Patrol/Safari bits for Sani

[AndriesS]

At least we all get to learn something. I learnt a lot about bump steer on an old sports car. In the process I got myself a camber, castor , KPI tool, still need to make my own rotating plates but helped me a great lot in setting up my suspension without running to wheel alignment shop the whole time.

I'm not sure about the double carden joints but the GU only has normal UJ's and sliding joint on the front.

If possible , can you set the flange to 0 degree and check your castor ? I'm not sure changing the castor angle is a 1-1 ratio with the flange angle.

Any specific reason for going with the shackle in the back vs the front?

[davidvdm]

Andries, the springs I have have an offset for the diff, IE, the diff sits 100mm closer to the front than the rear as I have them mounted at the moment. Turning them around would have meant the shackle points would have protruded past the front of the car another 100mm from where they are now. The angle on the springs would also have required the shackle to very long, or the mounts extended.

Front mount shackles has always looked like a place to run into damage or get caught up on obstacles for me.

[Kagiso II]

The Safari / Patrol [and older Cruisers] shackles were designed to be in FRONT of axle mounted .. not at the back like a Hi Lux's
Thus I think the dymaics of those springs and the way the react to load and lateral forces ..
As you know I at one stage considered to invert LOBO's front suspension -- but was cured from that akka idea after some research on that idea

[davidvdm]

Uncle Mac, most of what would usually have worked on the Safari is not too relevant here now, just because I am not using the Safari springs. The leaf length was 150mm shorter than the leafs I have. I used a donated set of Hardbody rear springs. They also have an axle mounting offset of 70mm to the one end.

Without realizing it, I ran into the same problem that just about every one else did, space under the car to fit things in.

The spring guys say that spring can work either way, the problem I have is getting the spring to lay horizontal with the space I have to fit a shackle at the back. The mounting point for that shackle needs to get closer to the body by about 150mm. Mounting would actually be above the chassis member. This gave me massive angle on the spring and the movement of the axle was no longer up and down, but at a fair angle forward and backward.

This is where I was creating my bump steer. The angle I ended up with was causing the axle to move forward and backward by 40mm through just 15cm suspension travel. As soon as you hit a bump with just one side of the suspension, the axle starts a zig zag path of travel under the car. Each time it zigs, the car also leans and the zag makes it worse. It felt like the wheels were rowing, and if you look at the movement the wheel would have been going through with the tension of the leaf spring also altering the length of the spring, it was an ellipse.

It's like a slow motion death wobble...

But that should all be sorted soon. We got an extra blade added to the pack yesterday. Its a long blade just under the main carrier blade with a military wrap done on both ends. Springs were retention-ed which seems to have added about 50mm worth of lift so that the spring still has a slight arch under full load.

I am presently busy pulling all the old mounts off the Sani so that I can turn the leaf packs around. Problem is my welding was too good and some of the stuff I can't get off the car again. Mostly because I just can't get a grinder in to confined spaces. The coil buckets are also being cleaned off as part of this exercise.

I've been swinging a grinder the whole day, and am no where close to finish yet. Hopefully by this evening I can start burning stuff back onto the Sani to get the wheels under it again. I am feeling really confident that it's all going to be better now.

[ricster]

Good luck bud !!!... I'm eagerly looking forward to positive results !!!

[davidvdm]

Gees, grinding up-side-down under the chassis is a killer .. My arms and hands are killing me and its getting slower and slower

[davidvdm]

For a brief hour or two, the Sani stood on his own feet again with the new springs. Carries very well, and it has worked out better than I expected with a total lift of 120mm from where we were with the IFS. Springs lay just about perfectly straight (drops 10mm to the front).

Castor is at 0,5deg. I have some work to do on the diff with the one perch needing to move to the outside by 5mm, and the other needing a spacer/lift of 10mm to get it on the same height as the one on the driver side where it sits on top of the casing, and we did not account for that on the passenger side. Believe it or not, the height from the floor to the panel indent that runs around the car reflects these discrepancies exactly at the moment.

The backside will run 20mm lower, and I'll see on the H260 diff if I am even going to bother trying to get that 20mm back. You can't even see that the Sani is standing ass down.

The new springs give me the same feel when bouncing the car as I had with the leaf pack and the Patrol coils together did, so I am feeling good about it all right now. Only slight worry is that my diff to sump gap is just less than 90mm. I will set the bump stops up to stop any accident, I just hope we are going to stay off them.

[Peter Connan]

90mm is more than enough. Just get the bump-stop right.

Most bakkies have no more than 40mm to the bump stops.

[davidvdm]

Cool, that makes me feel much better. I'll put them in at maximum "allowable" compression to protect the sump, even if it never gets there. My rear bump stop are that way. I have since 2006 never seen a mark or noticed that the bump stop has worked. But then I also think the shock was to blame for that as the standard shock could not cover the range of the springs and would run to its limit. I know this was stopping droop, never tested the compression side of it.

But I have much longer reach shocks in at the moment that came from a Disco2, so it would be interesting. I know I set them up so that the shock had something left in it after hitting the bump stop. I will just have to check my shock mounts for the front as things have changed fairly drastically there.

[Peter Connan]

You probably need to set the system up to allow for 60-70% bump stop compression to be on the safe side.

Both in terms of sump and shock mounts.