GQ Y60 Cost vs Best way to achieve 3"+ of suspension lift

[symmetry4wd]

Hi guys n gals,

So,
I want to educate myself further before upgrading the suspension on my new to me 96/97 Y60 GQ Patrol next year.
The car currently sits on EFS Shocks and some coils (I have no idea what because the previous owner went made with black paint under the car so can't see any branding or colour etc, just black paint)

Yes I could go the generic 2" lift with twin tube shocks etc like most do, but the reason I sold my Pajero and got the Y60 was to have the robustness and capability of a solid front axle 4WD, with good aftermarket support, and the ability to go further with what can be done over your generic double cabs and modern IFS vehicles.
Basically I bought the Patrol to tackle tough tracks with ease, and travel/adventure with my family. (build a little beast )

The Patrol won me over being:

- Coil sprung
- Solid axles
- Disks all round
- Robust diffs & drivetrain
- Looks sexy

With all that being said,

budget/bang for buck is always a concern of mine, I don't have an unlimited budget, but I would always like to get the best possible performance for what I spend.

My main first question is:
I would run (Ideally 33" AT's for family stuff, 35" MT's for trails with friends etc). What combination of components is best to achieve roughly a 4"/100mm suspension lift on the GQ? 2" springs/shocks and 2" body lift? 4" springs/shocks, new controls arms etc? 2"springs/4"shocks and spring spacers? New control arms or caster correction bushes, or drop boxes?
There are SO many configurations and options, what are you guys using? What works well? What is cost effective?
With the above, what is the most cost effective way of lifting over 3" and bring caster back into spec? What are the options with panhard bars, brake lines, sway bar links?

With all this in mind, the modifications must be SAFE, and provide good articulation, so not limit your up and down travel if possible.

I know this is a big ask, but I am just curious as to what you guys have done to your rigs, or what you have experienced to work well?
Google is full of this and that, camps for all different configurations, but what works locally here?

Another question, what sort of shock options are there locally for the GQ? I'm a big fan of the Bilstein monotubes on other cars I've had, seems like most of our offerings locally are twin tube. Any good/cost effective remote res options available locally?

Thanks!!!

[Tinus lotz]

Well yes ...you are trying to combine to many things at once .
For a family trail and overlanding with 35 or 33 inch is great . You can go terrain taimer and have proper road holding and drive properly. Also their coils are the best out there .the only ones that works empty and full . And not be hard empty and only drive properly once loaded . You can add standard radius arm bushes and set off drop boxes and 1 inch spacers to go 3 inches .with this setup you will be good on the road and do 95% of trails
I sell the 4inch options with bilstein monotube shocks also.
Here you must forget about caster correction and use drop boxes . Your gq needs 4.66 diff rasios to work the 35 rubber properly so think nice before you go that route .
4inch will be great on trails but not so great with roofrack and overlanding.
I can assist you either way and give you numbers of guys that has done diff mods to get options on it .
Stay away from body lifts if you can or max 30mm otherwise it becomes a issue with wiring brake lines ect
Anyway all is avaliable and has been done.
You need to decide what you want the car for ...overlander or trail car .
The idea of 2 sets off rubber never works . Get one set and work them accordingly .
37 are the new 33 . ...Anyway hope it helps

[Peter Connan]

To add to what Tinus has said:
Keep it as low as possible. A high center of gravity detracts from performance in all situation, whether that is stability on the road or on the trail.

The best way of increasing clearance is by going larger on the tires but that is expensive, especially on the GQ (because it has smaller wheel arches). 33s can be made to fit fairly easily (just the front mud-flaps catch, they can be replaced with something home-made or you can just reduce the steering angle by adjusting the stops) but anything bigger than that really requires substantially more work. Body lift, or cutting away the arches and also replacing the diff gears to get a lower ratio.

In terms of ability on trails, the most cost-effective mod you can do to increase traction is to fit a front locker. More flex is wonderful and has advantages lockers don't have (and disadvantages as well) but it gets expensive pretty fast.

One thing I would do to improve the suspension is to either remove the sway bars altogether (which is fine unless you carry a lot on the roof) or get a QD sway bar setup.

