Sniv's Custom Long Travel Build
- Thread starter snivilous
- Start date
snivilous
Senior Member
Began working on the truck a little today.
To do list:
Bent LCA tabs/frame
Finish bracket welds/sealing frame
LCA bolt and LBJ bolts need replacing on both sides
Stainless brake line needed for the passenger side
CV blown on passenger side, and drivers side is super rusted
Shock shaft on drivers side bent
Need to revalve both shocks
Need to calculate correct spring rate/lengths for new springs
Better reservoir mounts
Limit straps
Figure out what's up with the torque converter
And less priority, but need bump stops (nice thing about 10" of up travel from ride height is that's not a big priority for majority of driving), and I need to clearance the fiberglass and what's left of the inner fender for the 33s (which should be sweet considering my fiberglass couldn't clear my bald 31s that measured in at 28s).
Drivers side with the bent shaft:
I'm going to do a lot of cosmetic work this summer too. I want to try and fix a lot of the dents I have from when I rolled and also when I drifted into a lamp
I'm also pulling off the 50" LED bar and want to make a really low profile roof rack with maybe a 40" LED bar integrated into it, and then I'm thinking white out the rear flares to match the fiberglass (which will get color matched too) and white out the chrome on the grille and maybe outline the "4Runner" in the grille too... essentially it'll have an Oreo look 
Luckily my girlfriend and snivilous decided to accompany me and help me with the shocks
Started out with the drivers side coilover
I didn't have a spanner wrench and didn't want to pay for one so found some scrap steel laying around and made the most no ****s given wrench ever :thumb:
(Don't judge me from those shitty welds :violin
A few things pissed me off though. First of all, the shock oil was like black for some reason... and the shocks have ~3000 miles on them. Not a big deal but kinda weird, I'm gonna run them with ATF which I've heard works well since it has a similar viscosity and doesn't expand much with heat, as well as the fact it's super easy to get. And then I had a big shim bundle that [MENTION=89531]Cartzo[/MENTION] and I had bought in Utah, when we revalved his shocks all the measurements seemed weird which we concluded were the cheap calipers we were using. Well at first I used some good calipers and was still confused by what I was getting so got the micrometers out and measured the shims in the shock and a bunch of the shims that we had bought. What SHOULD of come in my shock was all 15s on compression and a combination of 10s/15s on rebound. NONE of the shims are 15s, all 10s. Likewise, the shim bundle we had bought should of consisted of 8s and 10s--like I said I didn't measure all of the shims, but all of them except for like two were 10s (and still no 15s which should of come off of Cartzo's shocks). I understand these are super cheap shocks, and you get what you pay for when it comes to shocks, but somehow there appear to ONLY be .010 shims when there should definitely be 15s already in the shocks and some 8s in the bundle we have. I'll contact FOA, but I'm disappointed. I thought my valving was too stiff before, but I also thought I had 15s before so I might just leave the valving how it is and judge it again once I push the truck hard with the correct springs and bumped and strapped.
Anyways, didn't even get into the second shock since I was fed up with everything and not sure if I should just put it back together or not. In the end they still damp totally fine and work well, and I wasn't planning on running these for more than a couple years at most. Hopefully get both shocks back together tomorrow. My dad has one of our boats in the garage so I'll just put the 4Runner back together enough to drive it around the yard and then stick it in there once he pulls the boat out. The suspension needs to be cleaned up and have everything fixed before I want to really drive it, at a minimum when I get my first paycheck for the summer I'm gonna get limit straps and the correct springs.
To do list:
Bent LCA tabs/frame
Finish bracket welds/sealing frame
LCA bolt and LBJ bolts need replacing on both sides
Stainless brake line needed for the passenger side
CV blown on passenger side, and drivers side is super rusted
Shock shaft on drivers side bent
Need to revalve both shocks
Need to calculate correct spring rate/lengths for new springs
Better reservoir mounts
Limit straps
Figure out what's up with the torque converter
And less priority, but need bump stops (nice thing about 10" of up travel from ride height is that's not a big priority for majority of driving), and I need to clearance the fiberglass and what's left of the inner fender for the 33s (which should be sweet considering my fiberglass couldn't clear my bald 31s that measured in at 28s).
