Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

Ja, had the entire family over yesterday to come say goodbye, so nothing happened after 11am. 2am our power off again with second cable stolen this week. Power came back on as we were having lunch. So I got back into the garage at around 1pm today. Built the panhard brackets on both ends, and spotted them in place, and finished off the other end of the panhard bar once I had a final measurement to work with. Decided to test the measurement Peter gave me of his coils under compression, but still had to guesstimate the bucket position on the chassis. Just to find that the three layers of bracketry Nissan welds to the front end for the IFS is a stuffup, as the height off the base chassis steel varies all over. Got that fairly well sorted with the grinder, and burned the buckets into place for testing. I do however see the chassis on it's own there, is fairly thin, and worries me a bit.

Peter's coil measurement was virtually spot on. I have ended up with 265mm and 275mm, and that's probably also due to the fact that Patrols have different length coils between left and right, and I don't know which one I put on which side, so I could still correct that.

Anyhow, the Sani stood on it's new suspension for the first time at 6pm. I seem to have dropped the front 20mm, but I am not entirely sure, as my driveway is not very level, and I seem to have a 20mm difference between left and right as well in the front and the back. I can see a few issues I need to tweek tomorrow. Seems the chassis members are not plumb, so coming directly off them, the buckets are not level, they rise up at a 2 deg angle on both sides. Somehow the distance between the tops and bottoms of the coils are not the same (and I measured countless times because the springs taper in on the one end, and I still got it wrong). So I need to see if I can move the bottom mounts out slightly, but I don't know how much space I have to the pitman on the knuckle, I think I was damn close already.

I was forced into a shorter Panhard than I would have liked, but I have no other option I can see to make it longer. It's probably about 30% shorter than the draglink. I see my temporary panhard bracket on the diff, is also slightly short, so my angle is also a bit out right now. But I need to double check what I do with that, as the top of the bracket is directly under the chassis member, and it's top surface will be be the bump stop. The other side will have the bumpstop setup inverted so that the panhard bracket on the chassis will serve the same function.

In the process, it seems I have scored nearly 20mm sump clearance due to the axle moving forward so as to get my draglink exactly straight. On the leafs, it was facing to the rear slightly. I think I moved the axle another 20mm-30mm forward.

Pics to follow, my phone died as I was packing up, and I need a shower right now.

Pics

Looking good. Instead of moving the buckets up and down, why not a coil spacer? Will achieve the same effect.

And I think the Panhard is flat enough, I've seen worse.



https://www.suzuki-4wd.nl/lwb-project/p ... nhard-bar/

Wow, there is no resemblance of angle between the draglink and the panhard on that zook. Interesting though, that looks suspiciously like a C200 diff he has there.

OK, so everything went pear shaped this afternoon. There is just no way I can fit shocks and a swaybar into this setup. Swaybar also has horrible angles on it's connecting rods to the chassis after I attempted to move the top points to make a bit of space for the shocks. So on a day I thought I was finishing off with the shocks, swaybar and bump stops, I ended up right where I had started in the morning. Sani will have to run with no swaybar for now.

Sway bar is less critical than shocks IMHO.

Just a question: was the suspension in that photo at half travel?

The panhard length and angle should be measured and set for max length and minimum angle at half travel, NOT LADEN TRAVEL.

Very nice explanation, opened my eyes to the Sagitt travel.

Yip, got that video downloaded along with all the other from that channel.

All my pics are taken at standard ride height. Like they always say, it's one thing to get a system designed in theory, another thing applying it to the available real estate under the car. My arms are a bit longer than I would have liked, but it helps with their angle. In hindsight, I could have lifted everything a bit on the diff, but it makes it close quarters in some places. Panhard now has 80mm clearence to the sump, so I have it placed as high as I dare to get my roll centre as high as possible.

This morning it's clearing out my garage, already on our way to the scrap metal place with a trailer load of scrap steel, six rims, even my spare ceased steering box and a old aircon pump and the leaf springs we just pulled off the Sani. Half a Pajero and a Fortuna suspension.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

Good luck, let me know if you need something.

jakeslouw wrote:Good luck, let me know if you need something.

Why, you win the lotto, lol.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

Refresh my memory on how you determined the position of the coil buckets on the chassis?