Unless you have a lot of cash to burn, I would go with the Terrain Tamer progressive coils for a 3" lift and a set of dropboxes. I am not a fan of body lifts. They do create clearance for bigger tires though. I actually think dropboxes are cheaper in the long term than caster correction bushes because concentric bushes last longer, and my dropboxes are fairly inexpensive. And they ride better too.

If you do have cash to burn, I still love my X-link. But to make it work to it's full potential requires significant additional expenditure.

[Peter Connan]

Sorry, just went to look at the pictures of your car again.
Looking at it's stance, you alreary have 2-3" of lift. Probably closer to 3 than to 2. So unless there is something wrong with the way the car rides, I would just keep the springs and shocjs as they are.

If the rear springs are constant-rate, then the Terrain Tamer progressive rear coils will improve the ride.

[symmetry4wd]

Thanks for the advice guys

I totally agree with keeping center of gravity (COG) as low as possible, nothing scarier on a trail than feeling like you are going to roll! as well as on road stability
Agree that body lifts are not my favourite with all the other wiring, brake, radiator, hoses, gear lever etc modifications they require. Though in some instances a body lift keeps your COG low as most of your weight is in the chassis, so you keep that low while lifting the body higher to fit bigger tyres, and getting better overall clearance from tyre not suspension lift.

I would like to keep the sway bars in and would rather look at quick disconnects as I didn't really like the idea of travelling with my wife and baby on my last rig, it rolled a lot when loaded with no swaybar. Are the GQ sway bars able to stay in place or be tucked away under the vehicle with QD's without being in the way of other stuff or causing damage to other components? (on my pajero it had to be removed, couldn't stay in place).

I definitely think my car has a lift, maybe around a 2" ( I doubt 3), which is a little disappointing as the car seems low even with a 2" lift. My Pajero with a 3" lift was substantially higher with more clearance
With that in mind, I definitely think I would at minimum want to go 3", as mentioned, possibly add a 1" spacer after if needed.
Also the way the car sits in terms of castor makes it look lifted.
I understand the GQ's are pretty low standard, very much have that wagon/station wagon look without a lift. It's also surprising how it seems 33's would just about fit with a 2" lift, no bigger. (would like to keep the arches as they are, no cutting), don't mind getting rid of the mud flaps.
I got the part numbers off of the EFS shocks on the car, front show 2" lift suitable shock (EFS ELITE SHOCK ABSORBER FRONT | 36-5546) rear shows standard- upgraded, so don't think it accommodates more lift ( EFS ELITE SHOCK ABSORBER REAR | 36-5548). I still don't know about the springs.
Can anyone give me an indication of the distance, front and rear, of the center of their wheel/hub to the arch on the car (arch with flares, so the flare)? Would like to see what height lift/springs are on my car.

I see people running 6" extended shocks with 3-4" lift, and say its works fine, is there any reason or benefit you guys can explain for this?

Would I be correct in saying that with 3" springs and a 1" spring spacer you have the same amount of down travel, but only the amount of up travel a 3" spring would give you, not a 4" spring? i.e you loose some up travel going with a spring and spacer over just a spring?

I think most likely I wouldn't go 35's just yet, so likely a 3" spring, longer shock and drop boxes sounds good, with 33's. But at least that's what I think at the moment, still not in a rush and waiting to next year.


How the car sits at the moment (driveway is at a bit of an angle ):

[Peter Connan]

Does your car have both front and rear sway bars fitted?
On the front QD's that I do, you can just strap the sway bar and links to the radius arm.

For the rear, I need to re-design the system a bit. For about 4 years I just left the sway bar hanging and it caused me no issues. But this year on the river trip I caught one end on a rock. It got me horribly stuck leading to a scary jacking operation and bent the sway bar quite badly. So I need to re-think that, but pretty sure the bar can stay on.

With regard to lift, I think the workshop manual has some dimensions for the gaps between the axles and chassis. Don't have it on my phone. Much prefer that to measuring to the body.
But yours still looks like about 3" to me.

With regard to shocks vs lift:
None of the commercial lift kits less than 100mm include bump stop extensions. In pretty much all cases, the bump stops determine the shock lengths, because you need to ensure that the bump stops limit suspension upward travel and not the shocks. And the shocks offered with most of the 2" lifts basically achieves that. Maximum stroke can be as long as possible from that point without causing any damage except maybe to diff breathers and possibly brake hoses.

