2003 GMC DURAMAX -toy with family manners

[tlbrewer]

I don't want to say anything bad about Cognito Motorsports, but lets just say that the majority of their products end up on "mall crawlers", whereas the Camburg stuff gets used and abused without fail. I worked at a 4x4 shop that did very extensive off road fabrication and we would have never recommended a Cognito kit to anyone who actually wanted to use their truck off road. Just my $.02.

This is good info. My question is why do you recommend Camburg over Cognito? I'd never heard of Camburg, other than racing, until your post. But glad I have now. I went to their website, but other than a brief description and very few pics, they don't offer much technical information on why their kit is better (I'm looking at a leveling kit by the way). Up until this point, I thought Cognito was about as good as it gets. I want something that corrects the geometry problems of the GM IFS, not just raise it up to look good like the "mall crawlers" as you so aptly put it. From what I can tell their product looks nice, but doesn't offer anything different than Cognito. So what is it I'm missing or they aren't telling/selling. Just trying to be as informed as possible so I can get the most for my money.

Tom

[bob91yj]

I see a lot of Cognito's stuff at my dealership. The only thing we've really had an issue with is their HD tie rods, the inner end will start popping/get loose as fast as the stock stuff does. I've got one of the top Dmax guys on the west coast working for me, he's fairly well known in the desert racing scene so we see more than our share of GM/Chevy Dmax's that are usedabused by desert racing teams for chase trucks.

[Saiyan66]

The difference between the Cognito kit and the Camburg kit is the engineering, quality, and attention to detail behind it. The Cognito kit is designed to be an almost factory like part, that allows for a proper geometry when cranking up the torsion bars. However the Camburg kit is designed to correct the geometry as well as enhance the strength and extend the travel of the front end. If you look closely at the arms themselves the Camburgs have much nicer welds, plate gussets on top of the pivot/arm junction, 1.25" uniballs (larger than anyone else's arms at this time), and proper length high quality flush mount hardware to attach to the spindle. It is this type of attention to detail that you are paying for. We all know that larger tires + off road driving = dead ball joints. The uniballs will never need replacing (when taken care of properly) and can handle just about any tire you can squeeze in there unlike a standard ball joint. The Camburg arms are made of 4130 chromoly not just mild steel like the Cognitos. This makes for a stronger product as well. The Camburg arms are more capable of supporting larger tires in off road environments, and should you decide to upgrade the front end more at a later date (maybe 2.5" shocks and high angle CV's, upgraded tie rods) they will fully allow you to take advantage of those components. Camburg does also offer the tie rod upgrade which is pictured on the truck shown on the website. Calling them is best as they often offer products that don't show up on the website for some time.

Camburg properly sizes all of their hardware, which most companies do not. On high stress parts you will often hear people talk about shank length of bolts. What this means is that if you have two parts that you need to bolt together that total 3" in thickness, you would need a 3.5"-3.75" long bolt to have enough thread to get the nut on. However with conventional hardware the threads on a bolt of this size would be 1.5" long. That means the shank length would only be 2"-2.25" in length, not enough to have the strongest part of the hardware completely through and supporting the two parts. The solution to this is to buy hardware that is either too long for your application and then cut off the excess thread (leaving you with the full 3" of shank length) or to buy expensive properly sized hardware (Camburg does this). If I had a picture it would be much better than trying to explain it.

Once again, I wont say that the Cognitos are bad. If you just want to correct the geometry after cranking the torsion bars they will work just fine. People on this forum tend to load their vehicles heavily and drive many miles off road with oversize tires so for those reasons I think the Camburgs are a more fitting product. And no I don't have any affiliation with either brand.

[tlbrewer]

Thanks. That explains a lot. That's the kind of information I was looking for and the stuff Camburg should put on their website.

Tom

[locrwln]

The uniballs will never need replacing (when taken care of properly) and can handle just about any tire you can squeeze in there unlike a standard ball joint.

The only problem with Uni-balls is they are not sealed. That may be fine if you never leave the dry dirt/dust, but trust me, a buddy of mine went through uni-ball upper joints like crazy on his LC100 when he tried that style of UCA. As soon as he went through anything that would land on top of the UCA and invariably onto the upper portion of the uni-ball (which every design I have seen is built like a cup that will collect dirt/mud), it just sat there and started abrading the joint. We did a lot of miles off-road and he was replacing the uni-ball at least once a year due to wear. Pretty hard to keep them clean when you are spending a week out in the backcountry. He tried everything that the manufacturer recommended as far as maintenance even to the point of lubing them during our adventures, they still squeaked and wore out.

I have another friend with Camburg's on his 4runner and he too has gone through at least one set of uni-balls in approximately 20k of use.

Nothing against Camburg, but uni-balls are made for racing, where they can be replaced after every race, not for use in the real world if you expect them to last for a long time. The rest of their arm looks great.

Jack

[tlbrewer]

That would be a deal breaker for me.

Tom

[Rot Box]

Uni-balls and coil-overs don't stand a chance in Utah's salty winters thats all I know

[Saiyan66]

Yeah I guess I am spoiled living in Cali where I don't have to worry about salt and ridiculous freezing conditions.

[WCO]

So the trucks stance is going to be finished today. 2" blocks going in the rear to give me the factory stance again (I personally like the factory rake...) The final result should sit the truck 1" higher in the rear, with an over all lift of 2-1/2 to 3" over stock with the larger tires. My pitman and idler arms were worn bad, so in is going a set of the MOOG "problem solvers. I want to add the cognito support kit, but that will be at a later date. I'm also throwing on some tie-rod sleeves. With the slightly-larger-than-stock tires, this should make my front end as bullet proof as a DMAX front end can be. Next month will hopefully be the bilstein 5100, and possibly new bump stops on the front end.....An end is in sight. I'll post pics later when I get them. Oh, and of course the alignment's getting done today as well....

[Nor-Cal Nick]

Nice build, really like that bed shell. Getting ready to start my build soon so alot of great reading in this thread.


Nick