Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Hi guys, Iwas going to wind up my TB and remove sway bar but before i go ahead I just need to know if i should do one before the other or doesn't it matter? also i was wondering if I need to jack the front end up to remove sway bar and wind up the TBs?
oh and how can I tell if the previous owner has done this already?

A hoist or jack stands a must! you wont be able to tighten it on the ground. It shouldn't matter the order. Not sure you will tell if its already done.
You will lose a bit of articulation doing this, is it worth it?

you can do it on the ground with a rattle gun, i had mine up about 2 inches, but i lost articulation and the track of my car was narrower, so its back down to standard again now. also i found, lifting the front and keeping it there will wear the inside of the tyres badly unless you get a shim kit to adjust the camber that you will add.

the sway bar was easy to disconnect, again, becareful going round corners too fast, and i wouldnt recommend it if you do alot of highway driving.

also forgot to mention its a '95 narrow fez

mmm hadn't thought of it narrowing my track and wearing tyres unevenly. How much would it cost to get a mechanic to reset the camber do you think?

Also how much is there to gain from removing the swaybar without winding up the TB and vice versa? I'v been trawling through the pages and I keep getting confuzled... I get more height from winding up the TB... right? and removing the swaybar gives more articulation... right? so do the benefits added together when you do both or are they separate and counteract eachother?

Dont use a jack or anything! if you do u'll wind it to high and trust me, its not a good ride.

I wound mine up on a jack then had to wind it down heaps coz i did it to much.

and yes remove the sway bar. So much better for wheelin not so much for freeways. car move around alot on the road.

But if you wind up ur bars about an inch and remove the sway bar it makes it alot smoother.

well thats what i think.

Wait for Mighty Mouse to respond on this one.

thanks for the replies guys. I'll have time to try it next weekend so i can play with it then. Would like to know what Mighty Mouse has to say, seems he's quite the wealth of knowledge :-)
but I cant wait to get out again. Bought the fes a few months ago, went out to give it a little test and was mightily impressed and now i'm itchin for more... come to think of it i've been itchin for a good couple of months. (uni gets a bit rediculous sometimes!)

The biggest issue you have with winding up the TB off road is you will limit the downward travel. (20mm increase in height will result in a 20mm loss of downward travel.)

Height is good but keeping the wheels in contact with the ground is more important.

Sounds like my cue here.......

First question is why do you want to wind up the bars ?

Unless you have an absolute mechanical reason for doing it, then leave it alone as the reduction in droop travel WILL drastically decrease your off road capability.

The Feroza IFS is very much a compromise.... bump travel tends to make for a good highway ride and droop for off road capability - and droop is what your sacrificing. Also how are you going to keep it level front to rear ?

If you need to clear tyres - then go body lift first and then MINOR adjustment of the bars.
just because bar adjustment is easy doesn't mean its without issues.

It takes much more force to adjust the bars when not on jacks but is do-able ( clean the jacking threads of dirt - spray with CRC first ) and tends to give you a more accurate height with less trial and error - but either way works in the end.

As for the sway bar - what do you want from your vehicle..... ? taking off the bar will improve it off road but at the expense of on road cornering.

no bar, soft springs and serious off road rubber make for handling that can at best be described as "interesting" or towards the frightening end of twitchy

So what do you want from your Feroza ?

Ahh Thanks that puts things into perspective. As I haven't been out in it a lot since i bought it maybe I should see how i'm going when we get to the lovely end of year break.

As you said i'm going to loose some droop by winding up the TB's and i realised the other day that my tyres are already 3" over stock at 30" making it 1.5" taller anyway (stock is 27" isn't it?) so if i take out the sway bar and leave the TB's alone will I effectively be increasing my droop? and by how much?

I suppose whether or not i take the sway bar out and leave it out will depend on how scary the ride becomes.

OK, time to clear up a couple of misconceptions.

Winding up your torsion bars will shorten the distance your wheels may travel in a downward direction, however, it should not affect your overall front end articulation. Yes, it will give a harder ride, but I certainly still achieve maximum upwards wheel travel. I also shaved a bit off the bumpstops to provide a tiny bit of extra down travel.

If you're running 30's without raising your front end, and with no bodylift, then expect to experience scrubbing every time you hit a small obstacle (even driveways) at an angle with your wheels turned.

The other benefit is increased front diff clearance.

The golden rule is to wind it up far enough to provide a little extra clearance and stiffness, but not to go stupid and wind things up as far as it'll go.

And maximum total wheel travel is about as useless off road as .......
its not about maximum travel its about AVAILABLE TRAVEL.. if 50% of your droop is already wasted with "lift" then that's what matters - who cares if you've now got 25% more bump travel ?

Droop is where it all at off road - anything that hurts it should be avoided, come over a crest on an angle - lack of droop lifts the unloaded wheel - no locker allows the unloaded wheel to spin - and there your stuck.
In fact - funny as it seems - lowering the front suspension actually improves droop and thus capability ( but isn't really practical for most ) but does require LOTS of serious engineering to overcome.

