[Technotron101]

Not saying that this rig is good or bad, I'm interested purely from a technical standpoint.

How exactly does a leaf sprung setup flex so much?

There's no funky sketch drop shackles in the mix, no coilovers, no 4+ link coil setups...

From what I can see, there's extended shock mounts to handle the extra travel, anti-inversion shackles and long springs (with extended chassis and relocated spring hangers to boot).

Is this just a combination of very low rate, long springs (which would then lead to an unstable and wishy washy car, correct?), or some other blackmagic I'm missing?

[MrRocky]

Longer the leaf/shackle/shock the more travel can be acheived. Standard shock mounts are a restriction once you start adding longer leafs.
Thats as much as i could get out of standard shock mount.
Stability, predictability and balance is more important than flex. Personally id be unhappy with the lack of uptravel in the rear of the blue one. No doubt bumpstop extension to allow a longer shock in the rear have reduced uptravel

[Technotron101]

Yeah I was thinking the same. The entire "flex" of the vehicle seems to be droop, as there's no tuck front or rear like you say.

Would this make vehicle unstable, in the same way that it does when we're talking about unsprung travel (funky drop shackles etc) in the other suspension thread?

It seems that by having the suspension fully compressed at normal for example, rather than the tyre raise up into the guard to climb something, the entire car would climb upwards - lifting your cog - and then another wheel simply drops down to keep contact. Is this reasonable theory?

[MrRocky]

Depends on spring rates ect...
I think it would give it a kind of jimny feel about it
Leafs are hard to get right you can carry loads, get heaps of flex or go fast but the difficult thing is getting it to do more than one of those things well. If its a comp rig or a work ute then it wont need to meet multiple needs but average joe likes to load up with camp gear, do harder stuff and handle well on road/dirt

[pete_79]

Looks sprung over??

Could explain the perceived excessive droop??

[Technotron101]

With some Googling, it's sprung over. And fark is it tall.

Here's the setup:

Mods are :
2 inch body lift
7 inch spring over axle jeep leaf conversion
Toyota hilux diffs
5.29:1 ring and pinion gears
custom cromoly axles and cv’s
Custom drive shafts, long travel and double carden joints
custom EFS and fireflex long travel shocks and custom shock mounts
custom toyota power steering box conversion
custom zlink steering arm and custom rose joints
custom high steering knuckles
6.5:1 transfer case crawler gears
semi button clutch, centreforce brand
35 x 13.5 x 15 maxxis mudzilla tyres, 95% tread x 5
custom 15 inch x 10 inch mega offset white sunrasia wheels x5
white flexiglass canopy and hard roof with tinted windows
Bushwacker flares, matched to paintwork..
Custom rear bar with swing away
6 point roll cage
LED tail lights
Welded rear diff

So yeah, I'd wager it's incredibly unstable and seriously scary to drive.
Prerequisite: balls of steel.

Some more pics:




How very American.

[MrRocky]

Sometimes people build cars that suit there needs and local terrain, not everyone wants to do rock crawling or have a lowrider doesnt make it bad or wrong.
Given zooks diminutive stature there height can be a restriction in bog holes and water crossings. I had a bit of a mud basher for my first zook (15+ yrs ago). It was high, wide and had not alot of susp travel but it would do in 2wd what fancy built rigs couldnt do at full noise in low.

[Gwagensteve]

OK, in front of a computer and not at work. yay!

So, there's a whole lot of stuff going on with that car that's sort of "cheating" - both mechanical and cosmetically. (And I apologise that some of this is a rehash of points already raised.


It's wide. Like REALLY wide. Width cheats flex because it puts the contact patch further away from the springs.

It has heavy axles, wheels and tyres, and no (front) spring clamps. This pulls the spring pack apart on droop. This over cambers the main leaf which leads to very high loads and risk of bending on the main leaf. Imagine the axle wrapping if the car is hopping on an obstacle - that's putting all that twisting load onto the main leaf only.

The photos are of the drooped front wheel side, and as has been pointed out, the compressed rear wheel isn't compressing very far. I'd be interested to see the compressed wheel on the front. I don't think its flexing as much (measured as degrees difference between the axle and the chassis) as it looks - so it's an bit of an optical illusion.

Compare the photo at ride height to the photo at droop. at ride height the top of the tyre is roughly level with the bottom of the sill. At full droop the tyre looks to be ~175mm or so below the sill or so. That's nothing special.

And then there's the whole SPOA thing where SPOA cars are somehow immune from Young's modulus. Steel has a working range and once that's exceeded it fails. Stock leaf suspension is designed around this working range. No bumpstops will invert the springs on full compression which is a recipe for very short spring life, so it's a short term "solution". The springs typically break where the main leaf meets the secondary.

For reference, here's a RUF SPUA car with bumpstops with a "2" BL and 35's, so it's at least 7" lower than that pile and can still put the tyre well below the sill on flex.



And here's when it was on 33's

[Jazaboy58]

Hi, can you recommend any people in Sydney to complete a ruf conversion?
Like chassis extension style?

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

[Gwagensteve]

Rampt customs springs to mind.