whats the general thought im buying 4inch arms and will be running coilovers on front what is best mounting coilovers off top arm or bottom arm ive had so many oppinions but not a straight answer ive got a lot of cutting and modifiying to do either way some say top arm mounted is more modern but what works best thanks
My opinion is top arm front end. Makes the front end more progressive. You will get a much better ride and not bottom out as much.
I changed from a bottom to top mount in my single seater(a few years ago now) and found the top mount a huge improvement.
Most people will tell you (and I agree) when you mount a shock on a car, it should be at 90deg between the pivot point and the shock mounts at full bump, this is impossible on a bottom mount front end.
Heres another opinion, If you look at the car side on & note the angle between the shock & arm at droop & then at full bump, there is no difference top or bottom. Some with the shocks laid right down only have a smaller second arm welded to the top arm at a lesser droop angle which still creats the same relative angles. Consider if you have room for clearance (with 4" arms you should have), bottom is good & you won't have large, heavy & vulnerable shocks sticking out, looking modern may just weigh more for the same end result. Hope I havn't confused you more.
I've had buggies with both top and bottom mounts. The level of travel, adjustability and progressiveness is much more achievable with top mount arms. If I was to stay with a beam front end then I would stay with top mount arms.
When rebuilding Dads Rivmaster we went through exactly the same thing and with much head banging, templates, bits of cardborad and disscusion we decided to mount the shocks off the bottom arm because of exactly what 260 said. -
Extending the mount on the bottom arm and using hoops instead of towers with 10" shocks gave us the correct angle which wasn't crazy, and there was no bennifit for us to mount them on the top arm.
And we find that on the smaller Rivmaster it works great. Handles very well and whilst having the correct spring rates it Jumps and sokes up the Ruff extremely well for a small buggy. It runs one coil over and one bare shock.
Well Hope that opinion helps a bit
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