Dropped spindles, opinions please

[Pete B]

They have been around for a little while now, but I still subscribe to the old school train of thought that two ball joints upside down is an inherently wrong engineering concept. Anything with top and bottom wishbones has the upper taking the load, the lower acting as a locator and pivot. Ball joints are not designed to take the load in the way needed when flipped on a bus beam and used in this way.

 

[Graham L]

HI Pete

Have to disagree mate otherwise I would not fit them to the buses I drive my family in and sell on to customers, the principle has been in use for over 10 years and I've not heard of a failure.

The balljoints are locked into place with a oversize circlip that locks into a machined groove into the arm so there is no way the balljoint can come out and I know that Alex uses high quality heavy duty joints not the standard ones that everyone sells.

Not wanted to get into a huge online debate (as we are friends :mrgreen: :mrgreen: ) but the beetle uses the balljoint the other way up on its bottom arm with the top one facing down and the bottom one facing up.

 

[Cali_bay]

If you look at the Red9 wishbone kit the load is taken on one upside down ball joint, the upper one just controls the rotation and vertical movement and doesn't take any of the vertical reactive load from the suspension system.

Whilst ball joints carry more load in the other direction, they still operate loaded the other way up, but wear life could be reduced.

At any given moment though only one balljoint will be taking maximum load on the drop spindle route as well. :|

The company's selling these parts, must have confidence in their products to sell them, because they would potentially carry the can for failures.

 

[Pete B]

I'm sure they are fine, just can't get my luddite head to accept that :lol:

 

[K@rlos]

They have been around for a little while now, but I still subscribe to the old school train of thought that two ball joints upside down is an inherently wrong engineering concept. Anything with top and bottom wishbones has the upper taking the load, the lower acting as a locator and pivot. Ball joints are not designed to take the load in the way needed when flipped on a bus beam and used in this way.

I completely understand what your saying and I had a similar doubt the idea hence me starting this thread but they seem to have a positive feedback from all who have fitted them.

 

[sparkywig]

I have no opinion on the upside down spindles, as mine are the welded WagenWest ones. :lol:

 

[Göran]

Hi
it´s time for my first post
what is the difference between the wagenwest ones and the transporterhaus ones?
and what about ground clearance for you guys driving slammed with dropped spindles and adjusters, any issues?
Cheers

 

[sparkywig]

hello and welcome to early bay.

WagenWest spindles are made from two sets of spindles and welded together, increases track by 12mm either side but then run right way up.
T2D/Transporterhaus spindles don't increase track but are flipped, so balljoints are mounted through bottom of trailing arms not top.

As for tyre and ground clearance, there's not much...

....that's grass hanging from the beam, and you can see the anti-roll bar rubs the road and where the bottom of the beam tower scrapes along as well.

 

[Trikky2]

As posted, using the joints upside down will not result in a dramatic failure as long as they are good quality and checked regularly. They will however suffer from more wear simply because of the reduced working surface thats bearing the load eg. the cup and ball area is reduced because theres a big hole in it for the stub to emerge.

This does not cause issues because the mileages, working conditions and loads carried on vehicles set up this way are much less arduous than those the vehicles were subjected to when they were in their heyday.

For instance I would not be happy to run inverted ball-joints on a bus laden with 10 Watusis, their luggage and their goats, negotiating the unmade mountain passes of Etheopia :lol:

If upside down joints were to be allowed to get severely worn they would pop out.

 

[K@rlos]

Started planning out how to do the 'simple beam narrowing' and the only problem I can see is how you get on with the shock mounts :? If the trailing arms are further in the shock will sit on the piss. Do you grind down the top shock mount along with the torsion bar tubes?

Ta

Karlos

 

[71dormy]

transporterhaus spindles are a must if your going down the route of dropped spindles.alex at transporterhaus knows his stuff and has been testing his products for years.i got some last year from them and they were great.even fitted with t2d coilovers and a cut n turned beam the bus rode real nice.having been to his workshop and seen the spindles being made from start to finish there is no expense spared.super strength ball joints too.anyway thats my opinion out the way :lol:
rant over and go transporterhaus dude
cheers
:mrgreen:

 

[Göran]

I´m confident they are really well made and all.. my only concern is the ground clearance with these dropped spindles :?