Thread: Dislocating Suspension, Anyone Done It?

The other thing to be carefull about is the front prop shaft does not have much travel left before binding. You can check this out ny dropping both front shock and jacking the car up then try turning the front prop (one or both wheels will need to be off the ground) It realy wont go far.
I over came this with a Double Cardon Jointed prop shaft. Which leaves you with lots of travel to spare.
I believe this is all caused because the different engine (from the TD5) sits higher and therefore the input shaft is higher and they simply tilted the whole engine, gear box and transfer case to make it work. This give a better angle for the rear but worse for the front than a TD5.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by uninformed

Bill, in what situation do you think the holy bushes to cause front end axle tramp?

Serg

What I term axle tramp here is the axle housing rolling back and forth around the halfshaft axis against the resistance from the bushings.
Iv'e never actually run holey bushes, but I have done the old remove the front bolt from the left side radius arm to gain more flex trick,and it would seem from that excercise that the holes in the bushings would have to be displaced more or less vertically in the same location that more bushing stiffness is required to resist torque reaction from braking and accellerating forces.The damper mounting, directly on top of the axle on LandRovers would do little if anything to control tramp when front end traction is marginal on rough steep climbs or braking at speed on a rough surface.I've experienced similar behavior when a set of pirate brand bushings chopped out within a few thousand miles.My other comment on the 2/3'' lift thread, about losing castor angle when braking might apply here too.
Wagoo.

PS, when articulating the front axle after removing a front radius arm bolt and noting how far the front of the arm moves out of its normal location, it's difficult to see how a couple of mm from each of 4 holey bushes could make a worthwhile improvement unless my other concerns are not valid.

after having driven it off road now the car is infinately more stable than before this little mod, it is truly amazing. i do understand your line of thinking however if you were to do a static test which is really quite simple ( undo Damper from bottom mount then raise the vehicle from the chassis, centrally at back of car, you will see the undone axle hang while the other will be limited by shock travel) you will see that your weight transfer fear is somewhat unfounded which im g,lad for coz you had me really scaredfor a second (insert "oh no wat did i do" here), contrary to popular belief you DO NOT require the opposite spring to be compressed for the other side to travel down, so providing no bump stops are moved and the shock doesnt bottom out before it finds the bump stops there will be no forward transfer of weight. as stated by rick130 it is a very popular mod in the UK and so far seems to be working ok.

Chris, I assume that when lowering your top damper mounts you swung the mounts forward a bit to prevent the dampers bottoming out before the bumpstops came into play? If you have a scrap damper, an interesting experiment is to cut the dust cover off so that you can see the stress that the damper shaft is under when even the standard suspension is articulating close to its limits. Serg (Uninformed) has designed a top damper mount that allows optimum articulation with minimum stress on the damper or its bushings.
I'm a bit of a fan of centrally pivoted or closely coupled spring type suspensions for serious crosscountry performance, and although it's been a few years since LandRover fitted the centrally mounted Boge self levelling strut to the rear axle, I think it was a mistake to delete it.The standard arrangement of the coils just inboard of the tyres doesn't really supply enough cross axle see saw effect, because the see saws fulcrum points are the springs themselves.With the Boge unit or similar you can run lighter springs and the see saws fulcrum is at the centre of the axle.
Wagoo.

yeah i swung them on their own axis to maintain a straight stroke so as to not have any torsional effect on the damper, ill cut up a damper today and have a look, it can all go back yo dtandard in about 15 minutes should it be causing stresses. thanks for the advice wagoo

Originally Posted by wagoo

What I term axle tramp here is the axle housing rolling back and forth around the halfshaft axis against the resistance from the bushings.
Iv'e never actually run holey bushes, but I have done the old remove the front bolt from the left side radius arm to gain more flex trick,and it would seem from that excercise that the holes in the bushings would have to be displaced more or less vertically in the same location that more bushing stiffness is required to resist torque reaction from braking and accellerating forces.The damper mounting, directly on top of the axle on LandRovers would do little if anything to control tramp when front end traction is marginal on rough steep climbs or braking at speed on a rough surface.I've experienced similar behavior when a set of pirate brand bushings chopped out within a few thousand miles.My other comment on the 2/3'' lift thread, about losing castor angle when braking might apply here too.
Wagoo.

PS, when articulating the front axle after removing a front radius arm bolt and noting how far the front of the arm moves out of its normal location, it's difficult to see how a couple of mm from each of 4 holey bushes could make a worthwhile improvement unless my other concerns are not valid.

Bill I never "felt" what you are discribing.....that doesnt mean it wasnt happening. I have run 3 sets of Haultech bushes...I believe they do offer more articulation...but I never did a true unbiased test to confirm this. The reason I dont run them atm is I do way more road kms than offroad and it just seemed a waste.

Serg

I wrote out a nice reply last night and it's been swallowed up ??

Anyway the gist of it was to allow at least 20mm compression of your bump stops when measuring and planning damper location.

If you don't allow at least that much compression your dampers will go metal to metal on full bump with dire consequences for the internals.

I think i have some photos somewhere of the holey bushes distorting, I'll post them up if I find them.

One thing I did find when i went back to urethane bushes was that the chassis end pin bushes allowed rotation with articulation that doesn't seem to happen with the rubber bushes (which seem to bite into the cup washers and force the diff end of the arms to do more distorting and work)