Hi Guys,
Haven't posted on this forum in years, but i love the forum (more specifically the people on the forum
) and its helped me a lot so I hope i can return the favour.
I purchased terrain tamer parabolics for my '88 HJ61 around 9 months ago (pretty stock weight wise other than a roof top tent and third row of seats). I'm sharing to help people decide on / consider a few things:
1.They haven't settled at all. The first time i drove them in the garage, the roof rack clipped the garage door with an empty tank of fuel / nobody in the back. That's still the case now.
2. I had Bilstein shocks front and rear that weren't that old, so I kept them (B46 1004LT front, B46 1035 rear), which were great on my old OME springs, but due to the extra spring rate in the rear with the parabolics, they were a terrible fit - the back was so bouncy everything would bounce into the air, and 4wdriving was much slower in order to prevent setting up resonance that would just about lift the rear wheels of the ground. The shocks are def not stuffed either. Nothing against bilsteins, just shows you need to match the higher spring rate with higher damping.
3. I removed the spacers that come with the kit (20mm spacer above spring pack on front, 25mm spacer below spring pack on rear). You need to buy new leaf pack centre bolts, cos there isn't enough thread. No big deal tho. This means more clearance under the shock mount in the rear (always good) for the same travel but reduced topped out / bottomed out eye to eye lengths. In the front it stopped the nose down (raised) the front by 20mm (still nose down so I don't know why they did that, it looked like a 100 series ifs with rear only lift with them in
). This increases the stroke by 20mm because it increased the clearance between the diff and the bump stop, so also a good thing. However, be careful. I believe (and I measured everything, tape measure only FWIW) that the spacers are there on the rear because the terrain tamer shocks need the extra eye to eye length in the rear (385-632mm listed stroke) so they don't bottom out on compression. The bilstein rears had a shorter stroke (368-575mm measured), so worked fine. (Note that isnt the case with the fronts, 352-580 for the tt shocks, so i'm not sure why they spaced the fronts like they did)
4. The rear springs started squeaking really bad after a few months. I tried taking load off the springs, loosening u bolts and cleaning all the dirt out of the spring pack but no difference. I called TT and they said yep its is a know thing, they sent me out new rear inter leaf anti friction / spacer pads that are at the ends of the spring, which use something like an N70 rubber instead of a hard (teflon?) pad, and they are now silent (totally free too btw). Make sure you get tt to supply the rubber ones straight away, trust me, they will squeak and it is very annoying, and annoying to install on the double military wrap end.
5. To fix the bounce in the rear, i researched lots of options and settled on a set of Koni heavy track shocks, 82-2294. Note that koni website for late model (19mm pin) with 2" lift suggests 82-2297 (368-587mm listed stroke), that is incorrect. Koni salesperson confirmed the 2294 and said "Interestingly, the 82-2294 has almost 14% more rebound and 50% more compression control than the 82-2297, straight out of the box. The rebound can be increased to accommodate higher spring rates and the greater sprung mass of heavily accessorised and/or loaded vehicles." He also said there is 100% rebound control (i.e. up to double the rebound damping rate? Or maybe 50% either way?)) The difference after installing these shocks in the rear is incredible. I didn't adjust the rebound at all, I think perhaps it could use slightly higher rebound damping, but now i can 4wd in comfort without having to slow to a crawl for pot holes / whoops or to cross ruts in sand, and sits much more planted on the road.
Overall, really happy with the springs, just make sure you get the rubber inter leaf pads, and consider these koni shocks if you need something with higher damping for high spring rates, and def take the spacers out if you can to save some weight and add some clearance and travel.
1st pic with BFG 31's is with spacers, 2nd pic with Maxxis 33x10.5s is with spacers removed. Not the best to compare, sorry, its all i have.