Drivers side with the bent shaft:
I'm going to do a lot of cosmetic work this summer too. I want to try and fix a lot of the dents I have from when I rolled and also when I drifted into a lamp
I'm also pulling off the 50" LED bar and want to make a really low profile roof rack with maybe a 40" LED bar integrated into it, and then I'm thinking white out the rear flares to match the fiberglass (which will get color matched too) and white out the chrome on the grille and maybe outline the "4Runner" in the grille too... essentially it'll have an Oreo look
Luckily my girlfriend and snivilous decided to accompany me and help me with the shocks
Started out with the drivers side coilover
I didn't have a spanner wrench and didn't want to pay for one so found some scrap steel laying around and made the most no ****s given wrench ever :thumb:
(Don't judge me from those shitty welds :violin
A few things pissed me off though. First of all, the shock oil was like black for some reason... and the shocks have ~3000 miles on them. Not a big deal but kinda weird, I'm gonna run them with ATF which I've heard works well since it has a similar viscosity and doesn't expand much with heat, as well as the fact it's super easy to get. And then I had a big shim bundle that [MENTION=89531]Cartzo[/MENTION] and I had bought in Utah, when we revalved his shocks all the measurements seemed weird which we concluded were the cheap calipers we were using. Well at first I used some good calipers and was still confused by what I was getting so got the micrometers out and measured the shims in the shock and a bunch of the shims that we had bought. What SHOULD of come in my shock was all 15s on compression and a combination of 10s/15s on rebound. NONE of the shims are 15s, all 10s. Likewise, the shim bundle we had bought should of consisted of 8s and 10s--like I said I didn't measure all of the shims, but all of them except for like two were 10s (and still no 15s which should of come off of Cartzo's shocks). I understand these are super cheap shocks, and you get what you pay for when it comes to shocks, but somehow there appear to ONLY be .010 shims when there should definitely be 15s already in the shocks and some 8s in the bundle we have. I'll contact FOA, but I'm disappointed. I thought my valving was too stiff before, but I also thought I had 15s before so I might just leave the valving how it is and judge it again once I push the truck hard with the correct springs and bumped and strapped.
Anyways, didn't even get into the second shock since I was fed up with everything and not sure if I should just put it back together or not. In the end they still damp totally fine and work well, and I wasn't planning on running these for more than a couple years at most. Hopefully get both shocks back together tomorrow. My dad has one of our boats in the garage so I'll just put the 4Runner back together enough to drive it around the yard and then stick it in there once he pulls the boat out. The suspension needs to be cleaned up and have everything fixed before I want to really drive it, at a minimum when I get my first paycheck for the summer I'm gonna get limit straps and the correct springs.
TCMach
New member
love the spanner wrench for sure!
Pretty weird about the shock oil. Looks as bad as the shock oil I pulled out of my Kings and that was ~35k miles. Your crazy to get into the valving like that. I'm still not that ballsy. Might try it next time I rebuild the Kings now that I know I like my 700lb coils. Then again I doubt I'll put enough miles on them in the next year or so to justify rebuilding them.
Pretty weird about the shock oil. Looks as bad as the shock oil I pulled out of my Kings and that was ~35k miles. Your crazy to get into the valving like that. I'm still not that ballsy. Might try it next time I rebuild the Kings now that I know I like my 700lb coils. Then again I doubt I'll put enough miles on them in the next year or so to justify rebuilding them.
prospectator
New member
Sniv, I've gotta give you a big :thumb: for doing this work yourself.
Have you checked to make sure your not coil binding? By the looks of the coil and the amount of preload you've got, I'd make sure your not binding up. A bound coil would explain a broken upper shock mount, bent shaft and broken LBJ bolts. All of those parts would be subject to a ton of stress if the C/O gets bound up. I'd be proud of the LCA, if everything is breaking around it, it's safe to say it's built to withstand the stress's of LT.
I'd say bump stops and new coils should be at the top of your list!!!
Have you checked to make sure your not coil binding? By the looks of the coil and the amount of preload you've got, I'd make sure your not binding up. A bound coil would explain a broken upper shock mount, bent shaft and broken LBJ bolts. All of those parts would be subject to a ton of stress if the C/O gets bound up. I'd be proud of the LCA, if everything is breaking around it, it's safe to say it's built to withstand the stress's of LT.
I'd say bump stops and new coils should be at the top of your list!!!
snivilous
Senior Member
Thanks! Yea it's super easy, especially just revalving.
