Thread: Disappointed in the D5 / waiting for the Defender

Rammy if it was better LR would not have spent a lot of money setting up independent suspension to simulate live axles. When your wheel is hanging down it is doing nothing for stability and traction on that side...you just can't get away from that fact no matter how much travel you get out of your IFS.

The more you lift an IFS the more you cane the CV joints. They are a compromise lifted.

Cheers

Yet to see a IFS 4wd comp truck....oh wait there must be a reason.......thats right; live axles articulate offering better traction and a smoother ride over rutted terrain.
They are a lot stronger and can be built even stronger to cater for ones needs. They carry more weight, hence why trucks are live axle. Live axle vehicles are much easier to lift and fit larger tyres. I could fit 35s on my puma with a 2 inch lift.
I had a lifted nav and it was excellent offroad however the 3 inch lift kept chewing suspension bushes and my cv's were running at a stupid angle , they held up but it was only a matter of time before they broke.
A true offroader needs live axles, its what the pros use and its tried and tested. If IFS was the bees knees then every comp truck would be IFS yet they all spend a fortune doing up live axle vehicles.

Im not having a go at you Rammy, im impressed by your rok. However the OP said how he was disappointed with the d5 and was waiting on the new defender, well i wouldn't buy a rok for one of the same reasons i wouldnt buy a d5 anf that is the lack of live axles. My idea of serious offroad has live axles as number one on the list, thats my opinion...

Any vehicle can be a serious off roader if you throw enough money at it, a near stock ROK being any good is laughable .

Meet the New Humvee: The Oshkosh JLTV Coming Soon To Your Local Army Base - YouTube

If you create two vehicles exactly the same, except one has live axles and one has independent, to give both the same flex and the same body roll during cornering, the vehicle with live axles will need stiffer coils or anti-roll bars, because of the narrower platform of the spring attachment points. These stiffer coils or anti-roll bars will exactly diminish the increased tendency for flex and more equal ground pressures that the live axles would otherwise give.

To put it another way, if you design a live axle vehicle so that with say a 1 tonne load the rear springs compress exactly 100mm, and you dont add anti-roll bars, and you dont make the coils any stiffer to reduce body roll, and if you then design an independent vehicle to compress exactly 100mm with 1 tonne of load, then the live axle vehicle will have more flex and equally more body roll. However, this is an unlikely scenario these days.

I think vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate. Pat

Originally Posted by rammypluge

The D3/4 has 9" at the front and 13" at the back.

Rhett's Automotive, flex track, Loveday 4x4 Adventure Park - YouTube

The front flexes better now that it did at the time of that video.

Not comparable, those numbers are how far it'll travel up a ramp, I'm taking actual bump/droop measurements between the bump stops.