Anybody done the leaf spring over exle convertion?

[Anton]

I did a body lift, before I tried SPOA. I took the body lift out! It sucked hard. You can actually hear the bodywork flexing around you - and I did a "proper" bodylift!

Verses SPOA, a bodylift probably has a lower centre of gravity (the chassis and drivetrain is still low) but it has a much higher centre of gravity than a virtual lift, where everything is where it's meant to be, you just have bigger tyres in bigger wheel arches.

I wouldn't do SPOA again unless I was building something like Mike Harris's truck. He kinda needs it.

Virtual lift for the win, it's the least amount of work, and gives the best results on tyres of 33" or less.

I was looking at Twiss's yesterday, trust me it's SO much less work than my SPOA. In fact, I'm now planning on virtual lifting mine at some point, then looking at ways to drop my truck back down - I'm actually considering going SPUA again!

[gamble63]

Can see the advantages of doing it. I was only going by what we do on the hiluxs, nearly everyone hilux that has been modded has a 3" lift on it including mine haha. Took couple of hours to fit them on them but do agree i would not do one on a truck that was more likely to roll.

Still looks like a fair bit of work but as you say there is rot in those sections. Ive had a a look under the one ive just got and it has holes behind the pedals so will have to come off anyway.

[Anton]

A Hilux is SPOA out of the factory though. And (from what I've seen of HPOC Scottie's Hilux's) they come with front anti-wrap bars as standard too, to make breaking more predictable.

If you do SPOA, do it properly. Get a decent high steer kit (z-bars are not really very good, they cause bumpsteer), or at the very least a drop pitman arm. Get braided extended brake hoses from dave at Llama 4x4.

Make sure you widen the vehicle's track with deep dish rims and wide tyres. Cover up the tread with extended arches.

But since you've found rot in the arches, I'd say start by cutting up your arches for bigger tyres. Then start to think about SPOA if you're still that way inclined.

[gamble63]

im not planning on doing a SPOA ive seen the shite side to them on other Sj s. On ours for the trip to Mongolia i wanted to have it on some 31" bf Ats i had.

Cheers