Control Arms:

What Are Control Arms? Control Arms, also known as A-Arms, are metal arms that connect the frame or body of a vehicle to the axle or wheel assembly of the vehicle. These control arms determine the arc that suspension travel follows.

Why Do I Need To Know About Them? There are a few different types of control arms with different uses and benefits, and knowing the difference can help you decide what's best for your vehicle, so let's get into it:

Long Arms VS. Short Arms: The biggest choice you'll have to make when choosing what Control Arms you want to run, is whether you want to run Long Arms or Short Arms, there's no one right answer, but here are the general differences in theory:

Long Arm kits allow the suspension to take a longer, gentler arc during travel, the theory is that this translates to smoother on-road performance, and can net you a little bit of articulation gain in some scenarios. Because of this, Long Arms are often chosen for vehicles that do more on-road driving than off road. Unfortunately, in reality the ride quality between a quality short-arm kit and a quality long-arm kit will often be very similar. The main benefit to long arms is gentler suspension angles.

Short Arm kits make the suspension travel in a tighter arc, and in general this means they offer more useful articulation in heavy rock crawling. Since short arms are also physically shorter, a short arm kit is less likely to get hung up on rocks, and can net you a bit more ground clearance.

Finally, you should consider your lift height. As you lift a vehicle, the suspension angles can change severely, and taller lifts may prefer the larger arc offered by a long arm kit.

Adjustable Control Arms: Another choice you'll have to make is solid or adjustable control arms. Put simply, if the cost isn't prohibitive, there is almost no reason at all to go with solid arms over adjustable arms. Adjustable arms have a few large benefits: They can be adjusted for different lift heights, so if you decide to go higher or drop lower in the future, your current arms might not need to be swapped out. The adjustability can also allow you to rotate and adjust your axles to correct driveline, steering, and suspension geometries. The only real downside to a good set of adjustable arms is the price.

What About Control Arms With Articulated Joints? Some Control Arms use moving joints instead of plain bushings, this allows the axle a bit of extra wiggle room and can net you a little more articulation in some cases by relieving binding. Again, other than price, there aren't really any downsides to articulated arms, though they don't offer that many benefits either. If you're a hard core off-roader and you need to squeeze every degree of articulation out of your rig, then these are the way to go, but for the general off-roader they aren't really necessary.