Transit Drag Link - Range of Movement?

[chrisj]

I'm busy building a double wishbone front suspension set up, and had opted for the mainstay of a Maxi type bottom ball joint, and a Transit draglink for the top ball joint.
When I've checked the range of available movement in the Transit part, it works out at around 25° total.
Checking through my CAD model, this appears to be quite limiting, I reckon I'll needing more along the lines of 30 - 35°.

A couple of questions have come out of this.

1. Is this a typical range of movement for this part?

2. What sort of total suspension travel is "normal"?

3. Are there any alternatives of the same design (ie. ball joint with a male thread) that could be used in place of the Transit part?


Thanks,

Chris.

[Mr2Mike]

On a typical Lotus 7 style car using the Cortina/Sierra upright the suspension travel is often quite limited, around 4" total in many cases. The TRE/Drag link as an upper ball joint has always been a bit of a compromised design IMO, designed more for convenience/cheapness/availability than anything else. If you are designing from scratch it might be an opportunity to use a design that doesn't put bending stresses into the threaded shank of a rod end.

If you must use this design, then you could switch to a proper rod end (a.k.a "rose joint") which will likely give more angular movement than a typical track rod end.