DOES THE HDK SUSPENSION K-MEMBER HANDLE BETTER THAN A T-BAR SUSPENSION?

Kern Dog said

I take a look at the lower control arm.....


....with the narrow 5 or 6 inches of width between mounting points and I compare that to the triangulated stock setup. I don't see how the aftermarket stuff would last and hold together. Think of how a man can easily be pushed over if his feet were 10 inches apart compared to his feet being 24 inches apart. A wider spacing equals greater stability. I'd be embarrassed to tell someone that I designed this. The upper control arm mounts are 1 1/2 times as far apart and the UCA carries only a fraction of the impact loads of the lower control arms.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I was trying to make that point earlier in the thread (and many moons ago). You just don't see stuff like this on anything OEM. Even a stock Mustang II doesn't have this. Even worse is ALL of the aftermarket K-frames are essentially the same as this.

The upper control arm carries very, very little load. About 20 years ago one of my OEM control arms I no longer have had the ball joint back out and it wasn't even connected to any of the threads and it didn't even really drive that strangely. It certainly felt like there was something wrong but it wasn't even bad enough that I didn't drive it home. They're mostly following. The LCA takes all the load from the springs/torsion bars and the road load. If you've ever seen the sorry excuse for an upper control arm and ball joint on a 97-04 Dakota it would be obvious.