Builds Fujiwara's 3 linked super daily (5 Viewers)

[Squeegee]

Wow this has been a rollercoaster of fun to read.
You are super informative and lots of good stuff in here. I want to keep the suspension expenses relatively low so gonna see what I can do with a little as I can. I got an eimkeith PCK and RAM for the 80. But it's already got 4" slinky springs on it and 35s. And I feel like it's WAY too tall. But for all the work I'm having to put in to it to fix a BHG and other problems I'm quickly exhausting my mod funds.

I am doing part time 4x4 and 10% overdrive in the Tcase though.

Id also recommend the 3.1:1 tcase gears! They’re suuuper nice to have!

4” is a bit tall! Generally, I like having the car lower because the suspension geometry is better. I noticed more rear steer on big sweepy corners on the interstate now that it’s taller! For reference, I’m running a 3” icon spring with a 1” spacer on the drivers side to mitigate the lean. Overall though, I’m sure your set up will work well as long as you get long enough shocks!

 

[Bigtoepfer]

I wanted to do the gearing, because I miss my dual case pickup. Especially since I already had the Tcase open. But it was extra I didn't have to spend. My goal is to have a mostly stock looking, excellent tourer, and rock warrior. I wanted to put a manual box in it. But due to all the money I'm putting in the engine that might never happen. And I still need a front bumper because it didn't come with one at all. And then eventually figure out something for the rear bumper to carry the spare.

 

[Squeegee]

By now everyone was pretty worn out so we had kind of a non wheeling day. I have no idea where we went for the first bit, it was rainy and cold and I dug holes and people jumped their cars in the dunes

 

[Squeegee]

We hit Kane next! I have a love and hate relationship with this trail. The first time we hit it, it was super busy and we got mobbed by a gang of side by sides on hamburger hill. This time it was super fun, we kinda hit it in the middle of the week and didn't really have any trail traffic. The car did reeeaaallly good compared to last year too. It seemed just tall enough to be able to bump up hamburger hill and the big line at the end of the trail without absolutely destroying the bottom of the car. Its kinda cool to see the comparison between the two set ups on the sqeeze. The lack of uptravel due to the panhard set up was pretty apparent here. The stock set up with 5" of uptravel ( I think thats right), appeared to keep the chassis flatter.

 

[Outsane]

Any more information on how you lowered the front shocks. I have my ideas but would like to see what you did.

 

[Broski]

This is a cool thread. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and problem solving strategies.

This ^^^

 

[Squeegee]

Any more information on how you lowered the front shocks. I have my ideas but would like to see what you did.

I lopped the top 1.5” of the shock tower off and welded in a flat plate with a hole in it! I didn’t take any picture because i was kinda slamming it together for a moab trip.

I’ll update this thread eventually a lots happened since this trip

 

[Outsane]

Thanks!

 

[Squeegee]

Sooooo I think we did pritchett canyon the last day. Which is a bad idea because none of us trailered this year. More tire, more lift, and more down travel made a big difference. Who woulda guessed. We ended up wheeling with a gladiator on 40s and a rear steer buggy on 42s They were both super cool dudes who had been doing the trail for years. Guy in the buggy said that when he started doing the trail, most of it was a dirt road.

He posted a vidoe of it
You get to see my subpar driving skills at work.

Anyway. Round 2 of this trail went way better, I went from getting almost skunked to hitting everything but 2 obstacles. Idk what the magic line for the wheelbase is or if i just need to hit it waaaay harder. Idk. Axle hill.. is axle hill. I got traction trying to bump up the section, it lifted the front end up, lost traction, and then slammed the front bumper into the rock wall so hard that it left little vampire teeth marks into the wall. I saw a video of someone doing it during easter jeep safari and you could see the chunks I took out of the wall. Kinda cool

 

[Outsane]

Pritchett looks like fun

 

[Bigtoepfer]

This just reminds me how much I want to be in Moab for Thanksgiving. And how much I need sliders.

 

[Squeegee]

Pritchett looks like fun

I highly recommend it. It definitely gets your out of your comfort zone.

 

[Squeegee]

This just reminds me how much I want to be in Moab for Thanksgiving. And how much I need sliders.

You’ll definitely use them!

 

[KZN130Alabama]

View attachment 3389022




I also welded 3/16" 2x2 angle iron to the lower control arms. I really like this little trick, its been a couple years and I still haven't bent these.


View attachment 3389023

Interested in the size material you used on the rear bumper. I'd like to something very similiar.

 

[Squeegee]

Interested in the size material you used on the rear bumper. I'd like to something very similiar.

I used 3x1.5x1/8” for the main section and used 3x1.5x1/16” for the wings, they're tucked up enough that I don’t hit them a lot.

 

[KZN130Alabama]

I used 3x1.5x1/8” for the main section and used 3x1.5x1/16” for the wings, they're tucked up enough that I don’t hit them a lot.

I appreciate it! What did you use to cap the body section you cut off on the corners?

 

[Squeegee]

I appreciate it! What did you use to cap the body section you cut off on the corners?

