FK rod ends & steering angle

[Billy_the_Kid]

How much steering angle is needed in an off-road truck? I've been told 34 degrees for the inside tire, and 31 degrees for the outside tire (a little bit of Ackerman), with straight forward being 0. That would be a total of 65 degrees of angular movement. Is that right?

On our new truck we want to use rod ends for our upper ball joint, mounting them vertically to the spindle, and running the bolt through them from front to rear. According to FK's website, the 1" rod ends have like 17 degrees of angular misaligment. Of course we had planned on running high misaligment shims to take the bolt from 1" down to 3/4", but even with those are we going to get enough steering angle?

Or are they measuring 17 degrees from center for a total of 34 degrees misalignment?

[BradM]

Their listed misalignment angle is in any direction from center. If you consider it for an application as described, the total would be 34 degrees in one plane using a 1 inch bolt.

[Billy_the_Kid]

OK, sounds good, that's what I figured and was hoping for.

So is 34 & 31 the optimum steering angle? or could it be more or less, and by how much?

Also, if anyone has any advice or experience with this type of ball joint setup, I would be glad to hear it.

Thanks

[hoeker]

bill, don't forget you're asking people on the wrong side of the country about this. in short course we need lots more steering than the desert guys need. my new truck has better than 90 deg of motion, and i use all of it. that being said with the limits of your rules you can only do so much, and you want to make sure you don't loose angle from stock. i think vertically mounted with hi-mis shims will work fine. the problem is keeping the threads tight in the spindle, by the time you open the BJ hole up for a 1" thread there is not much meat left. then you still need to be able to weld to the cast so you can use a bolt to "lock" the threads tight against the spindle.
if it were my truck i think i would look into it because the height adjustment for the UBJ would be nice for working on the bump steer, but you can get enough angle out of a horiz uniball to get your travel without weekening the spindle so much, plus you can still shim it to the optimum height. not sure the pros outweigh the cons good luck, dresser's just around the corner!