ToyRoverlander

Also, keeping the rollcentre of the front suspension lower than the rears increases roll stiffness as the 2 points are not in the same plane horizontally. Helps with handling onroad.

At the moment my 109" is sprung over on LC80 axles. It's got rear springs up front, parabolics, and 14" travel shocks. On the front it uses the full stroke of the shocks, on the rear it doesnt. It's got between 95-100cm of total articulation, far more than many coilers. It never felt unstable under any circumstances. At least that's one goodthing about leafs, the torsional twist adds springrate, works kinda like a swaybar. The width of the axles also help with stability. As I want to go to really big tyres (38.5 creepies), turbo and an Orion Tcase (doubles low gear to 82:1)I might run into trouble with the parabolic suspension (axlewrap). And as I want to constantly improve things I've decided to go 3link front, 4link rear with Fox coilovers. I know that articulation from the front end will be the same, the rear will improve. That will give me all the articulation I need. Even know it rarely lifts a wheel of the ground.. When needed I'll add an offroad swaybar to increase stability on sideslopes without going to stiffer springs.

Why the obsession for silly articulation? Crazy articulation is overrated. Unless it'll be an RTI ramp queen.., better to get a front-rear balanced suspension. That, with lockers f/r will work very well. The rear suspension is actually not that bad for a stock truck, it's the front that really needs improving. A 3link up front, lengthened A-frame and radius arms and retain the springs. Building a buggy and keeping LR axles? Why?

For a mallcrawler, it'll be fine.

Yes, and have you seen how crazy wide/big they are? And they don't see anywhere near the torque the belt in a portal box would see which means it would have to be massive to be able to handle it reliably. Whatever it is a belt is made off, it's not as strong as steel.

How would you make this cost effective? It's not without reason that all options out there are expensive. And I don't reckon many people would be interested in belt driven portals for example. No way I would want anything else but gears for strenght and reliability. Belts 'could' be reliable, just as the Td5 is so reliable

I agree. Have a look at just the immense cost of this. There was a guy in the US wanting to do the exact same thing but dropped the idea after pretty much everyone discouraged him to continue on as the scale of such a project is just immense. Another thing that set him back was when he found out howmuch it is to have gears cut, that is very, very expensive! Then you have to decide on having the portalboxes machined or cast, both not very cheap... I would think long and hard before doing something like this. As if you would want to make it sell it would have to be either better or cheaper than the ones already out there. You'd be hard pressed I reckon. Good luck anyway!

*cough* Cummins *cough* Those 6BT's are just plain awesome! If only they could be sent on a diet There's only one engine I would consider stuffing in a 110 and that's Toyota's 1HD-FT, the 24valve straight6 4.2 Td. Plenty of power/torque and very reliable.

They're around... One way of getting your hands on them is buying a damaged, scruffy 80Series. Pull the axles and sell the rest. The motor and gearbox are worth a lot of money.

LC80 axles are cool! There very wide though. Have huge brakes and standard factory lockers. CV's are huge, so are axles and diffs. Very strong axles. Ratio is either 4.1 or 3.73, auto being 4.1, manual 3.73. No issues with the tierod wanting to go through the leaf springs as it sits a lot higher than on a LR axle. It actually sits behind the axle instead of below it where it's vulnerable. Single brake lines on the front. I'm using a RR master, but a Disco master would be easier as they're setup for single lines. Drilling and turning the diff flanges to accept the LR driveshaft is a breeze.

I've got a 3.4 diesel (3B) in my 109.. gives me about 13l/100km.

Don't forget your A-frame, or you'll have a diff pointing straight to the ground .

My advice, retain the springs and get a locker. Works WAY better.

Proper front end being lights in grill?

My question would be; WHY do you want them to dislocate? It's not like it's a good thing...

