rodeo ball joint flip

[Jase n the deo]

i have a 99 r9 model and i was wondering will moving the top ball joint to the bottom of the upper control arm help with positive or negative camber?

[Jase n the deo]

i answered my own question, just went ahead and did it and it's almost perfect (by eye)!

[sudso]

Not only that you'll get a whole 1/2" more droop too! Whoopie!
The main reason for doing it is to correct the camber when the torsion bars have been wound up so far that there isn't enough adjustment left to get the correct camber back.
The Isuzu upper and lower arms are unequal length and the camber changes heaps as the wheels travel up and down, in the Rodeo's case the outside cornering wheel gains a positive camber as the suspension compresses and tends to "tuck" the tyre under and the contact patch of the tyre is mostly on the outside edge but this gives it some understeer which gives more predictable handling.
Flipping the upper ball joints allows the wheel aligner to correct the camber to standard after the bars are wound right up. The problem with this then is you are almost riding on the upper bump stops and when you hit bumps the suspension hardly droops at all and you end up with front wheels off the ground and crazy handling on bumpy roads. Another problem is your cv's are near their maximun operating angle at the lifted ride height and a few Isuzu owners have busted cv's because of this but more so if they have "trimmed" their upper bump stops to allow more droop.
The only solution I've seen to get reasonable lift and a bit more front wheel travel is to fit a kit like Calmini's, which replace the upper and lower arms and the tie rods etc. altogether with theirs but you still need to lower the front diff to get safe cv angles, and there are kits available for this as well.
It's better IMO to do it properly from the start than try to max out the standard set up and end up with problems.
It wont cost any more than properly lifting a full live axle rig and even those need other parts and work other than just springs and shockers to make them handle well on road with a lift.
Better to leave the IFS standard or get a proper kit.
cheers, sudso

[Jase n the deo]

thank for the info sudso!
does anyone know if there is a diff drop kit out there for the deo?? i haven't been able to find one