Sinking Creek 4WD Association

todays progress: These hoods pins are the biggest pain in the ass


and slider updates:

Looks good mang

almost done, welding the old liners and new liners together was a pain in the ass, but should be completely sealed up now



the sliders and fenders will be all camo'ed up in the morning.

finally done for the most part, gotta get turn signals set up and put my bumper down a bit

mmmm, looking sexy

Finally painted those sliders

Since the 258 parts purchased have been put into the Black XJ, I wanna see how that rebuild goes before building my own stroker so I figured it was a great time to....

yes coilover the TJ (all for the hope that Alec will be jealous of a TJ)(dont mind the mess on the floor)

As of now the plan is to run hoop type mounts in the front ( Maybe ill be cool enough to even cut my hood to make the hoops come out of the top) and in the rear im going to use plate mounts where ill cut a section of the frame out to weld in the mounts. Kinda like this



The coilovers are 12 inch travel Bilstein 9100 remote reservoir shocks (biggest Reservoir ever) and according to much research and Billavistas(i think thats how you spell it) spring rate calculator Im looking at running 200/300 in the front and 150/250 in rear. My corner weights with a full tank and a me in the drivers seat were 950 front and 750 in the rear. If these spring rates seam light it might be because of the fact that I'm planning on running .5 to 1 inch of preload on the springs.

Sweet.

Sexy! I'm glad you decided to pull the trigger.

Spring rate calculations that I've used to get what spring rates I need everywhere for the ride id like. Hopefully it rides decently with this set up cause i don't really wanna spend more money on different springs if these don't work out.


edit: I deleted the row of data that was irrelevant to everything i have been looking at to this point. all my calculations are on the frequency side

redneckrapunzel wrote:Spring rate calculations that I've used to get what spring rates I need everywhere for the ride id like. Hopefully it rides decently with this set up cause i don't really wanna spend more money on different springs if these don't work out.

It's easy to get caught up in the what-ifs and numbers. As long as you didn't do anything stupid it will ride well. Fine tuning is like an ODE time constant, you'll get 67% of the way there the first time, to use a nerdy example. I'm sure you'll be pleased. I'll look it over later and let you know if I have any input.

Yeah, that's why I'm just gonna go with those rates and call it a day. I have done a lot of reading and think I will be very close to what I want. So, I'm going to start with it and hope for the best.

redneckrapunzel wrote:Yeah, that's why I'm just gonna go with those rates and call it a day. I have done a lot of reading and think I will be very close to what I want. So, I'm going to start with it and hope for the best.

Edited for the nonilleterate and to prevent readers from passing out.

Sam, your rates seem reasonable, but the numbers you have entered in that calculator (which is only so helpful, especially if you are planning on preloading springs) seem arbitrary/incorrect. Did you just enter your weights to try to get an idea of rates? Also, how did you calculate your corner weights? Based off your springs on the jeep now?

I got the corner weights from measuring the amount my springs are compressed and then multiplied by the spring rates of my current springs.
When I plugged in the actual measured values for suspension arm lengths from center of wheel and shock to mounting point instead of assuming that these lengths where both the same (from wheel center to mount) it changed the spring rates a huge amount. If I were to use the values given the rear would be incredibly soft and have a much lower frequency than the front. From some reading this is the opposite of what I want so I adjusted the rates to get a better frequency in the rear.
Another reason that the rear numbers look pretty weird is because when I took all of the measurements the car was not loaded at all, I only had a person in the drivers seat around the same weight as me and a full tank of gas but no trail gear or anything. (I'm going to measure again before I leave for windrock with it loaded down to get the actual weights to compare to what I've used) so I just added 100 lbs to each rear corner to account for added weight when wheeling.
So in conclusion the numbers are kind of funky in the calculator because the spring rates are what I have determined to be best after tring many different rate setups and shock location points. All of the initial inputs should be actual values though that I have measured.