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Sequoia Family Crawler

With the steering shaft built, my steering system is nearing completion. The Sequoia column has a dual cv joint straight off it that has to be changed up. Used Amazon joints and DD shafts and it seems quality enough.
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I used a 2wd box cause I had it and like the 3rd mount from above. The body mount got cut off so that'll be fun to deal with later.
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The pitman arm needs work still but the draglink is complete and hoping 1.75x.250 wall holds up. The box was pushed forward quite a bit to clear the dual ended assist cylinder.
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The steering arms are sheet metal with the input as high as needed to be horizontal at ride height.
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The ram is mounted to the axle above center hopefully out of reach but will likely get a little bumper at some point
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I did have to trim my new frame section to get to the input of the steering box but was too lazy to remove the motor and cut from the inside. I put an old chopsaw wheel about 8" diameter on an air tool which worked great but looked and sounded hilarious. Posted on IG and it went viral with 50k views and counting. I got a chuckle out that one.
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bdkw1 said:
So why did you get rid of the Ackerman?
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I didn't get rid of all of it but you're right in that I did not prioritize keeping it. I'm not convinced Ackermann is required for anything other than keeping tires from squealing in parking lots. This is being built primarily for dirt roads, secondarily for tight rocky trails, and trying to keep some semblance of highway manners. With a low traction dirt road the slip angle needs to be increased to maintain turning force so less Ackermann would help load the outer tire. In rocks you need all the angle you can get on each tire so no Ackermann wins there. On the highway it shouldn't matter.

Side note- Ackermann is mandatory on beams and preferred on A-arms in parking lots so that the lateral force doesn't jack the vehicle up when turning. Often ignored but years of working contingencies convinced me of this. A specific class 8 with a ton of anti Ackermann would get pulled down every time it turned and was crazy to watch. Solid axle shouldn't have this problem.
 
I got the panhard bar complete. The frame side is 6" off the frame and dips between the axle truss and tie rod at full bump.
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In order to match angle and length the axle side ended up on the knuckle. Not thrilled about welding to the cast but it's on all four sides welded inside and out with a rib down to the truss. I had to keep bump for the bump stop or it would be boxed in more.
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The bar itself is 1.75x.120 wall DOM and ended up with two bends, 20 and 15 degree. I used a uniball on the frame side to guarantee clocking and eliminate the risk of it spinning and smashing the oil pan. The bends through the cg off so it drops with its own weight and will need to add a rubber washer or little link to keep in place.
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I cycled through the travel from bump to about 10" down and found no appreciable bump steer. The flex steer is there but hard to quantify how big of an impact it will be. I prioritized a flatter drag link at ride height over eliminating flex steer so hope it works out.
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It feels great to finally be able to steer and flex. The steering binds a lot which seems to be coming from the knuckles. It has some sort of BJ eliminator with grease zirks so I'll be cleaning them out and trying to free them up.

Still have no idea what I'm doing but this was a big hurdle to get over.
 
pennsylvaniaboy said:
not sure I follow this question?
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He moved the tierod pivots on the spindles inward. This will reduce the amount of Ackerman angle as it turns.

As he noted above, Ackerman is only really useful at low speeds with good traction, like a parking lot. Some race cars have reverse Ackerman due to the amount of time they are sideways.
 
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