spherical bearing

Edited: 9/27/2007 1:54:59 PM by tenfrontier

I ended up getting thesewith theseThe heim has a 1" hole and 1.25" threads and the high mis-alignment spacers reduce the hole to 3/4". The static load rating for the heim is 43,541 lbs. There should not be much difference in degrees of articulation between these and uniballs, right?

Not at all, they,re just burly enough to race the Baja 1000...

I would have went with a smaller heim, but the knuckles I am using have a 3/4" bore for the lower ball joint. I didn't want to reduce the hole.

so max using something like he got would be strong enough for a daily use on upper and lower ball joints? i think i may end up doing a full frame on my runner. but don't want to use the factory ball joints or get bent over on uni balls.

That heim that he has is the one that I was holding up in Low Life Video talking about how much overkill it was. That is the size that Trophy Trucks use for 4-links and some lower ball-joints. So yeah, I think that they will be strong enough.

Whats the price on those Larry? I'm curious on the price difference between that and a uni-ball.

I really didn't end up saving much, about $40.00 overall. If you don't need a heim with a 1" whole, it would be a lot cheaper. I purchased the qa1 unit from ballistic fabrication, and they were $43 each. Once you add weld in bung, jam nut, and (2) 3/4" high misalignment spacers the total comes to $76 before shipping for each side. Most people could use a smaller chromoly unit (3/4"w/7/8" shaft) and they are $29 each. One plus is that you could adjust the lower control arm in and out a little bit with a heim. One plus to the uniball setup is when the bearing wears out you only have to replace it, but when the bearing wears out in the heim, you have to replace the whole heim.
One cool thing I found was a bolt in billet uniball cup. This would make it super easy to adapt a stock control arm to a uniball setup.

You could use heims on the lower arms instead of the regular bushings to adjust them in and out as well. I have been thinking about building a new set of upper and lower arms for my truck and using heims to attach the arms to the frame instead of the regular bushings. Then I have complete adjustability of the wheel. I am still debating on what to use instead of the standard balljoint, heims or uni-balls.

what size misalignment spacer would i use on a 89 toyota spindle max????

It depends on how you set up the spherical. If you mount it in a way so that it is in double shear, you can easily get away with a 1/2" bolt, but if it is in single shear, you will need to address it a bit differently.