My control arms are "flat" at rest yet overall I have twice the droop ( and bump ) available to a stockie, and still sit significantly higher ( as well as the front diff tucked up... ) . In reality I'd trade 75% of the bump any day for droop.

Cranking up the bars does "improve" the front diff clearance BUT it still is the lowest point at the front so in reality it will still bash on things and eventually break. What you need to do to fix this issue is to lift the front diff relative to the chassis so its better protected.

As indicated earlier - the Feroza ( infact all IFS systems ) have these interacting characteristics and without engineering - every change affects everything else usually in a negative manner.

Sorry if i havn't read your reply right MM but does removing my sway bar give me more droop if i leave the Tb's alone? (I'm pretty happy with clearance for the moment so i won't be winding up the TB's for now)

Also where would i be scrubbing if i'm running 30x9.5s? I put the right wheel up on our retaining wall (250 or 300mm high) with the wheels on full lock to the left and right and didn't seem to scrub anywhere.

30's will scrub on the stock mud flaps & inside the guards on a wide track.
(Well they did on mine)
I removed my plastic guards and banged up some bunnings flares

"Winding up your torsion bars will shorten the distance your wheels may travel in a downward direction, however, it should not affect your overall front end articulation. "

That is a contradiction in itself. If you shorten the dwonward (or upward travel) of course it affects your overall suspension travel.

MM speaks with much experience, he also speaks from a point of knowledge.

If you wind up torsion bars you will reduce your downward travel. Reduce your downward travel (The most important really, upwards travel isn't an issue unless the opposite wheel doesn't have sufficient travel to keep it's wheel on the ground) and you will loose traction more easily and more foten (Short of combating this with say a diiflock)

Removing the sway bar boes not effect the amount of travel available.

What is does is remove the "linkage" across the vehicle that gets in the way of the vehicle USING the available travel.

So removing the bar makes the travel you have more readily available, important off road. However this allows the body to tilt ( roll ) more around corners at speed so its win / loose.

Sway bar disconects obviously allow you to disconect it for off roading and then reconnect it for road use - sort of the best of both worlds.

Haven't seen anything for a Feroza but that doesn't mean that others couldn't be easily adapted. The only pain is that sometimes connecting / disconnecting the system requires a bit of vehicle rocking to get it alligned, and it has to be done from underneath so if the rigs filthy / its raining / ground is muddy its a minor PITA.

Some newer 4WD's now do this automatically...

cookiesa wrote:"Winding up your torsion bars will shorten the distance your wheels may travel in a downward direction, however, it should not affect your overall front end articulation. "

That is a contradiction in itself. If you shorten the dwonward (or upward travel) of course it affects your overall suspension travel.

MM speaks with much experience, he also speaks from a point of knowledge.

If you wind up torsion bars you will reduce your downward travel. Reduce your downward travel (The most important really, upwards travel isn't an issue unless the opposite wheel doesn't have sufficient travel to keep it's wheel on the ground) and you will loose traction more easily and more foten (Short of combating this with say a diiflock)

Your confusing travel with articulation. The amount each suspension element (LHF or RHF) can travel is limited by the bump stop position in a feroza. Take an extreme example. Wind up the front end till its on the lower bump stop - therefore no droop. Drive up a ramp. The suspension will still articulate despite no available down travel. Sure it wont work well, but this is an extreme example to illustrate my point.

Feroza IFS has the same travel always due to its design, adjusting the torsion bar pre-load just alters the point at which the suspenions rests in that range of travel.

Travel is the verticle distance the wheel will travel. Articulation is the amount of difference in verticle wheel travel left to right. They are NOT the same number or concept.

Deffinatley agree with you and MM though - dont wind the t-bars up. Droop is the new black


Layto....

no confusion at all, the articulation reference was a quote from a previous post. And unless you only adjust one side of course it will affect overall articulation of the front end.

Ok I think I finally understand... The travel is simply the distance that one wheel can move up and down, the articulation is the difference in height that the left and right wheels can be and the flex refers to the difference in height between the opposite front and rear wheels. is that right?

So as I understand it then, and correct me if i'm wrong, the travel of each wheel won't change through removing the swaybar but it will allow the wheels to move more freely/independantly of eachother meaning that the difference in the height between the LHF and RHF wheels can can be larger before it will lift a wheel?

Got it

thanks heaps everyone and MM. time to go try it!

Just thought I'd follow up on my last post and say that the Fez minus the swaybar is so so much better. Though it was a PITA getting it out as the bullbar stopped me from removing the two front bolts on the bashplate so i had to work around it!
Next time you're lookin at your feroza imagine working through the 2 front holes in your bumper to first loosen bash plate bolts (couldn't undo cmpletely due to the bullbars bottom cross bar), then the locknuts on the tops of the swaybar connectors! took me 3 hours of sweat, bloody knuckles and expletives! yes i know... have a cry... but the girlfriend won't sympathise. ahh that feels better :p
Bullbar will have to come off to get it back on though haha... thank god it was worth it is all i can say!

So to anyone asking if they should do it i say... DO IT!!!!