Assuming that's rotational play you're talking about than that sounds not that bad at all actually . Quite often it's a fair bit more. A lot of play usually comes from the diff, just wear and tear. They keep going like this for ages so it's not really something to worry about. Checkin the drive flanges is easy. Lift up a rear wheel, pull on the handbrake (or actually the other way around ), whip off that dustcover and turn your wheel. You can only turn it a certain distance but when it hits 'the ends' you can see howmuch play there is. If you don't see the halfshaft moving much compared to the flange than all is good, if it is moving a lot get some new ones. They're cheap anyway. Oh, vibration could also be caused by a worn slipjoint in the driveshaft. Grab that bit and move it up and down, a tiny little bit is okay but any more than that is no good.

7Jx16 black 8spoke

I got the same size KM2's on my heavily modified Series. I run them at 2.5bar front and rear. The series sits spring over on parabolic springs, so the lift is quite generous, it's got a really wide track and very good shocks (bilstein 5125 offroad shocks). And it handles very well. I can fly around the bends with ease and the only vague handling caracteristivs it's got is because of its suspension, not the tyres. I reckon your suspension needs a bit of TLC....

No worries . It should make quite a difference. You can even start out with a full lenght leaf and see how it goes, if it's too stiff just start grinding it down . Wouldn't any cheap rattlecan paint do? Or rustoleum or something? The paint on my springs has started cracking all over and they started to get a bit rusty too. Must do something about that before winter hits I guess...

Haha, that's right, I don't live THAT far away . It's still a trailfix though . These perches don't limit uptravel at all, the springs still reverse arch a fair bit (yes I know, it's not very good for spring life ). So far they're holding up fine. Who says cheap nasty parabolics are worthless ? You get axle wrap with that setup?? Geez, mine ways about 2100kg, sits on 33" muds and has a lot more torque than that and I've got no issues.... weird. Yours is very light, how did you manage that? or was it a typo?

Nope, no anti-wrap bar on mine. And there's very little pinion movement under torque in 1st low, despite having 3leaf parabolics at the back. I did remove all the steel plates in between the leafs to make the spring pack is thin as possible and I made the spring perches 10" long, apparantly that's supposed to reduce spring wrap. That said, next spring I'm going to change a LOT of things on it, one of those things is that I'm going to a DC driveshaft with thicker tube and possibly larger u-joints and it gets an anti-wrap bar. Reason is I want to turbo the 3B, and with about 140hp/330nm torque I reckon it will need that bar!

True. Never really realized that the standard driveshafts are so bad... If the mod you describe helps for that, awesome! Cheap, simple fixes are always good . I never experimented with standard suspension as I reckon that's a complete waste of time and money if you want it to work really well. I went pretty extreme almost immediately so needed completely new shafts with way longer slip joints due to the lift and the insane articulation that it has, so it's only logical to opt for the high angle yokes while I'm at it. The only problem I had the other day was that the yoke came off the splined section of the front driveshaft. I had that one custom made and the idiots there welded the cast iron yoke to the steel splined shaft. This is possible ofcourse, when done right, which they didn't. The weld broke. Quite inconvenient when the 109 is pointing nose up with its back end sitting in a mudhole and you have to take the driveshaft of and get out in 2wd... That's being fixed atm, so that will never happen again.. I'm also looking to install a center limit strap on the front axle to prevent full droop of the front axle. That will help fight wheel hop and will improve the hillclimbing.

Having yokes capable of greater angles does not change the angle the u-joints are running at sitting at rideheight, so cannot reduce vibrations and therefore cannot increase u-joint life, unless they used to bind and snap.. Only proper u-joint angle will take vibrations away. My front driveshaft (not the one pictured above by the way, those I've used when converting a mate's 109" to LC80 axles, I've used slightly different ones) has been in use for around 15.000km's and the u-joints are still perfect. And the angles were, and still are, not how they should be in an ideal driveline world . But I get no vibrations, only when I engage 4wd at speed do I notice vibrations, slip it out of 4wd again and vibrations are gone.

2 drivemembers, gaskets, perhaps the 2 castelled nuts that hold the halfshaft to the drivemember (it's been a while that I had a Rover axle in my hands) and I guess, depending on the FWH's you've got that you might need new (shorter) bolts.

That would be a nice cheap option, if it's needed. I know a few guys running parabolics with one-ton shackles and not having any issues at all.. How much do you gain by doing this? I fixed it in another way, bit more pricey though.....