Ok heres a pic of the BL hitting the coil.

 

Steve, do you have your sway bar disco'd when measuring?

It seems like you should get more droop. I get 3.75" of droop with stock UCA's the Fabtechs and a 1/4" topout spacer . The Fabtech coils are smaller in diameter so that allows the ball joint to clear them. Which is probably too far for the CV's. I will probably find that out someday.

I think what you guys are doing is great though. Creating a cheap and balanced solution. Like I said before if the Fabtechs don't hold up I will try this out.

 

Yeah it was not a problem with the SAW, since the coil is quite a bit smaller.

All we can do is wait and see what Andy comes up with. More than likely, I'll be rolling on down to the Junk Yard.

Then I WILL BE SOOOO PISSED. All that SoCal stuff !!!!

 

Yeah, but there is a good chance you'll need them as well.

 

Andy called me and he has 2 5/8" of droop without hitting. I found a set at a junk yard. Off I go to get them.

I will have to customize them by shaving and re-welding the ball joint area. Stay tuned. Hopefully I'll have the right one on by tonight.

I'll just send the limiting straps and hardware back. Or maybe I'll just exchange the staps and make the back better and adjustable?

 

I remeasured and I got...

22.75" at rest (measured 3 times - 1 in garage before jack, 1 after jack, and one after real flex)

25.375" at full droop (measured in garage w/ jack and tire off the ground and during real flex)

I must've mis-typed into my spreadsheet or something when I doing the calcs for this post when I came up w/ 3. I had them written down on paper, then transferred to the spreadsheet for the calcs. I then posted the numbers from the spreadsheet to this thread.

The corrected droop is 2.625", but it seems to be limited by the STRUT and not the geometry of the suspension - unless it's the ball joint that is limiting travel. Time for me to get some N91s'.

First Pic: On jack w/ driver side tire completely off the ground. Notice that the upper arm is NOT contacting the coil.




The next few pics show the position of the runner when measuring the "real" flex:





This last pic is of the bumpstop on the driver side during the "real" flex test. This thing would be bottomed out if the Strut would compress that much. Apparently, the Billies don't have enough travel.




I'm going to try ONE more thing when I get home. I'll put my ramps under the driver front and passenger rear and drive up them. If I don't get enough travel, then I'll use the shop jack to force it to the limits to see EXACTLY what they are and try to determine if it's the ball joint or the struts that's limiting the travel.

 

Ok, I'm back fro the Junk Yard and the right arm is on the band saw right now.

1" is coming off the end and I will have to make a plate and weld it all up. One heck of a custom arm.

I hope to have it on tonight.

 

Sweet. I know of one other place locally where I might be able to force the front to compress and droop more. I'll try it out and take some pics and measurements. I'm also thinking that I'll jack up one front tire w/ the shop jack then use the bottle jack to force the upper arm down to try and see what's limiting travel. I should be able to get the upper arm to contact the coil.

Man, I love my ARB locker. This thing rocks. No way I could have climbed that vertical ledge w/o it. The ridge didn't even break over to any angle until it was OVER my front bumper. I figured that there was no way I'd clear that ledge, but I wanted to try. I had it in 4-lo and locked and eased up parallel to it, then cut the wheel into it and dropped it off into the ditch. It was almost as high as my hood. I eased on the skinny pedal and it just CRAWLED right up. You should have seen the lady's face in the Buick that came by w/ it like that.

 

I am 95% sure the TRD coils are progressive.

In my house I have a pair of 4WD coils (B/G, Y/G) and a pair of TRD 4WD coils (B/Y, Y/Y).

- The TRD coils are wound more tightly at the top than at the bottom, i compared them by sticking my fingers between all the wraps. The 4WD coils are linear, there is the same gap between all of the wraps of the coils.

- Also, the TRD coils have about 1/2 wrap more than the non-TRD 4WD coils, therefore, they are wound tighter.

- Finally, both sets are the same length, the drivers side is slightly longer on both sets.


Believe what you want to believe, take it for whats its worth...

 

Maybe so, but my TRD 2WD coils are NOT progressive, and are basically the standard NON-TRD 4WD coils w/ different colors.

 

Ok the right arm is cut. New 1/4" end plate plasma cut and welded to the open end of the arm. It's now closed up again. I tuned the welder up a bit so the welds would be deep. I have the big welds ground down with the stone, next up the 50 grit discs.

This is going to be quite a piece of art.

 

You seem to be the only one who cares? Why? So what. They work and we're not useing spacers.

 

since when do you settle on something that just works?

I keep bringing it up b/c progressive coils might not flex as well as the linear coils, or visa versa. Im just informing, not making any correlations. Maybe someone else can make a correlation.

 

Wow...a lot of information came out in a short period of time. Good thing is if this combo works out, it may allow alot more people to try it out since it won't require aftermarket upper control arms to work best.

Steve: Probably a stupid question but is the reason you are grinding so much off the stock arm because of your monster tire width? I'm sure glad I kept my stock arms.

 

Andy..do you have discos?

 

Ok, I have it all figured out, I am extremely diry and my garage is a disaster.

I now have 3 1/8" of droop and MORE LIFT.

Shorter axles and cams set normal.

I don't think most of you guys could pull this off is was extremely fab heavy.

Custom stock arms. Pics after a shower and dinner.


Yes it was the upper arms.

 

Wow, so the ATS arms actually limit travel and decrease lift??? I didn't see that coming.

 

Ok here is the deal. The ATS arms move the ball joint forward around 1". Hence the problem with the coil, it moved the ball joint to the widest part. The stock arm has it back further so it hits around the curved part, So it take more droop to hit.

Right now I have 3.5" of lift but I think that is due to the fact that I screwed with the camber cams and set them all to dead zero and the other side still has the ATS arm on.

But yeah the OME shock is longer and the stock arm seems to work best.

The only reason I had to "shave" it was the 35's. If you guys have 285's you don't have to shave. I took a good inch off.

I'll post some pics here in a bit after I have some Ice Cream.

 

Ok here's how you shave a stock arm. Only needed if you have 315's.

 

WOW ...some serious surgery