Leaf Spring Issues [Updated 29 Mar 2011]

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

Hey guys sorry for asking for a noob question but i better ask a noob question b4 i end up getting hurt over my SPOA project.

I recently did a SPOA project on my Daihatsu Rocky and i'm currently using my extended shackles from my Daihatsu Rocky when it was SPUA.

I was wondering if i was to use shorter shackles will it affect my articulation, suspension down travel?
Also will my ride and offroad performance be affected as it seems like the shackle angle will be more upright if i use shorter shackles.

I'm considering doing this as i don't wanna flip the car and get hurt in the process because it looks tall but it doesn't feel tippy yet.
So what's your recommendation and suggestions from the floor?

This is the pic of the car from the side. I dunno if you guys can see the shackle angles.


This is a pic of my embarrassing articulation.


Cheers.

[CTZOOK]

You will get more shakle angle if you go shorter shakles , depending on how short you go it probably wont effect your down as it looks like your shackles are very close to straight up and down now.
But it doesn't look unstable get out and drive it, play around on some ruts or something and get the feel of it and find out what it will and wont do.

[Zuri92]

your shackle angle is steep, and although a shorter shackle will reduce ride height it will reduce down travel. but that said you may not be too fussed.

to make your angle perfect you will need to re locate your shackle mounts on your chassis and that is work that doesnt need to be done, one thing you could do to lower the height of your car would be t either take your leaves to a spring shop and get them re set with less curve but that will also decrease down travel, but your best bet (in my opinion) and also cheepest (free) would be to remove a leaf from the pack which will make the spring softer, letting the car sit lower, smoother ride, maintain your down travel and give an all round better set up offroad, the only downside is that a softer spring will give you some body roll, but the lower height will counteract this so it wont be an issue.

also just had a re look at your flex pic, your springs look too firm as your rear wheel is no where near tucking right up as the spring is too firm so a softer spring will give you more up travel allowing you to get onto your bump stops and improve that rti or flex for some

hope that helps ya

byron

[Wambat]

flatter spring packs flex better than ones with a larger curve. most people do the spring over so that you can run a flatter spring to gain flex, and also to gain hight. think about how much arch in your springs you would need to have the same lift, but it would be completely unusable, so as far as i know, if you got a flatter pack and left your shackles where they are, your shackles will come up past 45 degrees, nearly sitting level with your chassis, but when your axle drops into a rut, the shackle will move further down giving you more down travel.

but you wouldn't want your shackle sitting on the chassis, you would want it to have enough room to move up to - so thats where you go in and talk to some spring blokes, there are alot of people here that know alot about this, try looking in the toyota threads, or talk to bad religion, or even zoltan, talk to people that have done alot of playing around with their spring packs,

Al

[Z()LTAN]

move the shackle mount to reduce the angle and lower the height.

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

your shackle angle is steep, and although a shorter shackle will reduce ride height it will reduce down travel. but that said you may not be too fussed.

to make your angle perfect you will need to re locate your shackle mounts on your chassis and that is work that doesnt need to be done, one thing you could do to lower the height of your car would be t either take your leaves to a spring shop and get them re set with less curve but that will also decrease down travel, but your best bet (in my opinion) and also cheepest (free) would be to remove a leaf from the pack which will make the spring softer, letting the car sit lower, smoother ride, maintain your down travel and give an all round better set up offroad, the only downside is that a softer spring will give you some body roll, but the lower height will counteract this so it wont be an issue.

also just had a re look at your flex pic, your springs look too firm as your rear wheel is no where near tucking right up as the spring is too firm so a softer spring will give you more up travel allowing you to get onto your bump stops and improve that rti or flex for some

hope that helps ya

byron

Thanks for your comments guys.
So just to recap you feel that the rear or the front leaf springs are abit too hard? So which leaf should i look at to pull out? Yank out the bottom leaf or the middle leaf springs for a start?

Also you mentioned about steep shackle angles? Correct me, you mean I should consider running shorter shackles to get more angle?

