Thread: Dislocate or Retain?

what about this question, those that have gone to unretained, have they up graded there springs etc to suit that system and have the tried to maximise a retained system?

well you have obviously never read any of the posts on my past 90 and my current 107''ute..

when guys that know their stuff are out there trying a range of combinations under smilar or same terrain and looking/tuning/analiysing purley based on performance without and end result already in mind.....and clearly explain their findings, I litsern

i couldnt count the number of people that have been out with me on one of my many R&D runs, they ask me plenty of questions and i explain it my way and no i dont try and confuse them with the loads of technical bull**** that some seam to spew, i like to KISS.

so incase you missed them heres some info.
the 90 when i got it was stock, had swaybars and heavy springs front and rear. i wheeled it for 12months getting the feel for what it could do and worked out what ''design faults'' in the suspension could be changed to retain the onroad manners and to gain in the offroad department..

i weighed the car, total and front and rear splits, and asked myself why would you want heavy springs in the rear when the front of the car weighed 80kg more than the rear, only for load carring, i was never going to carry heavy loads. so i decided to swap the spring rates around. heavy front and lighter rears. and it worked, great onroad, almost like adding a big fat sway bar but off road it was so much more ballanced.
the rear trailing arms i made cranked and longer because i knew that the higher i went the ''shorter'' they got.
i made afew sets of relocation cones for the rear and for quite afew forum members, and fitted them after i was happy
next i had custom springs made for the rear, i did this after i had 2 leading LR suspension specialists tell me what i wanted to achive wasnt possible.
i ran relocation in the rear of the 90 because i couldnt get a spring that could be retained and not coil bind loosing some of my upward travel.

happy with the rear i moved onto the front end. again i did as much as anyone could with the rover setup, then bought a SG 3 link, that had to be totally re fabbed, arms/ brackets were too short....whole different story.
i then sold the 90 and fitted the 3 link into the ute and am almost happy with it.

i might not come across as a technical wizard but i know how to make stuff work and make it safe at the same time.
i dont need you or anyone suggesting that i have no idea, i dont care, ive had the recoginition of the LROCS twice(including slunnie), the 90 has been in 4x4action and is about to be in for a second time, the ute is going to be out in it in the next 2 months and from the constant barrage of pm's and emails from ppl asking me for advice or whatever, i'll let my peers decide wether or not i know what im doing.

now while we are all adding pic's

this is pointless flex, the rear is re locatable.

this is what i wanted to achieve, ballance

wombat holes at appin.


rear spring, 35mm off the BS 285 75 R16 rubbing on the underside of the wheel box.


flex with the 3link in, 11'' stroke shocks are stopping downward travel

Its an interesting topic.

To be honest I don't think that there will ever be a settlement on what rules, and I tend to think that this will be the case because different vehicles respond differently to it. I look at vehicles like Phils in particular and it seems to balance up really nicely. On the other hand I look at my ute, and it was a total POS unretained and didn't flex in the slightest, but was good retained. I really do think that a big factor is weight distribution in the setup though.

Now, lets move on to whats better fat or skinny tyres.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

Not quite.

The X thing is about producing downward pressure and additional travel after the main spring is exhuasted. Its not about reseating, thats what dislocation cones are all about. A 2 second read on their website will show you that.

I did read that. 50lb/in rate on the lower springs. Which means the lower wheel can have 0-500lb on it while the other side has roughly 1500-2000lb.
A fraction better than dislocated, but not better than using the right springs.

Their sales speil is rather one sided with the discussion of longer springs, the ones used in their video look particularly short and stiff.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

The X thing also does produce a very similar result to a coilover that runs a coil bound secondary spring under (over?) the main spring at static ride height. As you say it, wont produce a result that has a transition in rate after compressing beyond static ride height.

Any coilover which runs one coil bound will feel horrible. Who actually runs them like that?

Originally Posted by rick130

Regarding how much traction is available just from unsprung weight, (ie dislocated) I can say it does make a difference, particularly if running a Sals

Played this game years ago, and letting the rear end droop with longer dampers enabled me to get through sections I couldn't traverse previously without wheel spin with shorter (standard length) shocks (retained if you will)

If I ran a locker it wouldn't have mattered.

I run a retained rear these days as it balances the travel better with the front and feels nicer from the drivers seat with the front end working more appropriately.
The clanging and banging drove me nuts too, but just because there isn't a spring there doesn't mean there isn't traction

what springs were you running when you tried the longer shocks?

its not a matter of if there is traction or not, but the pros and cons of both set ups over all....trade offs etc

discowhite,

have you tried retaining your current set up to see how much flex you loose and how it feels offroad?

Serg

[QUOTE=discowhite;1266564]well you have obviously never read any of the posts on my past 90 and my current 107''ute..

no I havent, mostly just come here to the tech section and even then I have spells of time not being here

i couldnt count the number of people that have been out with me on one of my many R&D runs, they ask me plenty of questions and i explain it my way and no i dont try and confuse them with the loads of technical bull**** that some seam to spew, i like to KISS.

glad you can help some others out and have some fun....If I have being spewing loads of technical BS please correct me as im here to learn


i might not come across as a technical wizard but i know how to make stuff work and make it safe at the same time.
i dont need you or anyone suggesting that i have no idea, i dont care, ive had the recoginition of the LROCS twice(including slunnie), the 90 has been in 4x4action and is about to be in for a second time, the ute is going to be out in it in the next 2 months and from the constant barrage of pm's and emails from ppl asking me for advice or whatever, i'll let my peers decide wether or not i know what im doing.

Thats all good and well, good for you...I dont believe that I suggested that you had no idea, in fact it was your first 2 posts in this thread that were kinda bashing the retained school of thought and a personal dig at me.....so basicly if you dont like it DONT DO IT

Serg

[quote]

Originally Posted by Dougal

There are no end of happy snake oil owners out there. Pick your product, doesn't matter, you'll find people who are deliriously happy with things that don't work.
I've come across bike owners with siezed suspension forks who think they're brilliant and work great.

As I've already said, articulation and traction are not the same thing. Just because your wheels are on the ground, doesn't mean they're doing anything.
But some people just can't see past the great increase in articulation. It's the same mentality with ricers who just want the biggest wheels and be damned with the missing performance.

What are my plans? Well I'm trying to find a nice 92-94 rangie with the air suspension still intact.

But I've met some people here who advocate unretained and the are far from retarded snake oil believers......oh and they've personally used an unretained setup, engineers work on theory, sometimes real world practice makes a mockery of theory

Originally Posted by Dougal

Any coilover which runs one coil bound will feel horrible. Who actually runs them like that?

It shouldn't do, it'll depend on the rate of the spring. It'd be no different to running on your normal springs.

I thought many of the harder core offroaders did this to keep the COG down and the travel up without ending up with a sponge ride. I've just pulled up a pic of Mal Van's bushie that I had, he's probably got the leading truck in Aus at the moment, and it looks like he is just off coil bind in the pic.