Watts Linkage

has anyone here used a watts linkage on their s10?

With leaves or on a custom linked rear?

its such an open ended question im not sure how to answer.
but no, i have never personally used a watts in an s10

im sorry to just now get back to this thread.

as far as it being an open ended question, my fault.  im not sure how any of that would be set up.  wether it be with leaf or custom link.  i had never heard of a watts link and found some cpu generated drawings of it but not sure how it works or how well.

1st gen rx7s, i think later durangos are a couple production cars that come to mind that had factory watts links.
might be a good place to start gathering ideas.

I think they package extremely well and are very effective.

after about an hour of looking around the web at this i saw several people using them in their bagged setup.  basically using it to keep the bed level as it drops to the ground.  i dont plan on building a dropped vehicle, i was under the impression watts links were best used for better turning while accelerating.

i never heard or seen a watts setup.  figured this would be the place to ask if anyone has it in their set up and if it helps out

im sure it is obvious, im very new to working on vehicles.  learning as i go and a pot load of questions.

thanks for the info, fellas

Watts are the best option for a lot of reasons, but they're not particularly easy to build. You'll find high minded ideals very rarely make it off paper.

The advantage of the watts in a bagged vehicle is also similar and an advantage for handling.  A watts link does a great job, especially over a small displacement, in keeping the axle centered.  With the leaf spring suspension in the S10s and Blazers the leaves locate the axle side to side, but they're springs, so there is some slop which translates to a loose feel and poor handling - less accurate relation between the driver and the road.  There's likely more theory than I could go into to describe it, but the more predictable the suspension responds to the road the more predictably you can drive.

compared to a mumford link, it's easy to package i think.
I'm not sure what you saw for keeping the bed level... no sure if you are confused on the watts link or not, post up the picture.

this is how mazda did it in the first gen rx7s


i have seen many people run them horizontally like this to keep the rc super low and still package well


apparently marauders had it above the diff

I like that horizontal one, that's nice!