Thanks man! Yea I guarentee my coils bind up when I compress very much. First thing on my list is limit straps and new coils, followed by bump stops. I don't plan to really drive it at all until the front suspension is complete.
snivilous
Senior Member
Tore the second shock down this morning. Shock oil was nasty and a few metal shavings, which I doubt is normal but considering it's a brand new shock I wouldn't say it's unexpected but I don't know :noidea:
Cleaned all the parts (didn't take the reservoir apart on this one), and cleaned up the uniballs with a dremel and wire wheel since they were pretty dirty from sitting outside for so long. The valving was the same as the other coilover, all 10s (again, supposed to be 15s on compression and 10/15s on rebound). So I just left the valving how it was. There was an extra spacer between the nut and the piston compared to the other side so I removed it to make both sides the same.
I think this is where FOA falls short of the expensive brands is just the quality control: the valving was wrong, one shock had an extra useless spacer compared to the other, the nut definitely was over torqued, etc. But I don't think they're bad shocks, it's just little things that are different and once gone over I don't see how these would perform much differently compared to a king or other brand outside a couple percent performance difference associated with tighter tolerances and stuff. I don't know, obviously I've never run fancier shocks or had a direct comparison with someone else's but that's my observation.
I'm gonna clean up the body a bit more, but nothing exciting on this side. I filled it up with ATF II which is all we had laying around. I'll just use our compressor to pressurize the shocks since it's so dry around here and I won't notice any performance difference versus pure nitrogen, and I'm not gonna pay $50 every time I want to revalve.
The other coilover's shaft is sprayed with penetrator since the eyelet was being a ***** to come off last night. Once I get that off I'll put it back together, then just wait until my dad moves the boat so I can pull the truck in and rebuild/fix the suspension and transmission.
Cleaned all the parts (didn't take the reservoir apart on this one), and cleaned up the uniballs with a dremel and wire wheel since they were pretty dirty from sitting outside for so long. The valving was the same as the other coilover, all 10s (again, supposed to be 15s on compression and 10/15s on rebound). So I just left the valving how it was. There was an extra spacer between the nut and the piston compared to the other side so I removed it to make both sides the same.
I think this is where FOA falls short of the expensive brands is just the quality control: the valving was wrong, one shock had an extra useless spacer compared to the other, the nut definitely was over torqued, etc. But I don't think they're bad shocks, it's just little things that are different and once gone over I don't see how these would perform much differently compared to a king or other brand outside a couple percent performance difference associated with tighter tolerances and stuff. I don't know, obviously I've never run fancier shocks or had a direct comparison with someone else's but that's my observation.
I'm gonna clean up the body a bit more, but nothing exciting on this side. I filled it up with ATF II which is all we had laying around. I'll just use our compressor to pressurize the shocks since it's so dry around here and I won't notice any performance difference versus pure nitrogen, and I'm not gonna pay $50 every time I want to revalve.
The other coilover's shaft is sprayed with penetrator since the eyelet was being a ***** to come off last night. Once I get that off I'll put it back together, then just wait until my dad moves the boat so I can pull the truck in and rebuild/fix the suspension and transmission.
farmerjon
Senior Member
Always admired your ability to just decide what you want to do with your truck and do it - you seem to be quite the self-taught dude and seem aware of a lot. I admire your persistence and perseverance with this, I think I would have given up a long time ago. You're one of those guys that takes a great platform that is the stock 4R and you seek to make it even better, I like watching this build. Keep it up!
4Running Daily
New member
Metal shavings are not normal for a shock at any point in it's lifespan haha
Looks great as always, excited to see what you have in store for it. I certainly wish my air compressor went up to 150 PSI
Looks great as always, excited to see what you have in store for it. I certainly wish my air compressor went up to 150 PSI
snivilous
Senior Member
Thanks everyone! I still feel like I'm light years behind all of you when it comes to build quality and performance, maybe I can catch up this summer
Yea I've actually thought about that, someone suggested that too when I was asking locally where I could get nitrogen cheap. I think Discount does nitrogen too so I might ask, the shocks have a schrader valve so nothing fancy either...
I was trying to remain optimistic I can't buy fancy shocks like you :crybaby:
The bent shaft continued to be annoying to get off, eventually I said **** it and welded some tubing to the bottom of it and clamped it in the vice and then still had heat the aluminum with the propane torch for awhile to get moving. I guess they really gung on the high strength lock tite :flamethrwoer2:
Both shocks are cleaned up (enough) and waiting to go back on the truck. Later this week I'll calculate what spring rate I need and hopefully get those soon.
