Thread: Holden - how long before the end?

The only advantage with leaves and load carrying is that interleaf friction increases with load, and interleaf friction has a damping effect. So you get cheap variable damping. But interleaf friction also creates harshness, because the springs wont deflect until the friction is overcome. That is why most modern leaves use anti friction pads, which also reduces the variable damping effect.

People think that leaves are better because they are typically set up as dual stage, which offers better ride comfort unladen as well as good load carrying capacity.

However, this can also be done with coil springs. It is ridiculous that it isnt done more.

The volkswagon transporter is one example. It has clever compact variable diameter and variable wire thickness coils. I have personally been in one of these vehicles unladen and it was great, and then overloaded it ridiculously heavy, attached a trailer and travelled several hundred kilometres. We couldnt believe how well it handled it, never bottoming harshly.

Another example is the defender 130, which has a second shorter coil located inside the main coil. The shorter coil only comes into effect as a second stage.

Progressive v linear coils

From a manufacturer's perspective leaf setups are cheaper to make and the vehicle will be lighter. So if customers dont demand or reward better, and shop on price too much, they wont get better.

Originally Posted by garrycol

Read the posts just before it and you will see the logic.

Hi m8. Yes I was very tongue in cheek. I recall the VN coming out. Nice raspy V6 was the only good thing to say about them. It was so corny seeking a Toyo badge on them. Very few got purchased as a Toyo. I can't recall the last time I saw a VN. Cheers

Originally Posted by ozscott

Hi m8. Yes I was very tongue in cheek. I recall the VN coming out. Nice raspy V6 was the only good thing to say about them. It was so corny seeking a Toyo badge on them. Very few got purchased as a Toyo. I can't recall the last time I saw a VN. Cheers

you can trace the history of that v6 and the rover v8 back to the same buick block.

Yep. True. They were smoother by the VT. I had a Getrag 5 speed manual VT S (police FE2 suspension) with some work. It was fun. Very comfortable on many Bris to Std runs too.

Cheers

Originally Posted by Eevo

you can trace the history of that v6 and the rover v8 back to the same buick block.

Sure about that? I guess waay back. Ish. The 3.8L V6 iron is a chopped 5L V8 iron. The buick/rover was always a small alloy V8.

Are you telling me they simply cast alloy into a 5L casting, fitted steel liners and a short throw crank to make 3.5L ??

The Buick V6, popularly referred to as the 3800 and initially marketed as Fireball at its introduction in 1962, was a large V6 engine used by General Motors. The block is made of cast iron and all use two-valve-per-cylinder iron heads, actuated by pushrods.


It is a derivative of Buick's 215 cubic inch (3.5 L) aluminium V8 family, which also went on to become the Rover V8, another engine with a very long life (1960–2006)