Chassis Building Part 5: IFS install

While in a normal installation Scott's IFS would provide plenty of suspension travel, our needs dictated some changes. In stock form the ball joints limited the a-arm travel to 9-inches. We ground some material away from the ball joint housing to increase its pivot angle and increase the travel of the front suspension:

This upper a-arm ball joint housings increased suspension travel to 12-inches locked out. But, I planned on tucking 22-inch wheels inside of the fenders, which meant that I needed at least 14-inches of travel to raise the truck up high enough for the tires to clear the fenders in order to make a u-turn.

The solution was a new pair of upper a-arms. The new arms used rod ends for the inner pivots and a spherical bearing for the outer pivot. Unlike the rear arms, we couldn't mount the sperical bearings vertically. This would have required us to build a different spindle mount. A uniball mounted horizontally won't give us any increase pivot angle unless we use a high-misalignment spacer inside of the bearing with a smaller diameter bolt. We once again used FK Bearing uniballs in our arms. The combo of Scott's spindles and lower arms with our upper arms resulted in over 15-inches of usable suspension travel.