The 1994-2012 Ram 2500/3500 features a 5-Link front suspension.
This link system comprises upper and lower control arms to hold the axle fore/aft while the track bar serves as the lateral link to minimize lateral shift.
When lifting the front end of a straight axle truck, you’re essentially pushing the axle further away from the frame at ride-height.
As the travel is not perfectly linear, the new ride height will set the front axle off-center unless the proper linkages are addressed.
The systems designed for these trucks range from 2.5″-3″ of front lift.
Three inches of front lift equates to an axle shifted toward the driver’s side ¾” and back toward the cab ½”.
Although this is perfectly operable when the factory control arms and track bar are in good condition, the purchase of an adjustable track bar is recommended to shift the axle back toward the passenger side and provide a stronger link with less deflection for the lifted application, along with a set of extended control arms to shift the axle forward to its new center of travel.
The construction of these arms starts with 0.120″ Box Steel mated to in-house machined joint-cups.
The mild-steel center sections are welded inboard of center to offset the link as far from the tire as possible for optimal tire clearance.
The joints are a point of pride.
In a market abundant with hat-bushing and crush sleeve equipped arms, the spherical bearing arms are leaps ahead of the competition.
As described above, the travel of the ram’s front axle is non-linear.
It travels up and down and back and forth.
This is a non-issue for a standard 3-piece hat bushing.
The problem lies in the substantial lateral shift of the axle due to the track-bar design.
This side-to-side movement falls outside the operating range of hat bushings meant for a linear load, effectively hot-spotting and egging out the bushing hole as they bind when the axle articulates.
The answer is a spherical joint design allowing far more lateral misalignment in addition to the up and down/fore & aft movement.
At the heart of the joint assembly, you’ll find an in-house machined 17-4 Stainless ball center.
This is surrounded by Proprietary Bushings & Joint Washers.
The assembly is preloaded into the cup and retained with a snap-ring.
A zerk fitting is added for ease of servicing.
Over the years, a lot has been learned about bushings.
Originally, Currie Johnny Joints were used.
Although they were high-quality joints and better than anything on the market at the time, there was room for improvement.
All Ball Centers are machined in-house from 17-4 Stainless bar-stock.
This is a much more corrosion-resistant material in addition to being higher strength.
Where stress fractures were seen in the Currie joints at the Ram torque specs, the Stainless ball center took without issue.
While designing them, the opportunity was taken to oversize the mating surfaces for the most contact area to the control arm frame/axle mounts.
They’re substantially larger than the Currie and 0.050″ oversized from even a factory control arm.
Next, a project was undertaken with Energy Suspension to design new bushings for the ball centers.
The Currie were great quality but often difficult to grease.
It wasn’t uncommon to need to articulate the truck to line the zerk fitting port with the split in the bushings.
The new, RED bushings have grease channels engineered into all surfaces to ensure easy greasing and proper grease migration.
Further, they’re not interlocked like the old bushings, allowing more room for grease and easier joint articulation.