I hate to say but I don’t remember the gauge. There’s a couple good build threads that chop the same section and I think they list what they used

 

[GW Nugget]

That slide to the driver for 20 feet till you hit the slide obstacle make me sick every time Ive watched through the years... must feel terrible.
I think Ive seen on Instagram you did front coilovers correct? I'm I right? Time for an update.

 

[Squeegee]

That slide to the driver for 20 feet till you hit the slide obstacle make me sick every time Ive watched through the years... must feel terrible.
I think Ive seen on Instagram you did front coilovers correct? I'm I right? Time for an update.

It feels horrible and it tips you more the farther you go. And it’s linked on coilovers now, I’ll do that update when I have a little more time!

 

[Squeegee]

Earlier this year I 3 linked the 80. I was mostly procrastinating but taking the time to drive it around has giving me some pretty good insight on the pros, cons, and compromises you make when you link a car yourself. I really want to make this pretty comprehensive, I had so many questions that I couldn't find any good info on and it's super frustrating. So I'm going to try to go into everything from how to use the calculators, which one to use, what products to get, what to worry about, and much more. I will preface this with, I'm not a genius, I'm just a dude who linked one car, there's thousands of people who know better than me, but everything that I'm going to talk about is stuff that I've either experienced or learned from someone who has. Everybody thinks they know alot about suspension, but this project has taught me that I really don't. This is a bottomless pit of stuff to learn that is largely useless. Here are my thoughts.

I should start with why you would 3 link a car. I talked to alot of people before I did it and I was told that the car was going to suddenly become undrivable because its 3 linked. Can it? Totally, there sooooo many ways to screw this up, but my biggest take-away is that the drivability of the car is largely attributed to the geometry of your link set up (duh), your shock tuning (less of a duh), and to some degree your tolerance for an unwieldy car.

Reason 1* Design it for your ride height
It doesn't matter if its a radius arm, 4 link, 3 link, IFS, or leaf sprung, every OEM manufacture designs the suspension to operate within certain parameters. When you lift or lower a car, you venture away from the angles that the suspension was designed to operate at (this is often called the suspension geometry). Ie, when you lift an 80, the angles of the radius arms, and 4 link in the rear become steeper, this results in adverse driving characteristics that we either deal with, or mask with aftermarket parts.

When you link a car, you have the opportunity to design your suspension for your desired ride height. You can do this by taking a ton of measurements and throwing them into a link calculator. I recommend the one on irate4x4 because it gives you alot more information than the old triaged calculator that you can find on crawlpedia, that one's fine, but it was made for the rear suspension of drag cars. I'll get more into how to use the calculators later. Do you need to use a calculator? No, there's lots of rules of thumbs that will get you close, but this is a lot of work and I like to have something suggest to me that it will be drivable on the road, soooo I opted into using a calculator.

Reason 2- Tune-ability
Especially on this forum, people don't... like to stray away from the norm. Most people overspring their cars, yes... if you put a 3" lift spring on your car and get 5"s of lift out of it.. its over sprung... no it does not make it more stable or make it ride good. This is a common trend though for most Toyota's, I have a weird feeling that it come from Australian touring set ups that required such heavy springs but whatever. ANYWAY more often than not, people opt for heavier springs than needed and it results in very little body roll on the street and a very poor ride that most just deal with. In total, I've had 3 old man emu lift kits, 2 Dobinsons' lift kits, an old man emu rear / custom spring lift kit with dobinsons' yellows, and now a fox coilover/ air bumbs front, icon spring rear spring with Dobinson MRA set up. I will say, that without a doubt, every suspension kit that I have used until now has ridden HORRIBLY. So when people tell me that their XYZ lift kit rides well, I know that they don't know what they're talking about. Suspension NEEDS to be tuned to ride well and twin tubes/ foam cell shocks will not ride well.

3 linking your car gives you a good opportunity to run coilovers. Coilovers are not inherently special, but they give you the ability to tune your suspension. There is a near limitless combo of shock valving/ spring combo. If you can't find a combo that works, you should get rid of your car. If I didn't go this route, I would've opted for a set of custom valved shocks from Fox with a dual speed compression clickers, or set of Dobinsons' MRAs front and rear. The clickers give you the ability to adjust the fluid restriction going into the reservoir with a low speed and high speed circuit. Oh and the MRAs allow you to adjust rebound through bleed. I'll go into shock tuning basics more later. BUT its very nice to have a car that doesn't rattle your teeth out.

Reason 3* You have suspension that's designed to live through what you want to do.
No you don't need to link your car to hit the rough stuff. But I promise you that the universal parts available to you are far more robust than the parts designed for a car that was orginally on 31" tires. The radial static load of a 1 1/4" heim is 76,000 lbs, please find me a bushing that can compare. Need I say anymore?

The biggest thing that you need to consider before taking on a project like this is....... DO YOU NEED IT. If you want to go to moab and hit hells revenge.. absolutely not. Do you do the rubicon and not hit soup bowl? Definitely don't need it. I did it because I wanted to hit 9 and 10 rated trails, I was tired of my 80 chewing through bushings, and I like building stuff because I think its cool.