Perhaps this is a good time to explain why I designed my suspension the way that I did. Since I already had 4.5”-5” of lift I choose to stay there because I didn’t want to have to either go extremely wide with the axles to get the wheel travel I wanted and allow the wheel to move outside of the wheel well. Nor did I want to have to completely gut the inner skin and have to relocate everything. Both are great options for those that are more willing to hack up their truck. I choose to “try” and keep my vehicle somewhat unmolested.
I started noticing a performance difference in vehicles with links that were extremely flat vs. “kinda” flat. Their suspensions did a whole less jacking and had far fewer if any unwanted effects on the vehicle. The vehicle was able to stay plated both on road and while crawling much better. Most guys try extra hard to attain more belly clearance and tuck the link brackets completely out of the way and into the frame which raises one end of the link. Others build their lower axle side brackets to position the link to act as a slider. Low on the axle and high at the frame makes for a link that is anything but flat. At least not on 4”s of lift. If you had no lift it would be fine. But at that point you would also be a “full bodied buggy”, some call them Raisins. If you raise the frame mount 3”s you are making your link act like it has 3” more lift on it. Which is not good a thing.
Since I wheeled this very same vehicle with a suspension both front and rear that was very much the same, I can tell you that I was less than impressed with the performance and wanted my leaf springs back in a big way. I was very unsatisfied and couldn’t believe that people were paying big money for suspension “parts” that were this unstable. Then I linked the rear. More problems followed, the lower links at the axle frequently stopped my wheel from climbing over obstacles, the geometry pushed the butt end around and even tried to tip me over more than once while climbing a steep accent by trying to drive under the truck. The vehicle wondered in freeway lanes more and because of the way I mounted the coil-overs the butt end was excessively prone to sagging when loaded for camping. This led to the nose raising even more.
So I started reworking brackets until a few years later I had a design that worked as I expected it to. The noes didn’t raise when I went up hills, there was no wheel recession jacking the front up. Yes I could have avoided some of this if I had been willing to build the whole truck with only 1” or 2” of lift. But then I would have cut a ton of sheet metal away too, again not what I wanted. You’ll notice in the above pictures that I only cut out what was necessary and nothing more.
After four years of trial and error on the front I set out to seriously study how suspension works, what the different attributes/characteristics do and how they effect the vehicle. I designed my front end around the oil pan and the steering arms that nearly everyone who drives a Toyota owns, “Hy-Steer” along with the idea that flatter is better. With this in mind, I set about designing a rear that would match and compliment the front. Knowing how important roll steer was for the street and how important flat links were for overall performance. The end result is what you see above. A complete system where both the front and rear compliment each other and give me the best performance I can have with a non-buggy vehicle. Interestedly enough, it wasn’t until after I finish my first prototype that I stated noticing just how many buggies that are competition, have this same design theory. Which lends its self to proving once more the importance of keeping in mind “the big picture”.
