Hey all,
I currently have the Camburg 5.5 kit up front, but I heard I could pull more travel with a new lower arm and uniballs... is this true? If it is, what would be the best design for it?

 

All the years I have been reading on DR I have never seen a new lower built for the 5.5. People Box/Plate them and add a 2.0 Race shock, and there are even some that have shoved an air bump in there. Never seen a differant lower though...

 

if you went to a different lower you would basically be taking away the whole concept of the 5.5 kit. Camburg designed it so that you could dune it up. It's like trent told me once. You have have 10"s of travel and land better / do better things if your valved right up front then somone with 18"s of travel and has a ****ty shock setup.

 

Read about uniballs in general also, if you're considering them. They are a "high maintenance" item that gets contaminated easily. They are generally frowned upon for daily drivers because of that, though guys do use them.

 

Jeff, do you need more travel? Have you used the truck hard enough to need the extra movement? I'm just asking for practicality's sake. I know I haven't (with minor exception), and I have the 6.0 kit. As a daily driver I don't need that much, although it would be nice. What you can do is like Jason said, upgrade to their 2.0 and maybe even an air bump/plate the lower arm down the line. I'll get you a pic of their "5.5 Ultimate" kit and post it here in a bit. It's a very nice upgrade, and the guys I know that have it, once valved well, are very happy with it and haven't even thought of LT yet because it works well for what they do, and some of those guys really beat on their trucks.

Correct. A common misconception is that if you have tons of travel, you'll be fine. That's only half the equation, and many, many, many people don't realize that a finely-valved truck is just as key as getting better travel numbers.

John tons of us have been running uniballs and monoballs on arm joints for decades with no problems. They are definitely no worse than balljoints. Keep it lubed and running smoothly and you won't have a problem, just like everything else, failure to maintain the part is what "usually" makes it go bad.

 

Exactly. I believe this is why Camburg didn't do a Custom Lower arm on their kits because they believe that they can make just as good a kit, if not better w/o having to put a custom Arm on that. Their LT kit, w/ their new truck was the first I had seen, as a part of their race trucks, that they had actually did a custom Lower control arm. I guess they enjoyed racing that class better.

 

That's a good point, as well as they wanted to offer kits available to people that couldn't afford long travel yet still wanted a good deal of performance out of their trucks. The 5.5 and 6.0 kits, as well as their similar-type kits for other trucks they offer products for, do this. I'm a weekend off-roaded myself, not out everyday using the truck to it's potential, so I don't need the performance of LT, yet, and until I can afford it, the kit I have suits me just fine.

 

thanks guys! My buddy can box the arms, and I can save up for the 2.0 shock upgrade kit, the frame gusset kit, and eventually hiemed steering and the x-member. Gotta love Camburg!

 

How much is your friend boxing the arms for Jeff? I've found some people to do it, but they still want a decent amount for the labor.

 

actually for free - well, not really... I'm making a website for him. So since my websites go for approximately $2,500 on average, he's doing some welding for me to pay for it.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out my design website - www.loaded-designs.com

 

Crap, Jeff, he better be doing some great work for $2,500 in website design. Just have him cage your cab, haha. Here's a pic of the ultimate 5.5, I have more but I'll have to look through about 15k pics to find them, lol.

 

jeff that site looks really nice

 

why thank you, my good man