just wondering. have you bent or torn any of the rear trail arms or bushes in the rear?

got some ideas you may or may not be interested in. since some of the lads fitting the BA/BF barra in to their e-series, ive read some are spacing down the front sub/K frame, effectivly raising the front. if you got some bits of box section with holes drilled in it and longer bolts you could space the frame and gear box mounts down abit giving you a body lift. also possibly turn your front upper inner control arm mounts (camber kit) upside down, so the arm would mount lower to adjust for the frame drop. as for the rear ive read in a few 4x4 mags and seen advertised trailing arms that have a swivel built in so that the rear suspension flex isnt as limited. might be worth having something custom made?

very odd idea, points for originality

i reckon some sunrasia rims would look cook on the old girl. do you get hassled by the cops much driving this beast

Spacing the K Frame does NOT alter the ride height. It allows the engine to sit lower.

To alter the ride height you would have to put a spacer on top of the spring/strut assembly effectively raising the car the thickness of the spacer.

BenJ

The 4x4 XY ute was built as a production item available to the general public.
They were built on the last of the XY ute bodies. Approx 400 were built and the production line had to be changed to accomodate the many difference between them and a standard vehicle. They were built in batches.
Dana front and rear diffs and a Dana transfer case from memory. It may have been an atlas transfer.
They didnt continue with the project as the XA ute body twisted too much due to the pillarless door design having not enough tortional rigidity.
All run the 250 6 cylinder and the motor was actually mounted on a sideways slant to clear the front diff pumpkin.
To get more travel out of the rear suspension remove the shocks and flex it to its extreme. Measure the gap between the top and lower shock mount. Then compress the suspension to its max. Measure the shock length again.
Then take the shortest and longest measurements to the suspension place and buy a set of shock that fit into the measurements.
The main thing that will stop rear flex will be the control arms and binding on the bushes.

whoops after i read that i was like...Oooo yeh haha. thanks BenJ i forgot about the strut top and was comparing the suspension to a 4x4. il be quiet now.

My guess is that's a toyota blizzard chassis . . . ?

Pretty sure not. The bushes have done 270k and during some offroading recently squeaked a bit, maybe some dust got in, but it goes away. The trailing arms seem quite robust, and i don't really give them a hiding anyway, they are well tucked and the car isn't really suitable for the kind of extreme offroading that bends trailing arms.


Aside from what Benj said, i don't like body lifts, because my aim is to have max ground clearance under the key areas as well as a low centre of gravity. But if i wanted to fit a terri 4wd system this could be an excellent idea! It could also be an excellent idea if i wanted to lengthen the stub axle upright in order to fit larger O.D. wheels. You've got me thinking. One problem though is if the front suspension droops too much with large wheels on full lock the tyre hits the chassis rail.


The rear seems to flex quite freely, it all seems well designed. There is so much travel i haven't bothered to improve it, i rarely have tractions problems in relation to it. It comes down to shocks, all i would have to do is fit longer shocks, an extra inch or so of travel would be easy. If i wanted to go much more i would have to concern myself with how far the bushes can go and how long they would last, etc.


Some factors are an engineering background plus i grew up in a 1977 range rover. The car was excellent, very excellent, but when it came time for me to test drive one to buy for myself, i found the handling just too wallowy.

It is possible to have the best of many worlds if things are designed right, but i have never seen such car in the marketplace. If only i had the money to make what i would like to. Its been a wish for probably 20 years.

Sunrasia rims better than 5 spoke alloys . . . well, each to their own. Do you sell them?!

I've had a few cops take a bit of a look, but even when one saw it with 30mm hub adapters on the front which spaced the wheels well beyond the front guards, the bloke still didn't say anything . . . cross fingers for the future! But it looks okay now with the 20mm adapters. A factor in my favour is raising the car puts some angle on the lower control arm, which reduces the track.

The front guards are getting a bit lunched though, i need to raise it another 10mm. Also makes it easier for a 6'5" fellow to get in and out.

Last edited by relaxed_diplomacy on Fri Feb 12, 2010 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

The rear shocks control the max and min flex, so if you take them off and flex the suspension, you need to look at everything else, and i mean everything else.


You also need to consider the swaybar, brake lines, driveshaft angle and clearance, axle rotation, tyre clearance, coils binding and/or coming loose, shocks rubbing due to increased angles, . . .

do you have any issues with the rear brake line? or handbrake cable getting stretched?

