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Getting more flex from the front?


Chicken Drumstick

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So who agrees that best bang for buck on a daily driver is, parabolics,longer travel shocks and a anti tramp bar up front?

Yes with the exception of the parabolics. The longer shocks and a different top front mount are first. You can't put longer shocks on the standard mounts. When they are compressed there just isn't room for a longer shock, this is the main problem.

When you put a different top shock mount then the parabolics start snapping and you have to get good ones for this not to happen so all of a sudden bang for buck goes out the window. Parabolics don't generally have as much free camber. Driver side 11 leaf diesel springs gives the most free camber. Remove leafs to get the spring rate you want.

I suppose the tramp bar would be next but I've never experienced it unless the tyres are really hard like for road driving so it doesn't affect me off road with 8psi in the tyres.

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Anyway, I've had a dig through my archives and turned up the contents of the original Gon2far website, so I've uploaded a few things that may be of interest, in no particular order:

Now you do!

:P

Thanks, a little bit of history I didn't have the chance to find at time.

Nice 109" :wub:

P.S.

Where's Nigel nowadays? Does he still own a LR?

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When you put a different top shock mount then the parabolics start snapping and you have to get good ones for this not to happen so all of a sudden bang for buck goes out the window.

Why would this be? Because of what you said before regarding thickness of the parabolic leaves? Reverse arching can be prevented with bumpstops. I've reverse arched and massively twisted my cheap parabolics and never snapped one. One issue I have with long travel leaf suspension is that the shackle end spring bushes wear out insanely fast.

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Those are indeed rear springs. I guess they do, as they are longer they don't have to twist as much for a given axle to chassis angle as a short spring. A short spring would offer way more resistance to this twist a lot sooner compared to a long spring. Does give added stability at the extremes of articulation though.

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Eeeh it's all gone terribly technical! A bit much for me as I'm not going to be chopping mine about to make alterations, one must think of originality and all that!

Anyway, I've had a dig through my archives and turned up the contents of the original Gon2far website, so I've uploaded a few things that may be of interest, in no particular order:

88_infield.jpg

bottomshockmount.jpg

coilbeating.jpg

findarock.jpg

gallery1.jpg

gallery2.jpg

p1010133.jpg

p1010136.jpg

parabolic.compressed.jpg

parabolic.xtend.jpg

photo_01.jpg

spring-piv.jpg

spring.xtend.jpg

springpivots.jpg

Loving the simplicity of those front lower shock mounts!!! can any of the old expericenced leafer modifiers reccomend a decent shock setup to start looking at for a fairly standard setup? i.e. best to stay eye-eye or move to pin-eye or pin-pin? travel length and the sorts too?

im enjoying this thread :) still yet to read that article by Fred Williams though.

on a side note been watching his "dirt every day" series on motortrend and although its not as entertaining as Roadkill i still enjoy it although think it could be more technical :)

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I'm not sure what the preferred flavour of shock is, mine are all eye-eye types and by happy accident the standard Volvo mounts put them the right way round & in the right place & with good travel (especially the rears).

The G2F front shock mounts were tall plates that bolted to the chassis, with a cross-brace between them in the engine bay, put the top of the shock pretty much as far up under the wing as it could get, they were 14" travel ProComps as I recall but I'd give a big vote to the Bilsteins that ToyRoverLander runs (and I have since switched to).

The rear of the 88 they put an extra x-member between the chassis rails with a row of holes to allow you to tilt the shocks over, this gives room for longer shocks BUT also reduces the rate of the shock as a function of the angle.

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thanks FF,

i would imagine that a reduced shock rate isnt the end of the world on an 88" pickup like mine as theyre so overdamped anyway. whats interesting is the ride gets so much smoother if you crack off the spring and shackle bolts (the 9/16" ones not the u bolts lol) and let the bushes rotate about them. i would be really tempted to maybe use castelated nuts and split pins on the front ends of each spring and use the threaded shackles and nyloc nuts to lock against each other on the shackle ends, leaving a bit of looseness except as it gets used for many miles on and off road, i dont think it would be a great idea to turn the bolts into extra wear points as i would imagine snapping one at speed (80+) woiuldnt be ideal!

anyone else had thoughts to do this?

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Why not remove a few leaves to make them a bit more supple? Unless you carry heavy loads reguraly..

im on RM parabolics, went for the 3 leaf rears as i have bent a few cheaper sets of 3 leaf parabolics due to awesome torque figures... ;)

Bowie, i suppose it is haha never thought of that i did run it on polybushes with the last springs but didnt seem to make that much of a difference, although those were super supple anyway, most likely why they ended up bending all over the shop!

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I have snapped 9/16" shackles bolts on a stiffly sprung 80" vehicle in the past, so I wouldn't recommend running them loose. The crush tubes of the original bushings are intended to take the shear forces. Has anyone had new main leaves made to accept a larger diameter bushing, such as were fitted to 101's or similar ? I think for standard non military chassis, larger bushings could only be fitted at the shackle end of the spring, because due to insufficient clearance, the larger diameter spring eye would not fit at the hanger end unless the 2nd wrapper leaf was deleted.

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even with the single wrapping leaf design, ala parabolics you would struggle to get a significantly larger bush eye in there unfortunately iiRC, soon ill be able to tell you off my CAD model chassis :hysterical:

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even with the single wrapping leaf design, ala parabolics you would struggle to get a significantly larger bush eye in there unfortunately iiRC, soon ill be able to tell you off my CAD model chassis :hysterical:

The shackle end is likely what makes the biggest difference to ride quality when loosening the bolts anyway, and it's the shackle bushings that tend to flog out more often than the hanger end, so larger bushings at the shackle could be beneficial to both a smoother ride and improved bushing life.

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that would be easier to achieve than the front ends of the springs, obviously by putting a larger bush tube into the chassis at the rear of the front spring and the rear shackle bush mount would be extremely simple to recreate with a larger bushing tube too!

if only my chassis wasnt galvanised!...

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So if you were to use eye-eye type shocks front and rear (not the stud type)...........which is the best direction to fit the shock eye axis in?

Front top: lateral or longitudenal?

Front bottom: lateral or longitudenal?

Rear top: lateral or longitudenal?

Rear bottom: lateral or longitudenal?

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that would be easier to achieve than the front ends of the springs, obviously by putting a larger bush tube into the chassis at the rear of the front spring and the rear shackle bush mount would be extremely simple to recreate with a larger bushing tube too!

if only my chassis wasnt galvanised!...

I think a larger bushing in the spring alone would make an appreciable difference. After all, how often do front chassis bushings require replacing compared to the ones on the shackle end of the spring ?

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unfortunately thats not quite so easy to implement unless you have a great knowledge of the type of spring steel parabolics (or in fact standard springs) are made of, and have the facilities to mess about with that sort of thing too! haha

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unfortunately thats not quite so easy to implement unless you have a great knowledge of the type of spring steel parabolics (or in fact standard springs) are made of, and have the facilities to mess about with that sort of thing too! haha

Yes, Parabolics are difficult, but I was mainly putting it out there for anyone with multi leaf springs who have access to spring manufacturing firms. Last time I had full custom leaf springs made ,I recall that it wasn't outrageously expensive, so I assume just having main leaves made wouldn't break the bank .

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