Yea I've actually thought about that, someone suggested that too when I was asking locally where I could get nitrogen cheap. I think Discount does nitrogen too so I might ask, the shocks have a schrader valve so nothing fancy either...
I was trying to remain optimistic
I can't buy fancy shocks like you :crybaby:The bent shaft continued to be annoying to get off, eventually I said **** it and welded some tubing to the bottom of it and clamped it in the vice and then still had heat the aluminum with the propane torch for awhile to get moving. I guess they really gung on the high strength lock tite :flamethrwoer2:
Both shocks are cleaned up (enough) and waiting to go back on the truck. Later this week I'll calculate what spring rate I need and hopefully get those soon.
snivilous
Senior Member
Time to finally start making some progress on this beast...
So yesterday or the day before the 4Runner fell off its jack stands. No one was around, pretty sure one of them just sunk too far into the dirt from all the rain we've been getting in CO. More of an annoyance than anything. It fell on pine needles and loose dirt, and the suspension didn't even have any shocks or anything so it just fell onto the crossmember.
Today it was FINALLY nice out for the whole day, so I used two hilifts to jack the truck up from both sliders slowly while anchoring the truck with the FJ40 and our tractor so it wouldn't shift left to right. Due to the nice weather, and being fed up waiting to buy new springs and stuff I needed I decided to move it into the garage. Once it was up and I had the jacks back under it and secured, I slid the coilovers in and just stuck my 600lb/in x 12" springs in and cranked the spring seat most of the way down just so I could get it into the garage. We used a jump start battery and the truck fired up fine after sitting for over five and a half months.
My dad had cleared the garage and moved his boat out so I could pull all the way in. First I used our pressure washer to try and clean up the engine bay and undercarriage and wheel wells really quick.
Once in the garage I cleaned it up a little more and then started tearing stuff off, but first pulled a spring and cycled the suspension to see how the 33s work since I hadn't actually cycled it visually since first building it. I'm pulling about 14" of travel before the wheel hits the bumper and inner fender, and the uniball still isn't maxed yet. So matches what I thought before, ~14 inches, maybe a little more.
The tires stuff REALLY nicely actually and pull in perfectly to clear the fenders...of course these are 9.5" wide and the rims sit in really tight so if I go any wider I'll probably be screwed and have to cut up the fiberglass--let alone if I do 35s. I'm not sure if prerunners are setup to clear their tires at full stuff and full turn, I would think you would want to but all the pictures I've seen is like mine where it looks like if you fully compress the suspension when turning the tire will hit the fender but otherwise clears just going straight.
Didn't do much more so far. Pulled the fenders, bumper, and tires and then debadged the rear hatch. You can see the rub marks from where the spindle disconnected in January.
I plan to take my time and do everything how I want it and not rush. I have three objectives: 1. Front suspension 2. Rear Suspension 3. Cosmetics
The front should go fairly quickly, nothing too hard. I'll do one side and then move to the other probably. The rear suspension will get tricky and be fun, but I don't plan to start that until my next paycheck. I'm thinking of going balls to the wall on the rear since I'm already planning to cantilever and triangulate the axle and I'm thinking of going all out with some King coilovers and bypasses in the back but we'll see. Cosmetically I'm just gonna do a lot of little easy things (debadge, roof rack, remove the 50" LED, color matching, undercarriage touch ups, etc.). At least she's in the garage now so I can start working away at her for the next few months until school starts again. I want her to be built enough to do whatever I want offroad (and mainly however fast I want) and also reliable enough to not have to do anything extreme for the next 3-5 years. Fingers crossed :biggrin2:
And in the meantime I'll keep drivin this :bolt:
So yesterday or the day before the 4Runner fell off its jack stands. No one was around, pretty sure one of them just sunk too far into the dirt from all the rain we've been getting in CO. More of an annoyance than anything. It fell on pine needles and loose dirt, and the suspension didn't even have any shocks or anything so it just fell onto the crossmember.
