If i may, your 3 link has lots of room for improvement. It was built in a weekend while two guys drank beer and sarcastically joked at the Ih8mud posts while building bumpers.
If i could lay hands on that truck again it would shine further.
You can always bump nitrogen pressure if the 2.5s are cavitating.
I wish you would stay in this thread. Im all ears on the spring rate and dampening thing. You are one of the few who can give real world feedback on all of this and your experience is worth its weight in platninum
I specifically bought this rig because I looked in my garage after I sold my tube chassis car, and realized I didn't have anything to work on, no projects. And my buddies that I was rockcrawling with sold off their buggies/jeeps/Toyota's and so we decided we wanted backroader/expo type rigs, viola, what better platform than the 80! I knew it wasn't finished, but the collection of hard parts was impressive enough for me to pull the trigger, and I've had a blast out on the Mojave Road, and various trails here in SoNev.
Anyfawkingway, I always want more performance, so I'll be addressing the suspension, doing an LSX swap and fitting it with an awning, and other such stuff for camping...but I want to be able to keep up with my buddy in his Raptor, or at least the guy in the Power Wagon. I can out crawl both of them by a large margin, but they leave me in the dust on the fwy or high speed roads, which is fine for now, but I know I can build it to do all those things.
The Bilsteins are not cavatating, they just don't have enough compression damping for the spring rate, and with no bumps I can blow through the travel at speed and stuff a tire hard into the inner fender well. Also with the reduced caster, it's kinda twitchy at speed, so I've got to be on my toes.
When EZ Rick was building the U4 car he has now, (he built three of them actually), he said he wanted 7*+ of caster, so it would go straight, and damn is that car stable at speed, real speed, the kind that makes you grin and pray at the same time. I don't know if I need that much, and I haven't measured it, but I'm guessing another 3* or so would really help me out....I'm working on it.
And as far as my feedback goes, I've been all ears when I've had the opportunity to learn from guys like Rick or Wayne. I'm not inventing nothing, just trying to let the others pay for their mistakes with THEIR wallets, so I don't have to.
Oh, and you can lay hands on it anytime you want, but no scrotums or other body parts.
