GSequoia said:
I'll tell you what Dirk, I'm feeling generous and am going to offer you a chance to give you a big favor. I will test out the leaves and coils in my Jeep and run them around California on both the highway and street for no less than one year. I will make it a point to abuse them (within reason of course) and try to get into flexy situations.
I will do all of this testing for you for free, I'll even install the parts. Just ship them to me and I'll get started.
I promise you this isn't a scam. I realize that a deal this sweet must sound like a scam to your knowledgeable ears but I swear I'm just in a generous mood and will probably regret this offer in the morning.
:laugh3:
...and if I act now, I'll lose 50 pounds and be RICH beyond my wildest dreams, right?
[/QUOTE]
Looks like a quality product. I'm interested to see some results from full body rigs with long arms; mainly to see how well the front/rear balances.
Front & rear balance is a tricky thing on an XJ.
I didn't design these springs to flex equally front to rear!!!
Coil springs will flex or compress farther than leafs will under the same amounts of pressure, if the rates are equal.
For our leaf spring to flex the same amount as our coils on MOST obstacles,AT THE SAME TIME, the leafs would have to be a MUCH softer spring rate. The result would be a much more UNSTABLE set-up. Much more body roll around corners and LEANING in off-camber situations, and a lot of wallowing & porpoising. Not good.
In many of the obstacles we see on the trail, the front suspension will go into action before the rear gets involved as much. Here's an example:
Notice the flex is great, but the rear leafs are holding the body of the jeep much flatter in this situation. This results in a much more stable attitude and cleaner shorts too! The tires follow the terrain, but the jeep tends to stay flatter.
If you've ever seen a rig set-up with front leafs and rear coils, (some YJ/CJ set-ups for example) they act quite differently. On many obstacles, the front flexes less than the rear, which causes the entire jeep to lean way over, while the REAR suspension flexes much more.
To each their own, but I prefer the flatter, more stable feel of less body lean.
A lot of rigs with 4 coils (or coil overs) have massive flex, but without some serious tuning with torsion bar/anti-rock type swaybars, that big lean factor is usually present. If you've ever rolled a jeep, stability tends to become much more important!:wierd:
That inherent stability of the front coil/rear leaf set-up is one of the things I like about XJ's.
The question is, do the rear leafs flex when they need to? Again, this is where good leaf design comes in. When you run through a ditch at an angle and jam that opposite rear tire against a wall, the rear leafs should flex a lot more- especially when the front coils are maxed out. (providing the shock lengths, mounts etc are all set-up properly)
There's a balance there, but the right balance doesn't come from equal flexing duties front to rear.
Hope that makes sense...