Today it was FINALLY nice out for the whole day, so I used two hilifts to jack the truck up from both sliders slowly while anchoring the truck with the FJ40 and our tractor so it wouldn't shift left to right. Due to the nice weather, and being fed up waiting to buy new springs and stuff I needed I decided to move it into the garage. Once it was up and I had the jacks back under it and secured, I slid the coilovers in and just stuck my 600lb/in x 12" springs in and cranked the spring seat most of the way down just so I could get it into the garage. We used a jump start battery and the truck fired up fine after sitting for over five and a half months.
My dad had cleared the garage and moved his boat out so I could pull all the way in. First I used our pressure washer to try and clean up the engine bay and undercarriage and wheel wells really quick.
Once in the garage I cleaned it up a little more and then started tearing stuff off, but first pulled a spring and cycled the suspension to see how the 33s work since I hadn't actually cycled it visually since first building it. I'm pulling about 14" of travel before the wheel hits the bumper and inner fender, and the uniball still isn't maxed yet. So matches what I thought before, ~14 inches, maybe a little more.
The tires stuff REALLY nicely actually and pull in perfectly to clear the fenders...of course these are 9.5" wide and the rims sit in really tight so if I go any wider I'll probably be screwed and have to cut up the fiberglass--let alone if I do 35s. I'm not sure if prerunners are setup to clear their tires at full stuff and full turn, I would think you would want to but all the pictures I've seen is like mine where it looks like if you fully compress the suspension when turning the tire will hit the fender but otherwise clears just going straight.
Didn't do much more so far. Pulled the fenders, bumper, and tires and then debadged the rear hatch. You can see the rub marks from where the spindle disconnected in January.
I plan to take my time and do everything how I want it and not rush. I have three objectives: 1. Front suspension 2. Rear Suspension 3. Cosmetics
The front should go fairly quickly, nothing too hard. I'll do one side and then move to the other probably. The rear suspension will get tricky and be fun, but I don't plan to start that until my next paycheck. I'm thinking of going balls to the wall on the rear since I'm already planning to cantilever and triangulate the axle and I'm thinking of going all out with some King coilovers and bypasses in the back but we'll see. Cosmetically I'm just gonna do a lot of little easy things (debadge, roof rack, remove the 50" LED, color matching, undercarriage touch ups, etc.). At least she's in the garage now so I can start working away at her for the next few months until school starts again. I want her to be built enough to do whatever I want offroad (and mainly however fast I want) and also reliable enough to not have to do anything extreme for the next 3-5 years. Fingers crossed :biggrin2:
And in the meantime I'll keep drivin this :bolt:
shootmymime
New member
I call B.S.
Not that it won't be reliable. I just don't think you will be able to keep your hands off of her.
So for the upper mounts. Have you thought about running a strut tower cross brace between the two sides over the engine or something?
snivilous
Senior Member
That's why I said "not have to do anything" :becky:
And yes, a cross brace at a minimum is planned. I also want to have whatever I do be easy to disassemble so I can pull the engine or have access to everything nicely (so like a pinned cross brace for example).
snivilous
Senior Member
Bought two 2.0 bump stops, just 2" stroke ones since I don't want to be riding them for the majority of my suspension travel. I also posted in Tacoma world, I'm having trouble figuring out what spring rates to run. Hardly anyone in offroading actually calculates what spring rates to run from my observation. The biggest hassle is I've found two sources for suspension frequency, one guy says 1.35hz on race desert and another said .9-1.0hz on ttora, which is why I posted in TW looking for some advice. If anyone has any idea what frequency to run it would be helpful.
prospectator
New member
Have you tried any of these calculators? Spring rate should just set your ride height. Everything else should be done via valving or secondary suspension (bump stops, extra shocks). The frequency will be handled via valving.
Your ride height looked good. But you had to put a lot of preload on the coil. So how many inches of preload did you put on the coil before you got the desired ride height? So you know you need to go with a stiffer and longer coil. The question is how much. Your motion ratio doesn't vary by much to the big name long travel kits. What does TC or Camburg run? You shouldn't be too far off from those.
I have a king coil over non long travel and it runs a 600 lb coil.
I'm just trying to help you out so you can get to the rear suspension.
www.hypercoils.com/spring-calculator
Suspension Worksheet | eibach.com/america
Your ride height looked good. But you had to put a lot of preload on the coil. So how many inches of preload did you put on the coil before you got the desired ride height? So you know you need to go with a stiffer and longer coil. The question is how much. Your motion ratio doesn't vary by much to the big name long travel kits. What does TC or Camburg run? You shouldn't be too far off from those.
