Carli Dodge Adjustable Chromoly Track Bar 03-12

Dodge Ram Adjustable Chromoly Track Bar

This adjustable track bar is a must for any Dodge 2500/3500 4x4 suffering from wandering steering or with an aftermarket lift. The track bar will center the axle side to side and ensure proper suspension geometry. The track bar will also give a tighter feel to the front end by eliminating the O.E.M rubber bushings. Included with each track bar are all required spacers, crush sleeves, and shims to fit each specific vehicle's stock hardware. On one end is a F.K. Heim Joint that offers articulation and rigidity with an improved service life over other styles of bushing. On the opposite end is an heavy duty F.K. Uniball bearing in a proprietary, preloaded molded bushing for maximum vibration damping, strength, and life-span. The Carli JAMMIT Jam-Nut provides 100% more clamping surface area than a standard jam nut while a laser-cut gusset surrounds the uniball welded cup to ensure that this track bar will be the last you ever buy.

On 03-07 trucks that may still have the 14mm hardware, we recommend upgrading to 16mm factory hardware and drilling the mounting holes out to utilize the larger bolts that Dodge starting switching all trucks over to in 2007.

Dodge Ram Fitment Guide:

• 2003-2013 4x4 2500 Trucks 
• 2003-2012 4x4 3500 Trucks -Will not fit 2013+ 3500's
• 2006-2009 4x4 1500 MegaCab Trucks 
• 2005-2013 Power Wagons
• Fitment on 1994-2002 trucks is possible with a 3rd Party conversion bracket, but we cannot guarantee fit or clearance.

Specifications:

• Constructed from 1.50" x .375" wall Chromoly tube
• CNC bent for perfect fitment
• Fixture-welded in house
• Pre-loaded captured bushing
• Heavy duty F.K. Uniball on frame side, Heim Joint on axle side.
• Includes both 14mm and 16mm bushing sleeves and rod end misalignment spacers

Part Numbers

• CS-DATB-03

The track bar is the most important link under the front end of a straight axle, heavy-duty truck. It’s both a suspension and steering component and any deflection in the bar or wear in the bushings are immediately felt by the driver in the form of excessive steering input, floating front end, wandering, and last but certainly not least, the dreaded death wobble. Exacerbate the bar’s susceptibility to the above by lifting the truck and increasing the load while pulling the axle off-center and so completes the recipe for disaster.

Enter the Carli Adjustable Track Bar. The goal, a link that deflects less than the stock bar, dampens vibrations without causing the sloppy handling associated with the stock bar, ensure service life far in excess of a factory unit while being rebuildable (vs. replaceable like the factory bar) all while being adjustable to center the axle on leveled vehicles. Many years have seen many iterations but we’ve landed on a design we feel impervious to future improvement.

The DATB Track Bars are 3/8″ wall DOM construction, FAR stronger than the brackets to which they’re bolted. This wall-thickness allows the end of the bar to be threaded to accept our 7/8″ x 7/8″ FK Bearing Chromoly Heim Joint. You’ll see many manufacturers running thinner wall and weld-in bungs as our previous generations did; running the thicker wall bar allows for more strength and one less welded joint – a potential point of failure. In place of a standard Jam-Nut, we’ve developed a tapered jam nut (mating surface similar to a lug nut) to ensure perfect centering of the joint while providing 100% more surface area than a standard Jam-Nut. We’ve taken a design used in off-road racing (Tube with weld-in bungs and jam nuts) and improved it to be FAR more reliable.

The frame end of the track bar saw a massive improvement in the DATB generation, as well. Our “CUB” joint starts with a proven FK Bearing 7/8″ Uniball at its center. Custom molded bushings are pressed on to encapsulate this Uniball then the assembly is pressed into the huge, gusseted frame-end housing of the track bar with a Stainless safety washer and retained with a snap ring. Custom Misalignment spacers center the joint in frame bracket and ensure full fore and aft movement of the track bar to be possible without bind or excessive bushing deflection.

Why is this new bar such an improvement? Previous generations of our track bars relied on a 2 piece hat-bushing and crush sleeve at the frame, weld in bung at the axle with a standard jam-nut and a .250″ wall main tube. Truth be told, there was nothing wrong with this design and we ran it through some of the most treacherous terrain Baja had to offer for many years. Product improvements each came with justification. The hat bushings in the frame end of the bar were VERY sensitive to installation error. If a person purchased our track bar and paid a mechanic to install it who did so using a standard pneumatic impact gun, the factory torque to yield hardware wouldn’t see it’s factory torque value, the bushing would wear out as you’re running an 8,000lb. truck on an un-preloaded piece of urethane and the customer would have nearly immediate handling issues. The customer isn’t a mechanic; all they know is they paid a premium price for a product and a pro to install it and it wore out in no time flat. No one wins, here. With the preloaded CUB bushing, there’s no fear of prematurely wearing the bushing due to a lack of preload as the pre-load is set by us in assembly and held by a snap ring so an impact gun installation is no longer an issue.

The axle end, again, weld-in bungs and standard jam-nuts have been used for MANY years. Like the hat bushings, they can be finicky to install as not everyone has the tools to yield the shank of a 7/8″ heim to its 660lb/ft. spec. Ensuring clamping force and thread interference was sufficient at a lower torque spec achievable by the weekend wrench, we increased the surface area to ensure we get the most clamping force possible.