17 March 2012

17th March 2012 - XZL's on and suspension dropped

SUSPENSION DROP
For some time I planned to drop the leaf spring front mounts to their lower point. The military spec chassis comes with an option of two positions...and I went for the higher one when Trigger was built up....as most do. I now find that with the Rocky Mount parabolics underneath that the tow hitch is too high. I don't really need all that height anyway.

So today out came the high-lift (haven't touched one of those in 10 years so I played safe and read the instructions again, first!) and assorted spannery things.

The front drop was straight-forward and lulled me into thinking the rear would be too. It wasn't and I had to use two hydraulic jacks to tweak each spring into alignment with the new 'fresh' hole.

So the height change was as follows for A & B from the center of the arch to ground.

Initially A=98cm B=93cm. The springs were then dropped to their second chassis position which then gave A=97cm and B=91cm. So b-all drop at the rear due to the length of the back spring and the geometry.

To get the rear lower I decided on removing the '1 tonne' shackles and fitting a spare 'SWB' set I had to hand. Pic shows the length comparison.


Now I had A=95cm and B=91cm. Much better IMHO ;) I now need to dig the trailer out and see how that sits. It will have a pitch but it will be around 4cm lower than it was.

TYRES
After a very quick turn-around by the dedicated S2 tyre guy (cheers Mark D) 5x tyres and rims went off with the 4x new XZL's and came back a week later all fitted plus 4x now spare Lassa's to put on 'the bay'.

The XZL's are much narrower on the tread block than most 750's but this due to their design intention - to cut through the soft stuff and find something firm. A quick run around the block shows the ride to be better than before with less sway. But some of that is also probably due to the new reduction in C of G ;)

Here he is as he was a few months back...


Here's Trig with new boots and in 'Chicano' mode!

Honestly it is lower.


Just measured from the floor to the top of the tow ball and on Trig's it is 26". On the Defender it is 22".