I have a king coil over non long travel and it runs a 600 lb coil.
I'm just trying to help you out so you can get to the rear suspension.
www.hypercoils.com/spring-calculator
Suspension Worksheet | eibach.com/america
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snivilous
Senior Member
I wasn't able to work on the truck until today since I was on the east coast for business since Thursday. Last week I tore the passenger side down and started cleaning stuff up.
Here is the bolt that really saved everything when my spindle snapped off:
So while on business I spent a ton of time trying to figure out what spring rates to get. There seems to be two trains of thought: design based on the suspensions frequency or based on ride height and droop/bump. I can understand the natural frequency of the system making a difference, but what makes more sense to me right now is running essentially the lowest spring rate possible and controlling everything with the valving since that can be much more fine tuned, and as prospectator said just use the springs to control the height and do everything else through the shock. This isn't a race truck, so even though performance is my primary goal, how it looks to be is pretty important too and it was proving to be essentially impossible to hit the frequency I had found (1.0hz and 1.35hz were the two values I had found) without cranking the shit out of the spring collar to get the ride height I wanted (or run long springs and pre compress them to fit on the shock). So with that in mind, and reading a shit load of stuff, I ended up making my own excel file to calculate everything in a more understandable way than I thought the one provided on Pirate4x4 did. Using it, I came to the conclusion of a few options: the nicest being to run a single 600-700lb/in spring that was 24 inches long. That is actually the most favorable, cheapest, and simplest alternative. I don't even have to crank on the adjusting collar to get the ride height I want, nor the ability to hit (or almost) the bump stops when the opposite tire comes off the ground when flexed--the only issue being no one makes a 2 foot long spring with that high of a spring rate. So the next option, is run around a 1250lb/in rate up top and a 750lb/in rate on bottom. This setup gives me the ride height I want with 1.5" of cranking on the collar (not too bad), and will fully compress one side with 2.2x nominal weight (so one tire off the ground, and some leeway in the event of weight shifted to the front). Combined rate is ~470lb/in which will keep it nice and squishy for city driving, and then once the dual rate bottoms out it'll jump to the 750lb/in spring (or 1250 if you flipped the springs, but I would rather the 750 be the final rate). The only place I found that sells springs that high (and what I based my numbers on) was the Viper springs that FOA sells. I've had zero issues with their springs and they're fairly cheap ($20-$30 less) than some King or Eibachs, which I don't want custom made so this is the obvious choice.
So new springs will be: 1250lb/in x 6" on top, with the dual rate collar set to engage after 2" of travel, and 750lb/in x 18" on bottom.
On to today, I haven't done a lot. I welded on my mounts some, but wanted to do a thorough job so pulled the steering rack to get easier access to the rear mounts.
She's pretty fugly from when my rear main was blown and dripping everywhere. From what I can tell the rack is fine, and I've never felt any issues with it. I'm debating replacing it just since it's out of the truck but probably won't, not like it's that big of a deal to pull anyways in the event I want to replace it.
Also pulled the tranny oil pan since I'm gonna cycle the fluid again to see if that helps whatever is up with the torque converter, plus as everyone knows it's kinda annoying when getting that top bolt on the rack.
