Front Suspension In Action

Well, after all the changes, it turns out the drive shaft was fowling on the transmission mount and the frame cross member. We moved the mount and heated and hammered in the cross member a bit, problem solved! At the time, I disconnected the front drive shaft for testing. It worked AWESOME, but I'm going to need to extend the bump stops further. That will mean that I won't be using all of the shock travel, but it also means I can strap in some longer shocks if I feel like it. Right now I'm pretty pleased with the increase in travel. In these pictures I had disconnected the rear shocks to get the most possible travel in the rear. It is easy to see how much was gained in the front vs. the rear. The front stuffed further up and traveled further down.

If you are familiar with the Land Rover suspension, here is a good comparison shot. It is the same ramp, but they hadn't made the flooring yet when I used it. You can see that we are at the same spot, a little past the second set of legs. This Defender was running a Safari Gard 3-link front suspension with remote reservoir Fox shocks at all four corners. This is a really nice setup, but I have matched it for a fraction of the cost (about $200 in mods for me) and I still haven't even touched the back end.

I've got some issues with tire rubbing, I'll need to run the bump stops out a little bit.

Here is the same test, but with the hinge 'locked'. That was as far up the ramp as I could get it to go without lockers. It is pretty obvious how much more travel the hinge gives me by looking at how far up the ramp I got in each photo. Both were on the same ramp (one time had flooring) and in two wheel drive. You can click here for a video of it climbing with the hinge locked.