Standard vs Upgraded Ute Suspension Test! How to choose the right springs for your 4WD

here are some expert suspension tips you need to know to get your for Drive set up properly for carrying what you need to carry to do that I'm back down at tough dogs R&D Center I'm going to be chatting to my good mate Simon who has been building suspension here in the R&D team for 30 years so it's safe to say he knows what he's talking about let's get into it okay so you need to do something about the suspension in your Ute where do you start the very first step is to figure out everything you need to carry and how often you're going to carry it the reason why your four-wheel drive is riding rough and a huge contributor to a bench chassis is choosing the wrong spring rate today we're going to put different spring rates in this Ford Ranger under load to show you exactly what happens and give you the right information so you can choose the right spring rate for your four-wheel [Music] drive to show you what happens to your suspension if you load it up with the incorrect spring rate we're putting the standard Ford suspension back in the tough dog Ranger then we're going to put the canopy on and Simon's going to point out everything that's happening to that standard suspension and why it's no good if you want to load your Ute up then we're going to pull these Springs out and put the correct spring rate in show you the difference and why it's much safer and it'll be better to drive here we have the factory spring fitted in place and what you'll notice is the three primary leaves are now fully engaged on the second stage and also two is the bump stop it is now fully engaged on the axle now what that actually means is this axle cannot compress any further than what it has done here as a result of the spring being fully compressed against the bum stop there would also be some pretty Dynamic forces going through the Chazzy rail here where we're fully engaged by fitting the correct loose spring it allows to restore the bump stop Gap allowing the axle to move up and down which is the design of the vehicle at the moment what we have here is a vehicle where the axle is tracked between the weight coming down onto the spring and the bum stop which is engaged on the striker plate while restoring in The Bump Stop Gap it will also improve the vehicle's performance in braking the reason why the braking performance will be affected by an axle that is trapped Against The Bump Stop is mainly due to the axle hopping and fighting against the bump stop almost causing like a slapping effect we now have the 500 kilo constant load spring in place and the one thing that you'll notice is we're now maintaining a 70 to 80 mil Bump Stop gap which is super important we also have doubled the amount of leaves in the primary stage and also in the secondary and the primary stage is now just resting on that second stage just for that extra support so that we're not duing the spring over the second stage droop being the axle falling away from the chassis and it's super important to maintain that 60 to 70 M of droop from R height we've put a yellow indicator Mark here just showing where the shock absorber is sitting at the moment with the correct spring fitted in place and the correct load placed over the axle the important part about this is ensuring that we have the correct spring fitted for the weight being placed over the axle if the spring was too powerful we certainly wouldn't maintain the 70 M drip that we have here now risking the shock absorber to be frequently topping out topping out and bottoming out your shock can happen if you fit the wrong length shock to your vehicle relative to the height increase of the Springs you've put in for example a shock that's too short with an increased suspension height will be sitting almost fully extended at ride height which means it's always working at the end of its range and you can damage the shock where whereas fitting a shock that's too long for the Springs you fitted means it will fully compress before the bump stops do which can also damage the shock your shock essentially becomes your Bump Stop that's why it's essential to get the right length shocks to suit your vehicle at full droop of your suspension and full up [Music] travel Okay so we've explained choosing the right spring rate for load carrying but how does that affect flex and off-road performance we're out on the tracks because we want to show you that even if you get heavier duty springs you're not going to lose articulation provided they're matched to the weight of the vehicle so here we have the next gen Ranger with the tough dog suspension kit in raised 50 mil it has a 0 to 300 kilo spring Springs matched perfectly to the tray as you can see we've taken that spring now to full articulation and the shock is at full travel really important to match the shock absorber to the loose spring so that we ensure that neither of them run out of travel in the way that they're supposed to and as you can see it's the shock absorber that's limiting the wheel travel here not the spring so it's a bit of a misconception that by choosing a constant 500 kilos spring that it limits the down travel and in fact that couldn't be further from the truth it's actually the shock absorber that dictates the full droop travel so as you can see