Sat down with Colin Campbell's suspension theory book during this morning's F1 race and figured a few things out ... the 9 degree incline of the front frame stub looks to be yerf's way of putting castor into the front end without having to angle match the a-arms to kingpin angles. Rather than do a riser, i'm dropping the pickup points lower, outward and moving them forward. So I'll end up with more ground clearance, a slightly longer wheelbase giving more room for bigger tires and a wider track for more stability. The rollcage on this thing-- isn't ---it's a brush guard and has no triangulation, so until that's addressed, anything to keep it on all four is welcome! BTW, spinning the top bar section 180 degrees gave me nearly two inches more headroom.
Really wasn't happy with any of the material I have to do something with the front end so I did some more digging today and finally made progess. Plan of action that I'm going to stick with is to get some big rubber up front. Tested a dry-rotted 20x7x8 tire on the golf cart rim, fits good and seems a good match size-wise to the rears. My mower spindles won't work as hubs, bolt centers are just a hair off, (must be 4 inch centers vs 110 mm) so i need to get some atv hubs, plenty around used with brake discs on them, so no worries there.
Spindles are going to get made out of cro mo tubing with bronze bearings. Finding something to make the mounting brackets for the spindles is an issue at the moment, so I moved to the other end of the arms. Today's score has gone a long way to getting me thinking I can make a durable front end with good suspension travel (even without the tire size increase, which will come later when $$s are available) using the stock arms. Pics below are from last night's comparisons and this morning's tire fiddling.
Flipping the arms won't work without redoing the brackets, kills the arm to frame clearance. meh--so much for easy games to play ... The one shot with it on the jackstand shows how far it has to come up just to put the shock back in place... just too much.