If you want to see more pics of it flexing check out this link in the Daihatsu thread.
http://www.outerlimits4x4.com/viewtopic ... 8&t=201820" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hi Zoltan, the owner of the truck that inspired my project. So what you are saying is redo the shackle mounting side or the fixed mounting for the leaf spring?

[crankycruiser]

x2 on pulling out a leaf or 2

[Z()LTAN]

Hi Zoltan, the owner of the truck that inspired my project. So what you are saying is redo the shackle mounting side or the fixed mounting for the leaf spring?

Thanks mate, move the shackle mounting side so the shackle will be on a flatter angle, aim for about 50deg. Leave the longer shackles in there to let the spring work through its arc and like the other have said remove say the 3rd and 4th leaf in your packs. Good luck mate

[zookimal]

How does it behave when you drive forwards up the ramp?

[Wambat]

buy reduce the angle we mean, instead of being near a right angle to the chassis, it should be atleast 45, but it you look at zoltans his are less last time i looked. although i dont remember what photo it was it culd have been slightly flexed.(i too am basing a bit of my 75 around some if his work except sprung under)

[HUSSLN]

take your leaves to a spring shop and get them re set with less curve but that will also decrease down travel

So your saying the more arch in your spring the more it drops?

I think your confusing yourself mate.

[Zuri92]

no i am not confused, if you have a s#itload of arch in a soft spring you will have a not so high ride height but because of the arch it will have heaps of down travel just like how a really long soft coil makes the car st low but has lots of down travel. i do not know how this is confusing or how i or anyone else could be confused by basic principles.

as for which leaves to remove, i cannot say without seeing your springs as i could suggest the wrong one, but if you could tell me how many leaves your packs have, and how long each leaf is i may be able to give you an idea, and to give you a balanced car that does not sit high front or back you will need to remove leaves from both front and back to maintain a level ride.

how much did you want to drop the car? because removing leaves may not give you as much of a drop as you want if you are after a fair bit.

[HUSSLN]

So are you talking the arch on an un laiden leaf or when it has load. The more arch the less droop, it isn't rocket science.

[Weiner]

Flatter the springs, the more down travel, and the plusher the ride

[alien]

yeah make those leaves run only just near flat... so side on they look flat but at the front you can see a slight bend in the leaf... this means when you go over bumps you have a bit of arch left to dampen them without inverting the leaf... offroad you should then also get 50/50 up and down travel out of the leaf - however do expect shorter leaf life... my fronts are sagged bad now and have lasted 3 years running dead flat in SPOA. Pretty good life i reckon considering theyre constantly being inverted offroad.

[Zuri92]

i agree it isnt rocket science its just that we are both thinking of the arch in relation to different situations, i am talking about the leaves when they are out of the car, which is the camber that a spring shop will work off, the camber of the spring out of the car. so what you want is a spring with heaps of curve that is soft so that when it is at ride height it only has as much curve as is needed to obtain your ride height, and when compressed onto the bump stops, it will ideally be perfectly flat with minimal bending past straight.

there is much more to leaves than that but for the purpose of this thread we need not go into longer lengths and multi rate spring packs etc

also alien, you can get your leaves to deliver travel in any up/down ratio you desire and the life expectancy of leaves can be related to the amount of travel you are getting out of a set of leaves, for example a short leaf pack delivering 12" of travel will not last as long as a longer pack with the same travel, as the shorter pack will have to cycle through a larger range of spring camber to do it, as in the short pack has a larger or sharper curve at full down travel than the longer pack effectiveley resulting in the smaller pack being distorted out of its static shape more upon compression which will in time fatigue the steel and cause sagging.

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

How does it behave when you drive forwards up the ramp?

I guess pics speaks a 1000 words better than me describing it.

Before my SPOA project with Hilux drive train.



Current setup






Hopeless articulation when ramping up front... Still much better after swapping the rear leaf springs to my previous Daihatu Rocky Ultimate Suspension 3 inch springs... Previously there was no down travel what so ever...
Below are pics when i was using Ultimate Suspension 3inch springs for LN106 Hilux.



