Flexing has always been the way we like to find out just who's the best. So whether it's muscles or a suspension system, whoever has the most flex wins. Now, I'm sure we're all pretty familiar with flexing our muscles...but many times when comparing our Jeep flex with others, the question arises, "Who has the biggest flex?"...and not only that but how do you find out what the flex of your suspension system is in the first place? Here are the answers-
Fist off, for those unfamiliar with Jeep terminology, the flex of your suspension system is basically your Jeep's ability to articulate it self to an amplified degree. Take a look at the picture on the right. As the Jeep travels up the ramp the suspension of the front wheels flex at a huge angle. The more the flex, the more you can keep all your tires on the ground when going through obstacles on the trail. The more tires you have on the ground the easier it's going to be to not lose control...simple right? So, the goal is to have the most amount of flex possible!
Now, how to measure the flex of your Jeep? How many times have you been talking to a group, chatting on a forum, or trying to one up your next door neighbor and an argument arises over the topic of how you measure flex correctly? We've seen it plenty of times, so in an effort to eliminate heated Jeep discussions on the trail and in the living room, let's talk about something called RTI.
RTI stands for Ramp Travel Index. It's a number that corresponds to the distance you travel up an RTI Ramp and the length of your vehicle's wheel base. RTI ramps can vary in degree between 15-30° but are usually at a 20 degree angle to the ground.
To score your Jeep's RTI Index, you start by putting one tire on the ramp and driving up it until one of the other three tires begins to lift off the ground. Back the vehicle back down the ramp until all tires are making contact with the ground again, then take the measurements. You want to make sure to measure the distance traveled up the ramp (represented by the yellow line in our handy little diagram below), and then divide that by the length of the wheelbase of your Jeep, shown by the green line. Take that number and times it by 1000, and there you have the RTI for your flex!
Hint: Remember while measuring distances that you want to measure from the center of the wheel like it shows in the diagram.
Well, there you go! That's everything you need to know in order to find out how much flex your Jeep has. Now the only hard part would be finding an RTI Ramp laying around somewhere...good luck!
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