here we got a 0 to 300 we got a tray fitted we're at full travel here everything is well protected brake lines and abs lines and on the other side we have full compression stroke on the bump stop the way it should be so what we're saying is the right spring and shock combo should mean your droop is only limited by your shock length and your compression is limited by your Bump Stop not your shock topping out because that's what can cause them to wear and fail faster next up we want to talk about the difference here between the good old coil spring and the loose spring the coil spring here being made in Australia we're using a micro alloid steel important to note that the way we come up with a design for a coil is not just by the free length it's also the thickness of the coil the pitch between the wire and also the free height one of the other misconception is running a really tall coil and allowing that coil to come down to the correct ride height and that would cause a lot of stress on the coil and not only that we want to ensure that the coil spring doesn't bind before the internal Bump Stop comes into a play a sign of that could be chattering in between the coils where perhaps the powder coat's been fractured from the coil spring binding so again we don't want to just run a super long coil and have that compressed down to the correct ride height it will always come down to matching the correct spring rate for the vehicle's application what we have here in front of us is a NextGen Ranger Comfort spring you'll notice that it has a delete on the second stage just purely running primary leaves and the idea of this is just to keep the Lea spring nice and linear all the way to the bum stop just ensuring comfort and again we're giving the customer are three choices here with Le Springs being this is a comfort spring we also do a constant load 300 and a constant load 500 and that's where we see the the second Leaf coming into play to support the primary leaves keeping in mind if we were going to a heavier application where we're seeing a canopy or a steel tray this is where we would introduce the load leaves to support the primary leaves just so that we don't have the spring laying out too flat so as we have seen this is a single rate spring nice and linear all the way down to the bump stop now if we were carrying things like a steel canopy steel tray we would option up for the second stage spring and again it's super important selecting the correct spring for the application of a steel tray it's always been a bit of a misconception with airbags when to use them do they make the ride too firm or do they restrict the wheel travel on on droop so I thought we'd cover off today just on a few things firstly the old poly bag here made from polyurethane and designed to go inside the coil spring we would run this coil as a minimum at 5 PSI and as a maximum at 60 PSI the idea of this bag is just to top the spring rate up so if you chose a lighter rate coil or if you had the factory OEM coil and you carrying an inconsistent load this bag would be the ultimate solution the important thing to note with the poly bag is that you take the bag to a maximum pressure of 60 PSI first before placing the load over the rear axle and then taking air out of the bag until the desired R height is achieved cuz we want the bag to actually grow in height rather than grow in width and being trapped in between the coils the Bellow bag is a rubber constructed two- ply bag comes in different heights we do a standard height application and a long travel application the bag should only be used to top up the spring rate not to carry the complete load carrying that can end in we've seen that plenty of times now with chassis rails being damaged the poly airspring is a great solution for vehicles like this Ram behind us here where we're inconsistently loaded back of the vehicle here might be taking say 200 kilos of cargo and due to the lighter spring rate the poly airbag is a perfect solution we can take the bag to 60 PSI before the load goes on and then lower the PSI back down to the desired rake now rake is how much higher the back of the vehicle is than the front of the vehicle and ideally what we would like is the back of the vehicle to be around about 15 M taller than the front and also ensuring that the headlight trajectory is facing the road rather than the trees in summing up you can see why spring rates are so important for your vehicle hopefully this video has given you the information you need to get your spring rates right if you get them right your vehicle will drive nicer be able to carry a load much safer and generally be much more enjoyable to cruise around in of course if you're not sure you can give the experts a tough dog a call and they'll be able to sort out your suspension spring rates perfectly for your full drive and what you use it for thanks for watching and I'll catch you next time

Channel: 4WD 24-7

Views: 82,653

Keywords: 4wd, action, 4x4, offroad, outdoors, travel, overlanding, toyota, nissan, hilux, patrol, landcruiser, adventure, camping, fishing, diesel, petrol, surf, shaun whale, graham cahill, australia, dirty 30, shorty, gq, gu, 80 series, 40 series, 60 series, 79 series, troopy, 4wd action, 4wd 247, 4wd 24/7

Id: SS64dxRKArw

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024