2026 Update #1: Getting more dialed
After my last run up to Santiago Peak, I noticed the suspension wasn't acting the way I wanted. The rear felt very wallowy. This would normally be a sign of worn shocks, but since these shocks are rather new (and adjustable), I figured I'd do the work to adjust them. It's not that they were set up bad, they were simply set up by the previous owner, for the way they use the vehicle. (more weight, higher center of gravity, etc...).
For starters, it felt like it needed more rebound dampening. This has heavier duty Dobinson Rear Springs (I think the spring rate is in the range of 700 lbs/inch) and the fact of the matter is I probably run this rig lighter than the previous owner so I need to increase the rebound dampening to fight the heavier duty springs.
The access to the rebound adjusters are at the lower shock mount. They are supposed to be inward facing, but when I removed the shock skid plate, I found that they were facing outboard. I couldn't get to them because of the position of the rotor/dust shield in the outboard position so I removed the lower mount, and simple rotate the shock lower 180-degrees. ChatGPT said I shouldn't do this. I've rebuilt mountain bike shocks w/ reservoirs and couldn't think of a technical reason why this would be bad, so I ignored ChatGPT and did it anyways. The right way to do this would have been to completely remove each shock and move it to the opposite side, but I didn't have that kind of time on me.
I also had to do this with the wheels on the car as I don't have height clearance in my garage to jack up the rear and remove the tires..
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As soon as I removed the lower shock mount, the shock piston extended out. On old worn shocks, you've be able to push against the pressure to remount them, however I had to use a trolley jack to compress the piston to get it back on the mount after it extended. In the above photo, I've already rotated the lower shock 180-degrees so the rebound adjustment screw is accessible (as seen in yellow).
I remounted the shock without the lower shock skid for now. I need to drill a hole in the shock skid so that after I re-install it, I can still access this adjuster screw.
SUSPENSION TUNING
The first part of suspension tuning is establishing a baseline. To do this, I counted the the number of clicks it took to get the shocks at 0 rebound, 0 LSC (low speed compression) and 0 HSC (high speed compression. I found the suspension was set up like this.
BASELINE
Rebound (Driver/Passenger): 0/1
LSC (D/P): 14/14
HSC (D/D): 4/4
In the baseline settings, I effectively had no rebound dampening, full low speed compression dampening and low/medium high speed compression dampening. This would actually make sense when the rig is heavily weighted down, but for my daily use, wasn't going to fly.
FIRST RUN
Rebound (Driver/Passenger): 7/7
LSC (D/P): 0/0
HSC (D/P): 0/0
For the first real run, I turned off all compression dampening and put rebound at about half. All these tests were run on the road and I was focusing on 45-60 MPH as far as on-road comfort. Good reset, but definitely still wallowing.
SECOND RUN
Rebound (Driver/Passenger): 10/10
LSC (D/P): 8/8
HSC (D/P): 0/0
This improved wallowing significantly at speed but it's still there.
THIRD RUN
Rebound (Driver/Passenger): 12/12
LSC (D/P): 10/10
HSC (D/P): 0/0
I started to noticed a significant reduction in wallowing pretty significantly but bigger bumps still took a while to recover.
FOURTH RUN
Rebound (Driver/Passenger): 13/13
LSC (D/P): 8/8
HSC (D/P): 5/5
I added HSC to address some bigger/bumps. I actually reduced LSC because as much as these try to be separate circuits, they still influence each other.
Based on these settings, I was very happy with the on-road ride. I will need to test these settings off road to further dial these in.
With these settings in place, the ride quality on road is significantly improved. Time to start addressing more front end noise.
I've already replaced the outer sway bar links. When I did that I noticed the SPC UCA Upper ball joints had some play. SPC had known quality issues with these ball joints. Instead of replacing than entire UCA which would be a lot more money, and a lot more effort, I elected to replace just the upper ball joint. the new part # is: SPC 35102. What's great about these SPC's UCA's is that because you can adjust the ball joint position, you can also remove the entire ball joint assembly with a single 32mm bolt (while a 22mm bolt undoes the steering knuckle).
Here's a photo of the older worn joint, and the new one.
Out with the old...
View attachment 4068197
In with the new...
View attachment 4068198
You can see the new style is a OE style non-greasable sealed joint. Word on the street is you can adapt this to take a greasse zerk but there should be no need to. I will note that while swapping ball joints, you need to unbolt the wheel speed sensor cable from the UCA. I thought I could stretch it a little bit so I wouldn't need to unbolt it, however I ended up breaking the line. Doh! I literally tried to save 1 minute unbolting a single 10mm bolt and gave myself another hour of work replacing the wheels speed sensor cable.
So once again, out of the old and in with the new...I used a $18 ebay cable instead of the Lexus part because it arrived the next day and was 1/5th the price. It's a basic 2 wire cable with a basic water resistant connector at each end so I figured not the biggest risk to use an aftermarket part...
View attachment 4068199
So what's next? This isn't the most exciting but I'm going to spend the next few weeks getting an alignment and chasing some interior squeeks. Then I will take this on a small half day offroad trip for another shakeout run. Oh, in between now and then I'll give this thing a detail/clay bar and ceramic coat.
Lastly, I sold the 75 quart Dometic that this rig had but am now itching to get another one. If anyone has a lead on a 55 quart and smaller slide out, I'd be very interested. Until next time!
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