However ramping up from the rear is fair.

no i am not confused, if you have a s#itload of arch in a soft spring you will have a not so high ride height but because of the arch it will have heaps of down travel just like how a really long soft coil makes the car st low but has lots of down travel. i do not know how this is confusing or how i or anyone else could be confused by basic principles.

as for which leaves to remove, i cannot say without seeing your springs as i could suggest the wrong one, but if you could tell me how many leaves your packs have, and how long each leaf is i may be able to give you an idea, and to give you a balanced car that does not sit high front or back you will need to remove leaves from both front and back to maintain a level ride.

how much did you want to drop the car? because removing leaves may not give you as much of a drop as you want if you are after a fair bit.

Up front there are 5 leaves.
In the rear there are 8 leaves. There are 2 pretty short leaves, probably 4 to 5 inch at the bottom. 3rd spring from the bottom is slightly long at 8inches.
Should i snap pics of the leaves from the side? Front and rear?

Funny thing is that the rear shackles doesn't extend to the point where the shackles might inverse itself like in the original SPUA setup compared to the current SPOA setup considering it's the same leaf spring. Did i do something wrong?

Well for me, i just want a more comfortable ride, slightly lower, without killing the leaves where it warrants a traction bar.
More importantly i wouldn't want to test the roll cage when offroading.
Oddly though the car is very chuckable around corners like a go kart on the road. There's not much body roll if any for a truck.
I hope i'm not asking too much.
Thanks for you advise to all you gurus out there.

[Zuri92]

looking at pictures 6 and 7 is the best for me. in 7 on the drivers side leaf pack you can see that there are 2 leaves that are really close togeather length wise well remove the slightly longer of the two. in the rear try removing the leaf that is second from the bottom of the pack, aswell as the 4th or 5th from the bottom (pick the one that ends close to half way from the diff housing to the shackle or spring eye. this will leave you with 4 leaves in the front and 6 in the rear, this should be plenty enough with those length packs to prevent serious axle wrap. so you will not need a trac bar.

you cant really achieve any more height drop from removing leaves than this considering the anti wrap preferances, so if you want more decrease in height you can fit shorter shackles.

remember that this is only recommendations and i am only giving guidance on your pictures, it should work well but if it is no right after you remove the leaves just get back on here and tell us whats happening and i can give further advice but it should only take 2 to 3 attempts max to get it how you want.

also can i see a panhard in the front?

i hope this helps

Byron

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

Thanks for the feedback.

So from what i digested, for the rear i should try removing the 4th leaf from the top (it should be like the middle spring and half the length of the top most spring) and remove the spring at the bottom.

But then if i remove the middle leave, what if that leaf has a leaf spring clamp?

Will try to snap pics of it when my mechanic friend is free to remove the springs.

Also in your opinion you think it's ok to run shorter shackles as i'm not likely to loose much down travel in the real world?


Yes in the 7th pics i've a dodgy looking panhard rod at silly angles lol....

[Z()LTAN]

that pahnard wont help your flex issues.

Its going to cause the springs to bind up earlier

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

Are you running a Panhard on your LC?

[Z()LTAN]

No, pahnards are for non triangulated link suspensions and massive leaf sprung monster trucks with 3 ft of leaf arch.

Take it off and see how it goes.

[Zuri92]

yeah you definateley do not need that panhard, it will cause more issues than its worth.

the 4th leaf that you are removing should be the one that ends half way ish from the diff housing to either end of the leaf pack so it should be roughly half the length of the main leaf and may not be the 4th, might be the 5th.

and remember the leaf in the front, take it out too

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

Just an update.
My mech recently took out one of the rear leaf springs at the back. Still left the front.
Didn't have a chance to snap pics b4 the mech dismantled the leafsprings.
Well there's hardly much difference in terms of lift reduction.
Looks like the same (i admit i haven't measured the difference) but now the down travel and the rear has improved quite abit from what i've noticed.
Just drove up a kerb where b4 removing the leaf it would make the rear wheels lift off the ground.
Still need to find that elusive ramp to really find out the RTI.

