Improved Designed Tubular Arms

Off road enthusiast use their trucks or rigs on and off the road. As the Toyota Land Cruiser’s motto “No Roads Required” they built their cruisers to do the extreme. As 4X4 enthusiasts continue to build their rigs to do the extreme they tend to eliminate its factory suspension parts to give way on the height and durability requirement of the vehicle. It is not the height that really matters when doing mountain trails and mud races it is how durable and tough is your suspensions. Putting a tough suspension means putting not just quality parts on your car it must be lighter also. To maximize the weight of the suspension they use tubes and reinforced it to become tough.

The stock factory control arms of your vehicles will be eliminated to give way to new and improved designed tubular arms to give way for the suspension lift. These will give the proper ground clearance to your rigs to boost its full performance. Improved designed tubular arms are made from different materials according to your needs. Some aftermarket tubular arms are made as bolt on parts to your trucks including lift kits for DIY installation. There are three different materials typically used in control arm or tubular arm construction namely DOM or drawn-over-mandrel mild steel, aluminum and chromoly steel. Each of these materials has its own advantages and disadvantages in application. Let me give you a bird’s eye view on these three materials.

·         DOM or drawn-over-mandrel mild steel

Dom steel is not actually a type of tubing; instead DOM is a process by which steel tubing is constructed. Typically DOM tubing is electrically welded and during the manufacturing process the steel is drawn over a mandrel which cold works the material and gives it more uniform dimensions relative to the inside and outside dimensions of the tube itself. The weld line disappears during the cold working process and the tube become seamless as its results. In tubular arm construction 1020 steel is normally used which offers 87,000 psi of tensile strength and 72,000 yield strength.

·         Aluminum Tubes

Another material that is used in tubular arm construction is aluminum. CNC-machine billet aluminum offers high strength and extremely light weight, but is not typically used on off road or in all-out drag applications as the material is not optimized for higher horse power cars. Using aluminum in tubular arm constructions requires a good engineering and design to ensure they will withstand the loads applied without failing or breaking.

·         Chromoly Steel

Chromoly steels are light weight not as lightweight as aluminum but lighter than 1020 mild steel.  It also has a high tensile strength of 97,200 psi along with 63,100 yield strength. It uses TIG process in tubular arm constructions. Compare to mild steel, chromoly has more pound-for-pound strength which permits a thinner wall thickness to be used to save weight and still equal the same structure strength.