with Bill Johnston

Spidertrax Anti-Wrap Kit

With all the different options in suspension systems on the road today, many Zook owners have found it difficult to choose a ride that is strong enough for their brand of 'wheelin', yet is soft enough to be comfortable. When we installed the YJ springs on our white Zook, we thought it was perfect. But we soon realized that the soft ride came with a price. It had plenty of spring wrap! Spring wrap can cause broken springs, snapped u-joints and lots of headache when you are on a tough trail far from the main road.

A traction bar can take the spring wrap out of the equation, but you have to choose the right one for your application. We installed a triangulated (looks like a triangle) traction bar in the past, and it worked very well. Too well in fact, as it transferred all of the drive train power directly to the wheels. In a trail rig, that worked amazingly well. But after driving the same rig on the street for a few months, the steady shock loads finally took their toll on the worn transfer case gears and killed the transfer case. What we needed was a traction aid that still left a little play in the drive train, kind of a 'buffer', so the gearing could work smoothly again.

We went to Spidertrax and explained the problem. They told us about their Anti-Wrap Kit that used a single bar to control the axle movement. On the right you can see everything that ships with the kit. Above is a picture of the parts we needed for our application. This Anti-Wrap Kit would be installed on a Spidertrax Rear Sidewinder axle housing, so the mounting brackets needed to be just a little different. The axle tabs (3&4 in the photo) are made to fit around the rear axle tube and line up on the welded bead that runs down its length. You can see the notches cut out for the bead quite clearly. The Sidewinder axle tube doesn't have such a bead, and the center housing is so large that the tabs would have to be attached there instead. So you see the tabs we used in the picture above, on the far left.