I also took a bunch of measurements for the rear end. I'm thinking I'll move the gas tank and just run a normal triangulated 4-link. The one thing that's annoying is I'll have to run a lower mount for the cantilever arms and have the shocks mount up high (versus the cantilever mount up high and have the 'L' shape pointing down) assuming I mount the coilovers to the cross member in front of the gas tank. Will have to think through that more, I was almost thinking of running the cantilever arms and running a long link forward and have the coilovers pointed forward and do some super fancy shit, but that's getting to be overly complicated. Also, good news that I was worried about is I should be able to run a two piece skid on other side of the drive shaft to protect the shocks assuming I run them horizontally there. I was worried about that but that shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully in the next few days/weeks I'll start posting solid models and analysis of the rear suspension design. Trying not to get ahead of myself since I have a lot to do, but sometimes you just have to take a break and work on something else :rofl:
Here is the bolt that really saved everything when my spindle snapped off:
So while on business I spent a ton of time trying to figure out what spring rates to get. There seems to be two trains of thought: design based on the suspensions frequency or based on ride height and droop/bump. I can understand the natural frequency of the system making a difference, but what makes more sense to me right now is running essentially the lowest spring rate possible and controlling everything with the valving since that can be much more fine tuned, and as prospectator said just use the springs to control the height and do everything else through the shock. This isn't a race truck, so even though performance is my primary goal, how it looks to be is pretty important too and it was proving to be essentially impossible to hit the frequency I had found (1.0hz and 1.35hz were the two values I had found) without cranking the shit out of the spring collar to get the ride height I wanted (or run long springs and pre compress them to fit on the shock). So with that in mind, and reading a shit load of stuff, I ended up making my own excel file to calculate everything in a more understandable way than I thought the one provided on Pirate4x4 did. Using it, I came to the conclusion of a few options: the nicest being to run a single 600-700lb/in spring that was 24 inches long. That is actually the most favorable, cheapest, and simplest alternative. I don't even have to crank on the adjusting collar to get the ride height I want, nor the ability to hit (or almost) the bump stops when the opposite tire comes off the ground when flexed--the only issue being no one makes a 2 foot long spring with that high of a spring rate. So the next option, is run around a 1250lb/in rate up top and a 750lb/in rate on bottom. This setup gives me the ride height I want with 1.5" of cranking on the collar (not too bad), and will fully compress one side with 2.2x nominal weight (so one tire off the ground, and some leeway in the event of weight shifted to the front). Combined rate is ~470lb/in which will keep it nice and squishy for city driving, and then once the dual rate bottoms out it'll jump to the 750lb/in spring (or 1250 if you flipped the springs, but I would rather the 750 be the final rate). The only place I found that sells springs that high (and what I based my numbers on) was the Viper springs that FOA sells. I've had zero issues with their springs and they're fairly cheap ($20-$30 less) than some King or Eibachs, which I don't want custom made so this is the obvious choice.
So new springs will be: 1250lb/in x 6" on top, with the dual rate collar set to engage after 2" of travel, and 750lb/in x 18" on bottom.
On to today, I haven't done a lot. I welded on my mounts some, but wanted to do a thorough job so pulled the steering rack to get easier access to the rear mounts.
She's pretty fugly from when my rear main was blown and dripping everywhere. From what I can tell the rack is fine, and I've never felt any issues with it. I'm debating replacing it just since it's out of the truck but probably won't, not like it's that big of a deal to pull anyways in the event I want to replace it.
Also pulled the tranny oil pan since I'm gonna cycle the fluid again to see if that helps whatever is up with the torque converter, plus as everyone knows it's kinda annoying when getting that top bolt on the rack.
I also took a bunch of measurements for the rear end. I'm thinking I'll move the gas tank and just run a normal triangulated 4-link. The one thing that's annoying is I'll have to run a lower mount for the cantilever arms and have the shocks mount up high (versus the cantilever mount up high and have the 'L' shape pointing down) assuming I mount the coilovers to the cross member in front of the gas tank. Will have to think through that more, I was almost thinking of running the cantilever arms and running a long link forward and have the coilovers pointed forward and do some super fancy shit, but that's getting to be overly complicated. Also, good news that I was worried about is I should be able to run a two piece skid on other side of the drive shaft to protect the shocks assuming I run them horizontally there. I was worried about that but that shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully in the next few days/weeks I'll start posting solid models and analysis of the rear suspension design. Trying not to get ahead of myself since I have a lot to do, but sometimes you just have to take a break and work on something else :rofl:
snivilous
Senior Member
Bought $300+ of springs... I was thinking about it and chose to run the 1250 rate as the primary. The step up from the combined rate is now 266% which is more inline with the recommendations I've seen (versus 160% if the 750 rate was the primary). The longest 1250lb/in I could get was a 12" spring, I wanted a 14" but whatever. So I bought two 12" springs, one at 1250lb/in and one at 750lb/in. I'll set the 750 secondary to stop at 5" of compression, which with 1.5" of the collar cranking down will give me 3.5" of up travel from ride height with the initial rate of 468lb/in before bumping to the 1250lb/in. The 3.5" of initial rate travel scared me at first, but then I thought about it since mainly you want some soft travel for droop which I have 4" of droop travel so I have over 7" of low rate travel and then another 7" of high rate travel, so I think it should be pretty comfy. My bump stops should be here tomorrow too
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