So don't pay too much attention to what they are rated for unless the full kit includes longer bump stops or bump stop spacers.

[symmetry4wd]

Does your car have both front and rear sway bars fitted?
On the front QD's that I do, you can just strap the sway bar and links to the radius arm.

For the rear, I need to re-design the system a bit. For about 4 years I just left the sway bar hanging and it caused me no issues. But this year on the river trip I caught one end on a rock. It got me horribly stuck leading to a scary jacking operation and bent the sway bar quite badly. So I need to re-think that, but pretty sure the bar can stay on.

With regard to lift, I think the workshop manual has some dimensions for the gaps between the axles and chassis. Don't have it on my phone. Much prefer that to measuring to the body.
But yours still looks like about 3" to me.

With regard to shocks vs lift:
None of the commercial lift kits less than 100mm include bump stop extensions. In pretty much all cases, the bump stops determine the shock lengths, because you need to ensure that the bump stops limit suspension upward travel and not the shocks. And the shocks offered with most of the 2" lifts basically achieves that. Maximum stroke can be as long as possible from that point without causing any damage except maybe to diff breathers and possibly brake hoses.

So don't pay too much attention to what they are rated for unless the full kit includes longer bump stops or bump stop spacers.

Thanks Peter,

Yes my car has both front and rear sway bars in place. Like you mentioned, I would like to avoid a situation like you say in that riverbed, thats why I asked if leaving the sway bars in place is fine, can cause all sorts or horrible messes!

I will have a look through the worksop manual to find those specs.

I understand what you are saying regarding the bump stops and shock length. For curiosity sake, if you had a 4" lift longer travel shock, with 2" springs, would you be able to use the shocks without them topping or bottoming out before bump stops? (if you wanted to change to bigger springs at a later stage).

When lifting the GQ with its 5 link rear, does the rear axle get brought forward towards the front of the car?

[symmetry4wd]

Correction,
I don’t know why I thought I saw it , but my car has NO front sway bar, another thing to add to the list…

[Peter Connan]

Very few GQ's have front sway bars, that's why I asked. Pretty much only some of the full imports. Personally I wouldn't worry about it. In fact, I drive mine without sway bar most of the time. It has a roof rack fitted with a 270 degree awning and for a long time had a high-lift jack fitted as well, and I even ran a huge roof-top-tent for quite a long time. Running a heavily-loaded roof rack with no sway bars on a GQ does result in quite a lot of body roll, but nothing much else.

Patrol suspension travel is limited in the droop direction by shock length. I know some people don't like it and on race cars which are often jumped, it might be an idea to add limit straps, but I have never seen a local Patrol with straps fitted, and I also have never seen it cause a problem.

Whether 4" shocks will cause a problem on bump, I don't know. It would depend on exactly how long that shock is. That's why I mentioned that one needs to look at the full kit: if the supplier adds extended bump stops as standard, that would indicate to me that the shocks are too long for the standard setup.

[symmetry4wd]

Very few GQ's have front sway bars, that's why I asked. Pretty much only some of the full imports. Personally I wouldn't worry about it. In fact, I drive mine without sway bar most of the time. It has a roof rack fitted with a 270 degree awning and for a long time had a high-lift jack fitted as well, and I even ran a huge roof-top-tent for quite a long time. Running a heavily-loaded roof rack with no sway bars on a GQ does result in quite a lot of body roll, but nothing much else.

Patrol suspension travel is limited in the droop direction by shock length. I know some people don't like it and on race cars which are often jumped, it might be an idea to add limit straps, but I have never seen a local Patrol with straps fitted, and I also have never seen it cause a problem.

Whether 4" shocks will cause a problem on bump, I don't know. It would depend on exactly how long that shock is. That's why I mentioned that one needs to look at the full kit: if the supplier adds extended bump stops as standard, that would indicate to me that the shocks are too long for the standard setup.

Thanks,

When you mention that few GQ's locally have front sway bars, do you mean that most owners take them off, or that they didn't come from the factory with a front sway bar?
My car was built in SA I think from the engine bay plaque.