Thread: Softening the ride.

Muppet. Your current suspension will not produce a soft ride. But you could start by lowering you tyre pressures to R 38 and F 30 psi.
Regards
Robbo

True, not after a Range Rover soft ride.
But my dads navara with leaf springs and 33s is smoother.
It's just quite unpleasant, even crossing things like railway lines.

I would be finding out what rate the springs are first. So many of these off the shelf kits are way too hard.

I am running 180lb in the front, custom length to give a 2" lift.

I did have 270lb in the rear which gave a great ride, but when fully loaded they were too soft and the rear sunk a lot.
This week I removed the springs and put in factory air bags with 2" spacer. The ride is fantastic and I know that no matter what load I put in I can pump it up to the correct height.

But if you don't want to go this route then I reckon 320lb in the rear would be perfect.

If you are in the Orange area, you should get in contact with Slunnie. He lives just out of Orange and what he doesn't know about D2 suspension isn't worth knowing.

Agree - looks like a combination of firm tyre pressures and the HD springs - I havnt used those shocks but I have standard height heavy duty king springs on the front of my D2 with Konis and the ride is quite supple.

I assume the tyres are LT rated in which case you can down to high speed dirt road pressures to see how that goes in the mean time while you look at the other variables - as per the Pink Roadhouse
http://www.pinkroadhouse.com.au/Pink...essure-pdf.pdf

Cheers
Simon

Originally Posted by walker

I would be finding out what rate the springs are first. So many of these off the shelf kits are way too hard.

I am running 180lb in the front, custom length to give a 2" lift.

I did have 270lb in the rear which gave a great ride, but when fully loaded they were too soft and the rear sunk a lot.
This week I removed the springs and put in factory air bags with 2" spacer. The ride is fantastic and I know that no matter what load I put in I can pump it up to the correct height.

But if you don't want to go this route then I reckon 320lb in the rear would be perfect.

If you are in the Orange area, you should get in contact with Slunnie. He lives just out of Orange and what he doesn't know about D2 suspension isn't worth knowing.

The reason I went with new suspension in the first place was to counteract the weight of winch/bar/battery up front, it sagged like nothing else before the new springs.
And I may have bumped into Slunnie at some point in the past.....

Yes, the problem is the off the shelf spring counter the sag by being much harder.
I have always gone the other route and had springs made that were still fairly soft but much longer. This works well even with all the weight of bar, sliders, winch etc.

The hard part is working out the length needed but once you know the weight at each corner it is easy to work out spring length needed.

When I bought my D2 last year it had HD springs in and I had them tested at the spring manufacturer. The fronts were 300lb and the rears were 420lb. No wonder the vehicle felt like a rock.

Your rear HD springs are likely pulling around 360-410lb

Get softer rate rears or load up a lot more!

I agree that your tyre pressures are way too high. Factory is 28/36, although I soften up to 32/35ish. That will take some of the sharpness out.

I however disagree that the springs are the problem. Having played with shocks, the shock bump valving specifically is what brings most of the sharpness into the ride within the suspension and it affects the ride significantly more than spring rate. I dont think spring rate alters ride as much as what people will have you believe.