My take on extended shock towers....

[mike harris]

hello,

since i sort of flexed my suzuki the other day i realized i need to put very long shocks on it, so i rang dave at llama 4x4 and he said to make the shock mouting points as far away from each other as possible.

so i did just that, without going silly !!!

started with 120x120x500 box section.



cut it in half, and then cut the bottom off:



compared to standard tower:



cut a small hole in the inner wing, the other side will have a bigger hole but i dont think it will matter.



drilled some holes to plug weld through:



made a plate for the top, drilled three holes for adjustment:



glued it togther:





zapped it on:





painted and done





what you think??

mike

[ScottieJ]

Looks good Mike, a little bit of undercutting on some of the welds but we won't worry about that as it'll be plenty strong enough what length shocks are you using?

One thing though, is the truck sat at ride height in those pics? have you tilted the diff up towards the tcase? If so it will mess up your caster angle and could give you some bad death wobble and bump steer.

[mike harris]

yeh the welding was a rush, got board ! but theres more than enough to stop it from coming off, i am sure you have seent the standard towers lol !!

yep i have titlted the diff, and i never had any death wobble before, so cant see why i would have it now....... i cant stand seeing lifted trucks with the props running stupid angles !!

the caster has been changed dramatically to be honest, moved the axle fowards buy 2 inches, and tilted the axle forward, ther is a 1 inch spacers to make the high steer clear ! but it all seems to work

shocks will be either 12 or 14 inch travel ones, from dave at llama, depends what i do with the d flex or see what these missing link things are like when they come.

mike

[ScottieJ]

Ah are you getting some missing links for the front now are you? where are you getting those from? I need to order my shocks for my sj, don't think the astra ones are going to have enough travel for the YJs. I've got some hoops for my front shocks.

What are you doing for the rear shocks? Just tilting them in?


Did you ever drive the sj on road before now? You dont really want the caster set up wrong if you are going to be driving on road it'll handle horribly. You want the caster set to +3-6 degrees if the diff is tilted up more than 3.5 degrees from stock then you will move into negative caster something you don't want on a vehicle that is driven on road.

Also I presume if the front is tilted up then the rear is as well? This means that your UJs are not going to be in phase and when traveling at speed you might end up with some bad vibes. The UJs are also going to be working against each other so you are going to go through UJs a lot faster than you would if both the diff and tbox flanges were set to the same angle like in this pic, you can get away with 1-2degrees of difference but that's about it.



The only way you can really get away with tilting the diffs up is by using a double Cardon propshaft.

Obviously if the vehicle was only being used offroad at low speeds then you don't really have to worry about all these things that much, but if driven at speed the UJs being out of phase is going to put a lot strain on your pinion and tcase bearing as well as the prop UJs

[mike harris]

To be honest I haven't changed the angle since I took it apart and didnt have any problems then. And again as with any mod project if it doesn't work il replace and re work the bits that don't work......

I have everything to make up another set of axles, so if this doesn't work it doesn't matter.

I do completely understand what your saying with the diff angles, but at the end of the day it's an sj....... Not exactly a sports car is it.

Like I said before it's all trial and error, if it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't.

Missing links are low range of road ones, with bone shackles.

Shockes will b rough country from llama 4x4, either 12 or 14 inch travel ones.

Rears are super inclined with astra shocks. Should flex nice with iron man plus 3 inch springs, it's Paul ruddick, silver zooks old setup. I also now have his old, old man emu front 3+1 front springs on it too.

Setup worked well on his so It should be ok on mine.

Probally not knowing my luck though !!!

Mike

[ScottieJ]

Paul's sj did perform pretty darn well so I'm sure yours will too!

Only reason I highlighted those points about diff angles and caster etc. Was because you weren't old enough to drive your sj on the road before you stripped it down were you? But if and when you do now drive it on the road just thought I'd give you a polite warning that a few issues might arise when traveling at higher speeds as I'm sure you don't want to be replacing UJs every few months.

And yeah your right an sj will never be a sports car but you still want the bad handling to be as good as possible

[mike harris]

No I wasn't old enough but me dad used to drive it with me as a passenger,

But anyway with vitara Diffs and a 5.1 transfer box I don't think il be going anywhere fast !!!!!

Mike

[ScottieJ]

No I wasn't old enough but me dad used to drive it with me as a passenger,

But anyway with vitara Diffs and a 5.1 transfer box I don't think il be going anywhere fast !!!!!

Mike

Ah I didn't realise your dad used to drive it on road. Those vit diffs are pretty low for on road driving, The 34s should help balance it out a bit though! what's the Hi ratio in the 5.1 transfer box?

[mike harris]

Not sure what the ratio is, 20% reduction I think,

I will never nee to use low box that's for sure !!

Mike

[ScottieJ]

Yeah ya will

I used to have 4.66:1 in lo-lo with 4.11 diffs on 33s and still had the urge for a lower gear on steep decents. So now I've got a rocklobster on the back of the doubler for 7.57:1 in lo-lo but will be running 3.73 diffs. It still works out quite a bit lower than my old set up though.

I drove zero and dunks sj at kirton a few months back with the same tbox set up and it was great fun creeping down big steep hills in 1st gear lo-lo with the engine doing all the braking and I was using 3rd and 4th to go back up

Just worked it out and with your gearing. lo box will be only very slightly higher geared than mine. There really isn't much in it though

Through the tbox and diffs ill get a 28.24:1 reduction and you'll have 25.6:1