Nope. The rear suspension has had approx. 30mm spacers added to the top of the upper coil seat, and the upper shock mounts lowered accordingly. The suspension doesn't quite sit 30mm higher because of the large rear mounted battery and toolbox i often carry. The upshot is the suspension can droop to a position about 30mm more than std, but that is well within the limits of the well designed brake line and handbrake cable arrangement.

Hi, I just posted in your other thread regarding the differences between the RTV and Territory suspension.

Also, have you seen this EB from http://www.trueblueford.com/ScottsAU2xr8ute.html



That ran 31" tyres by using a longer spindle made from 2 standard ones. Good luck getting that engineered.

I've been looking into whether it may be possible to fit a RWD Territory front spindle/knuckle to E-series front suspension by having a bolt on adaptor to mimic the lower balljoint and steering arm locations. Effectively making a lifted spindle and leave the rest of the suspension geometry the way it was designed. Might be just what your after (to develop the EL, it won't work on an AU-BA due to reversed balljoint placements).

Benefits; Higher ride height with extra ground clearance, larger Territory size tyres (std 28" but 30" fit), bigger wheel (17" min.) to clear the much larger Territory brakes, stock E-series setup otherwise. At the rear fit AU-BA/F ute or wagon diff to get the extra width to maintain similar track widths with the AU_BA/F_Territory wheel offsets with either re-arched springs or lowered mounting points (or possible a SOA (spring over axle) conversion but that's rather radical.

I have actually seen that red EB, once when it was at mount gambier i think. It had aftermarket coil over shocks on the front and the same size tyres as on the back of mine at that time from memory. With the aftermarket shocks, remote reservoirs and some extra bump stops, etc, the suspension wasn't easy to scope out, and i didn't know stuff-all about falcons at that time. The car handled impressively over jumps considering how little modified it was.

While i really like my EL it's getting old and i could do with a wagon. An even stiffer chassis aka BA would be nice. It's usually cheaper overall to get a newer car than try to keep an oldie going.

Last edited by relaxed_diplomacy on Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've here replied to your post in the "can increased track be made legal" thread. I would rather any discussion happen here.


Thanks for all this, it's a definite step forward. While i have read some of this before, without the extra details you provide it didn't sink in much.

Okay, so, since i am considering creating a raised large-wheel BA wagon, i need to decide whether i go 2wd or 4wd, and go from there. Either way i need to accomodate big wheels without creating ball joint clearance or offset problems.

If i go 2wd it seems i may need to fit longer uprights to fit the bigger wheels. One option would be to modify the std ones and lower the lower control arm mounts. If i want or need a wider track i could move the mounts outboard. Bump steer would probably still be okay, but if not some small mods may sort that out.

I would need to make up for the lowered lower arm plus the lift i want which is about 40mm. I could fit a lift spacer to the top of the OE coilover, or maybe RTV or terri coilovers might have something to offer. I don't want to raise the suspension too much because my wheels will be so large and i don't want the COG to be too high.

Terri uprights being longer and designed for bigger wheels may be nice, but sound hard to graft onto a BA wagon front, since the terri has the rack and crossmember in different spots, and different geometry with two ball joints. It sounds like all or nothing.

Regarding the 4wd option, it seems it would be best to fit full terri suspension and crossmember. How much would be involved in that? My guess at this stage is at the easiest it would involve simply bolting in a terri subframe, at the hardest would involve welding and gusseting? But if terri only fits 30" i would need to play somehow because i want to fit 32.5" (275/60R20). The issue then would be gearbox/transfer case and body clearance, etc, etc?

Last edited by relaxed_diplomacy on Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:44 pm, edited 5 times in total.

On a related topic, i recently drove an early model toyota prado over some terrain i have driven in the EL offroader. So i made some comparisons.

The prado suspension is stiffer, yet bottoms out quicker in some circumstances. The chassis is less stiff. It handles significantly less well and is significantly less comfortable and has significantly higher NVH. You can drive 10km/h+ faster in the EL and be more relaxed doing it.

It has no more clearance under the front bash plate than my falcon has under the crossmember (the prado i was driving actually had less, but it had a steel bullbar on the front). Unladen the suspension flexed no more and possibly less than the EL, laden it might be around equal to the EL. Ramp over angle was noticeably better than my EL, my EL needs another 10mm or so of ground clearance.

Up hills i could (of course) drive slower and had little traction problems. That took a lot of stress out and i was able to drive a track that i had to back away from with the EL.

Would i consider swapping to a prado? No way. On top of what i have already said it was like being in a noddy car, narrow and high. But the EL does not currently meet my offroad needs.