Oh I've been thinking about a parallel 4 as a simpler alternative this last few days, dont you worry .....lol
Your pictures answered my slightly unclear question about the pivots being parallel to the axle rather than the bar. Does this affect the articulation in any significant way? I can totally see how it would make your adjustments much easier, especailly with regard to the width at the axle. They do look clean too.
My images are a little rough but they are to scale. One grid square per inch. I played around with the bar lengths and the notch position and then ran the numbers through the 4-link analyser i found at Pirate 4x4
http://mysite.verizon.net/triaged/4l...tml/index.html
and I think I got some pretty decent numbers although I have no idea how they change under articulation. the performance trends analyzer demo version doesnt let you do anything useful so I cant see how things change as the axle moves.
These numbers are with 16" and 20" bars for the 80% upper to lower relationship and with the lower bars tucked in the front of the notch and the pinion back to the factory offset.
The driveshaft loop is wider and offset to match. The lower bar just tucks inside the notch:
Is the side offset on the pinion in addition to a front-to-back rotation on the housing or are these installed with the pumpkin face perpendicular to the ground instead of tilted up a couple degrees? From those pics of the jag with the satchell it looks like he centered his driveshaft and the pumpkin is offset to compensate. Its hard to be sure.
Maybe a parallel 4 and panhard is just the easier way out here. I was hoping for something a little different without getting too complicated and I liked the idea of no panhard or watts. I'm already in the realm of a custom notch and bars here with this design though.
I am planning a trip to the Pleasanton goodguys at the weekend to do some research and maybe there'll be something there that helps me decide.