more knowledgeable about rear suspension than me , so you might get a good laugh out of my inquiry. Here it is anyway : I've got a 1989 Camaro which is getting a T56 sixspeed transmission. That will mean shortening the stock torque arm or buying a quite expensive custommade spohn torque arm for T56 in thirdgens. So I thought , why not buy these $200 lakewood lift bars , then my whole torque arm issue is resolved about I can just remove it , and get better traction on top of it !
the car will also be fitted with a 454 bigblock (its sitting there waiting in my garage). I wont be doing any drag racing (is not very common here in Europe)
I'm giving you this addittional info because it might affect your ideas on what to do (or NOT do :-)).
Sooo , could I do this Lakewood lift bar thing and lose the torque ? (both the stock torque arm and LCA's are said to be too weak anyway) Or should I stick with the torque arm setup , and buy stronger recplacement parts or something ? Thanks for your thoughts ;-))

Shagwell

...in simple terms...
Yes, it would solve your issues, but NO, it wouldn't improve your traction. You would also break them like most have.
Get the BMR "track pack" tq arm. It's around $400 shipped with the ds loop(ever seen a car do a poll-vault?)

...read, and re-read the qoute in my sig.

maxrochatansky

thanks Shagwell I've been out for a while, just read your post now, looking for that BMR tq arm right now ... and yes, I do know about the risk of camaro pole-vaulting without a ds . LOL !!
one more thing to check if I get this traction bar thing straight : while a standard car's nose lifts when launching , a car with these lakewood bars would try to push its nose into the ground when launched .. do I see that correctly ?? thanks

Cruz'N Bruz'R

No, it will preload the tires. Actually Lakewood instructed me to remove the torque arm altogether when I installed these lift bars, but I haven't because I'm not sure if they will actually be strong enough without the torque arm.

maxrochatansky

thanks for your reply. so you mean instead of trying to push the nose of the car into the ground (which is what I thought-which would be cool it will try to push the rear tires into the ground ? is that what you mean by "preloading" the tires ?
Word of advice : earlier in this thread people explained why keeping both the tq arm AND the lift bars creates suspension bind ( sorry I dont understand this myself , just read it above ) and things will go horribly wrong You're advised to weld the brackets onto the rear axle. But then people warn that you'll break the lift bars themselves ... holy crap
anyway, I'm still somewhat inclined to go with these lift bars, especially now people explained to me that my spohn T56 conversion xmember with DS will not work with my regular tq arm. and my sfc's are in the way of that short version BMR tq arm.

xplane

Look at this pic i made and think of whats gonna happen to those traction arms if you move the axle up with both attatched? either the TA mount point is gonna want to move down or the Traction arm mount points are gonna go up. kinda like a seasaw action. TA is in red and the Traction arms are in Blue. you do this enough an put that much stress on those parts and which ever is weaker is gonna snap.

maxrochatansky

thanks xplane !

Shagwell

- All I did on Dans87GTA's car was shorten the crossmember for the tq arm and weld it to his sfc's(homemade motorsports sfc's). They're much stronger than the pinch weld anyway.

maxrochatansky

OK Guys , I'd like your opinion on this dillemma : I will be placing a 454 BBC in my 89 camaro. Now I have two leads on rear axles (my std 7.625 10 bolt is already worn out) :

1) a 1999 10-bolt with disc brakes out of a 3.8l camaro v6 at 750 EURO

2) a Ford 9" with drum brakes at 500 EURO

** note : this is not an aftermarket 9" thats set up to be used on a third gen, this is a "real" 9" out of an old mustang, so it has no provisions to be used on a third gen. This is what makes me think of the Traction-Action Lakewood bars again, since the 9" has no provision for a torque arm. (wouldnt need a tq arm if I went with the Lakewood bars)
Even with the lakewood bars, the 9" would still need some mods though
(spring pockets etc...) and its only got drum brakes

My question : what would U do in these circumstances ? (prices are in euro cause i live in, well, Europe so just think of those as dollars, thats about correct.

Now my car wont be subjected to drag racing , just some fun on the streets and long roadtrips , so would I really grenade that 1999 10-bolt ? (with my manual transmission)

thanks for your thoughts

Shagwell

with a BBC and the traction actio bars, you 'd probably never find enough traction to hurt the 10-bolt. If you want to use the big-block, pu the 9" in.
- Can you weld? If so, putting a tq arm on a 9" housing is pretty easy because the housing is steel, not cast. I can post some pics of suspension I did under a 81 shortbed pickup if you like.

maxrochatansky

Would definitely like to see 'em

I'm no welder myself, but I have some competent friends ....
well, thats what they call themselves

Shagwell

....well, I don't consider any of my friends competent...if they were, they probably wouldn't be hanging around me
- I'll find the pics and get them posted. - Just two tabs, top and bottom that a rod end slips between. Tube tq arm that the upper link bends up at the back so as to keep the tq arm skinny under the floor, but wide enough to slip into the tabs from the housing.

maxrochatansky

wow , have you guys seen this on ebay ? its ending in a few hours,a Ford 9" with "ventilated" (thats what we call them here) disc brakes , a limited slip diff and 4.88 gears
eBay Motors: 9 inch " rear end Mustang Ford Posi disc brakes (item 8068497911 end time Jun-01-06 19:30:00 PDT)

I hope i dont get banned for posting this , I'm only doing it so you dragracers dont miss out ! I dont think I'm going to bid, it'd cost a small fortune shipping it to europe.

joey big block

has anyone ever installed an older 12 bolt in a third gen, i have looked everywhere and just get the run around,, is there a kit of brackets from spohn or some other company to make this 1965 gm 12 bolt work in my car before i have to fab something up my self....please help im loosing my mind cause i have this 12 bolt thats in my garage and dont want to spend the money on a new one from moser...on a budget.

Atilla the Fun

Reviving such a dead thread, you must have been doing a lot of searching? There are plenty of ways to fabricate torque arm mounts, most of them are not pretty, the rest are not cheap. You might look at trying to adapt the Detroit Speed offering for '67-'69 Camaros, if you want bolt-on for your axle. But then the front end will require some fabrication. If modifying your 12-bolt is your thing, look at how guys have modified the Ford 8.8" axles for third and fourth gens. I just did it with a Dana 60 from a '78 Dodge D250 pickup. So it can be done with a variety of axles. Or you could sell that 12-bolt for enough to buy something else. Probably a Ford 9", then add the Currie bracket for a torque arm, only re-do it like Kwik Performance, so it can un-bolt for gear swaps. Note also that five7kid did an alternative non-torque-arm setup, that added upper arms onto the existing lower arms. This effectively works the same as the Lakewoods in this thread, but with it has the same problems: dramatic changes in the angle of the rear U-joint, and in his case, unloading the tires on launch ( at a dragstrip ) probably with travel-limiting straps, at least to protect the shocks, if not also to reduce the risk of snapping the rear U-joint.