Long Travel BS Thread

The spring rate mostly dictates ride height. That's about it in simple form. I usually have atleast as much tie in planning geometry as I do in the actual building. A poorly designed link can actually decrease your traction under acceleration and/or braking.once you have a grasp on it, laying it out on paper becomes very simple. Making the adjustments to fit your packaging issues while keeping the suspension characteristics how you want them is the fun part.link suspension on factory frames is ful of comprimises, I hate comprimises

 

Thank you! This is the type of info I need. Ok I'm going to be busy with reading for a while haha.

Hmm... I've seen people run antirocks in custom setups...

 

I hate compromises too lol. I just want something that will articulate a lot, but support the ass of the truck with a damn RTT and armor, and allow me to sorta keep up with the front. Bouncing off bumpstops is getting old.

I understand though, the last thing I want is worse wheel hop soo to the drawing board I go.

 

Why not toss a spring under kit on there with some heavy duty LT leafs and tune it for your weight?

 

Told Ya Chevys weren't gonna be great haha

 

Yes, you can run a sway bar. What @glorifiedwelder is saying is that it is very difficult to physically fit one into the equation. You are adding so much stuff to the frame between the pan hard mount, bed cage mounting points, bump cans etc etc that pyhsicslly fitting a sway bar and it having room to move is very difficult. On my truck an anti rock style sway bar will not work, I have to use an axle / links mounted set up.

 

Well because I already spent a lot of hours into swapping the chevy leafs... I kinda don't want to mess with leaf springs anymore. I know they're better than my current setup but they're still not as great as links or as easily tunable.

Yeeeerp. I mean they're not bad. Better than Dakars or something haha. But yeah not once I added more weight and got LT up front.

Makes sense. So you basically just got your geometry figured out to the point where the links control your body roll?

 

Geometry for links on our truck isn't gonna control body roll. The only thing you can do besides a swaybar is change shock valving. But it's better to valve the shocks for the terrain you intend on using the truck on rather than valving them to combat body roll.

 

Nah, just seriously pre plan the sway bar build into the equation...hell looking back on my build we would have had to start with the sway bar first and then tie in the bed cage and bumps differently to leave room for the sway bar arms outboard of the frame. The other option is this style of sway bar set up :

 

Isn't your truck mainly a crawler? Just stick with leafs. Once you get the correct leafs it won't be a problem.

 

Just throwing this out there anybody have a set of 18" Long 3" 600 Lbs coils?

 

Understood.

Well damn man, that idea doesn't look bad at all! A true sway bar is still better though?

Well I mean yeah... but I want to do more of this... and more gracefully lol



Plus all the serious crawlers are linked. I mean links just trump leaf springs at everything... besides towing and payload I guess lol

 

Don't forget ground clearance. If your plans are to stay with the plus 2 front end, a giant link killer rear setup will out run it all day. And perform a million times better than a flat set of 63 springs. If you're set on going with links you may want to look into running your links more like a pro 2 suspension or a rock crawler, won't give up near as much ground clearance that route and you don't need 24+ inches of rear travel with 12.5 or so inches up front.

 

rockslayer offroad makes a badass 2nd gen kit id look into that

 

I think @dakotasyota is trying to keep the factory gas tank so that kit may not work, but for someone who isn't too familiar with setting up links, plumbing a fuel cell is probably easier than designing your first suspension. But something like that in the form of a parallel 3-link with c/o's on the axle would be very simple to do and prett easy to get to handle weight

 

somethings cant be unseen

 

If you're referring to that rock slayer kit, it's very rough for something commercially offered. You'd think with all the cnc cutting these days you'd see a lot less square tabs an bland mounting brackets, but I guess just cause people can weld doesn't mean that they have the ability to design solid appealing parts

 

my favorite line...

"Just be glad the BLM doesnt have this kit on their trucks."

Brilliant sales pitch

 

I agree. I wasn't sure if I truly needed trailing arms. I'll keep the +2. I know you can still get a lot done with 12" of travel with everything valved right and bypasses.

Of course I would like more travel than I have now, but like you said nothing crazy. Just something better and good enough that I can quit messing with it lol.

Yeah definitely leaving the gas tank.
See what you said would be perfect. Just ugh, I still need to figure out the geometry I haven't got a chance to do any real reading yet.

 

I've got a set of 18x3x700lb eibachs (silver) spare.

Just buy my truck. I'll make you a smokin' deal! Keep one for a beater and one for cruising asphault.