Beam Axle?

look underneath a K-car. you can either rob/modify something from one of those, or at least get some inspiration. a beam axle will lead to a loss of handling precision, and give more likelihood for the rear end to "hop" on mid-corner bumps. there are many examples of recent, modern cars that sport beam axles and do very well when they're tuned correctly. Another possibility you may want to consider (just for fun or for loss of marbles) is that many 1990s-era GM vehicles had this hybrid-ish, seemingly corvette-inspired IRS that uses a transverse leaf spring assembly. Most likely those will be waaaaaaay too wide for a moke. that could be pretty entertaining with fat tires, really big fenders, and wheels with painfully high FWD-stlye offset, like +48mm

Maybe when I said IRS I should have said the moke has a trailing arm rear suspension. I can more or less do away with the subframe if I go to coilovers, but I'm not so keen on keeping the stock trailing arms since that pivot shaft broke and sent one of the drivers dancing off into the field with sudden and random rear wheel steering.

If the beam axle is a bad idea, I'm wondering if I can some up with some tubular steel triangular rear arms that I can just put a cheap coilover on.

edit: Like this

I second the K-car (any FWD mopar, 1980-late '90's) style rear beam.  They are easily cut in the middle, then welded back together w/ a scab plate or tube to get the narrower width.  Available w/ various coil or leaf springs and shock locations.  The coil spring type locate w/ a pair of trailing links and a panhard rod.

A1/A2/A3 golf/jetta are also easy to narrow.  An advantage to the VW is the coilover rear shock only requires a single upper strut mount and a single body pivot on each side.

I'm guessing the mini moke has a flat rear deck underside?? why don't you graft up a 240sx rear end, or similar (Datsun 510, 240z)? Those are full IRS, have the cross-member already built, spring mounts built in. shocks, etc..... Once you get the cross member and diff bolted up then you can just locate the rest of the interface points accordingly, and cut the drive shaft.

Possible overkill, but how about all that plus the addition of rear disk brakes? All for the price of "Scrap Value" depending on where you do your shopping?

-=Tom

I don't think I would cut the rabbit beam, it is under torsional load with a lot of leverage to break a weld.  It is also designed to flex, which is also not friendly to welds.

How about the axle off a Harbor Freight trailer? It's around 55" wide and has longitudinal leaf springs.

not so much on a 1100# car that doesn't lean - it'll lift the inside wheel first.

that said - overlap and bolt-through would be easier and more effective - and still work.

Is this rwd or fwd? i dont know what car you have..

  If its fwd, a 90's nissan rear beam axle, se-r and maybe the normal sentra and 200sx too has a watts link rear axle that should be pretty easy to shorten if needed.  http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/ … ldrear.jpg