Only thing i wonder if i should worry is that when i was testing the articulation, the rear wheel at full up travel, the leaf spring now goes into negative arch. Previously at full up travel it max out straight. Is that a bad sign?

Just to recap
the thing has 8 rear leaves.
I think we removed 6th leaf from the top.
It looks like 1/3rd the length of the main leaf spring and it's just below the leaf spring that has "clamps" on them.
Ride is slightly better but i don't know how tippy the car is till i wheel it hard.

Should i stick with this setup for now?
Cheers

[droopypete]

Did you lower your bump stops when you lowered the axle?
It's very important to set them up right if you want to maximise flex, it's all about leverage.
Also have you checked the stroke of your shocks? they could be maxing out their travel.
Peter.

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

Point noted, will look into them as it's something i've overlooked.
I realised i've not fitted any bump stops on them so far (being originally SPUA) the bump stops are like highup where the chassis rails.

So it should be ok if the leafpring goes into negative arc at up travel?

As for the shock lengths, can i find out if there's still sufficient down travel by jacking up the rear or i still need to flex them?

Just to recap what are the things that could limit down travel again? correct me if i'm wrong or feel free to add more points.
-leaf spring shackle
-leaf spring clamp
-hoses
-absorbers
-propeller shaft?
-what else?

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

To the oracles of OL.
Recently the car was handling strange and checked out the rear springs.
One of the rear leaves popped out in the pack.
Does that mean the leaf spring pin have broke?
If so any idea what could be the contributing reasons for the pin to snap and cause the spring packs to pop out like a pack of cards?
Axle warping. What's the feeling like when the axle is warping? Car seems to handle fine on the road b4 this happened.
Prior to this the mechanic did remove 1 leaf out of the pack to gain more articulation and this happened after an offroading trip. There was 1 section where i was quite stuck in a mud pool.
Could this be the last straw that broke the camel's back?

[mungrelbreed]

congrats on your truck its looking great, i done a similar thing with my rocky, first thing i suggest is look around your local wreckers, spring works and tip, there are a lot of vehicles out there that use that spring width. i found a set 40mm longer for the rear which gave me 335mm down travell, you need to open up your spring wraps, weld 50mm extentions to them and put in a cross bolt. the ones near the end make
them 75mm.use your standard lenth shackles, you will need longer shocks. the front, i suggest you sort out your steering, i'm not prepered to tell you what i did(booty fab). the springs, i used hilux front, redilled center hole 40mm forward(in relation to rocky spring pack)to extend wheel base,i also used a bundera front diff for the high pinion. you may need to extend your shaft if you move your hole center. dont forget to limit your compression travell to about 120mm or you will bend your springs. the wraps on the front extend by 25 and 50mm.

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

Thanks for the head ups.
Will try to take the above tips into consideration when i send the car back in to the workshop to fix my leaf springs which has popped out of the pack.
I'm running a Ultimate Suspension Hilux LN106 fronts. Axle pushed forward with spring perch inserts and running a prop shaft spacer. The rears are Ultimate Suspension Rocky springs with a leaf removed from the pack recently.

My major concern is what could coz my springs to pop out recently? Potentially suffering from axle warp? But the car is so underpowered? There is a positive arc at static height. Only goes into negative arc when articulated.
Will snap pics of my broke leaf spring pack when i get back home.

Also the "setback" of the wheels is whacked after the offroad shakedown session (i don't think it was wheels hard). What i mean is that both the front and rear left wheels have moved 2 inch backwards compared to the right wheels.

[Zuri92]

negative arch is not bad unless its a fair bit, but preferably do not go past flat so you may need to adjust your bump stops, then you can work out compressed lengths of your shocks and buy a shock with that compresed length and this will give you maximum travel with your set up. and yes even cars with little power figures can get axle wrap in low range especially sprung over a trac bar will solve any issues. to stop your leaves getting wonky you can use your spring clips but just do not have a top to it so the leaves can open up but then re seat in correct position.