Every time someone asks me what lift they should buy, I always ask how often they drive off road. The more road miles you drive the more money you should spend on your lift.
That advice doesn’t seem to make sense to a lot of people so I will break it down before we look at the Alpine arms from TeraFlex.
What do you pay for?
That’s always the question when you buy anything. Making a suspension work off road is far simper than making it able to withstand the punishment of on road driving.
Off road is usually a much slower speed, the focus is on flexibility, and noise in the system is less of an issue. It’s also easy to mask any geometry issues off road.
With those things in mind you can get away with loose flexible joints, arm alignments that allow more clearance but aren’t the optimum for higher speeds, and springs can be far more relaxed.
When you drive on road your suspension has to be capable of controlling your vehicle from 0 to 65 MPH and faster. Hitting road irregularities, bumps, debris, and also maintaining control while stopping, turning, and accelerating.
In other words when you compare systems they may look like they have all the same parts but they aren’t the same quality.
TeraFlex Alpine Arms
The Alpine arms from TeraFlex are a blend of total on road control and road damping combined with off road centric features. They are also require very limited maintenance. Replace the bushing if it fails but no grease required every few weeks or after every off road trip.
For the road you have Clevite style rubber bushings. They don’t give up maximum flex but they are more resistant to flex. They are excellent at controlling vibration, damping road imperfections, and giving excellent control while driving. That’s why the factory system uses them. The arms are made from 1-5/8” X 0.156 wall DOM tubing, that makes them strong and durable. They will handle years of punishment that driving on the highway and city streets throws at a vehicle.
Continuing that heavy weight and durable design are the fully adjustable forged ends. You can center the tires in the wheel wells allowing for better tire clearance and set camber and caster to optimum.
Another great feature is the aluminum pinch collar versus the typical jam nut. It takes a bit more work to get them torqued and set but there is a lot more clamping force placed on the end. That prevents any movement and helps these arms last longer.
Off road because they were able to make them stable and strong TeraFlex was able to optimize the angles of the arms to provide maximum clearance for tires and articulation.
Overall
The TeraFlex Alpine arms are designed to give factory levels of on road performance and give as much flex off road as possible. That’s a tough ask.
They did as good a job at those design criteria as possible. The on road comfort and control are exactly as advertised, just like stock. Truthfully it’s a little better than stock, plenty of control especially when you consider 37 inch tires are much heavier than the stock setup.
Off road we didn’t give up any maximum flex. It isn’t as easy to get there as it was with a system based on a heim joint that has no resistance to movement. Heim joints also offer zero damping so every vibration and bump is translated into the chassis.
So that’s the trade off. If you drive off road exclusively I wouldn’t use the Alpine arms. If you drive on road more than 50% of the time, and definitely if it’s your daily driver the Alpine arms are as good of a multi purpose control arm on the market.
Buy them direct from TeraFlex for $1146.99
