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Torque arm duties - does it Control Control thrust?
Question on TQ arms. Doing an 80e, Explorer 8.8 swap into my t/a, along with a bunch of other stuff. Building my own tq arm. Question pertains to the duties of the tq arm. I’m planning on using solid Heims in the rear (adjustable), and a male/female combo heim up front attached to the trans x member (also custom made)
Does the tq arm play any roll at all in laterally locating the rear and? I’ve found both yes and no answers online, both from pretty reputable sources.
I would think the answer would be no, or extremely minimal. Otherwise any tq arm with heims would allow movement? Pictured below is what I’m talking about.
Stock torque arms may help with the front/back movement of the rear, but most/all of the locating duties are done by the trailing arms and panhard bar. The torque arms main duties are to keep the rear from rotating under acceleration/deceleration, much like an old school snubber, as well as keep it from moving laterally. Its basically a three-link rear suspension setup. The other main duty is has is to move the instant center from the rear end to the midline of the vehicle to help with both squat under acceleration and nose-dive under deceleration.
The latter is why the Global West track link is so good. Its a decoupled torque arm that allows its instant center to change with acceleration to deceleration. Flatter stops and able to get on the throttle way earlier in the corner.
No, a torque arm does not laterally locate a rear axle. In your picture of responses, Unbalanced Engineering is correct, and the response to them couldn’t be more wrong.
Simple answer to this question, disconnect the front of your torque arm and try to pull it left to right. I bet you will be surprised with what happens
Simple answer to this question, disconnect the front of your torque arm and try to pull it left to right. I bet you will be surprised with what happens
It’s been quite awhile since I messed with one of these cars. It’s seems like the last time I hooked up a tq arm, it was a bastard to pull it over an inch or so to get it up into the factory mount. So that leads me to believe no. But, that’s not exactly comparable to say a trans brake launch lol. Just want to make sure I’m doing this correctly, appreciate the input guys.
Simple answer to this question, disconnect the front of your torque arm and try to pull it left to right. I bet you will be surprised with what happens
If that were truly the case, my car would be an ill-handling bag of **** considering I have a decoupled torque arm. Its quite the opposite, actually.
That guy is Eric, formally with BMR I believe. Looking at his other posts, he seems to very knowledgeable in the area. Otherwise I wouldn’t have paid much attention.
I say no as well. There is not enough mechanical advantage on the TA mounting points to lead me to believe it does anything for lateral movement. If the mounting bolts were on each side of the differential horizontally I would say "maybe" But they are vertical and maybe 4" offset from the centerline of the driveshaft/centerline of the car with only a thin stamped steel nose slid into a OEM bushing in the front.
That's what the PHB and LCA's are for. The LCA's would control thrust of the rear end and the PHB or Watts link does lateral movement. Like 79TA mentioned, having a decoupled torque arm has no ill effect. I would tend to believe a guy (Jason @ UBE) that has a such a good working knowledge on suspension that he designed the one and only (I believe) decoupled torque arm for Fbody's.
Ever driven a car with a broken torque arm mount? I have, and I can tell you, it can be felt in the corners, and it is not comfortable. I don't speak from theory, I speak from experience
Yeah, I do all the time. My torque arm is de-coupled under coast and braking, drives awesome. You had something else wrong. Stick to selling parts, attacking other vendors, and making awkward videos about cars that plow around corners.
Your lower control arms control wheel base, your panhard bar controls centering the rear end, and the torque arm controls the rear end rotation. If you are able to grab the torque arm at the front and push it left to right that means you are changing wheel base at the same time.
If you are able to do this you are using warn out rubber bushings or sub par poly bushings.
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Torque arm duties - does it Control Control thrust? 
