A/C dryer relocation mod.

I took a quick break from the head gasket replacment & twisted the A/C dryer over to get out of harmed way.

Maximizing flex on Lexi the Lx450

As of lately I have been trying to maximize & get the most of what my LX suspension can give me. Learning the capabilities & limitations of my suspension has been a huge learning curve for me. I have realized I really can't go to far "outside the box" on what works & has already been done by the many 80 owners that ave been there & done that years before me. I now know that OME did a good job with the L shock for the reason is the front suspension doesn't want to drop out much past the L shock extended length of 26.5" measured at the shock collars. Anything more than that will start releasing coils & hitting tie rod to control arm on full flex.
I did try the sway bar & hitch pin mods & on my set up it started having problems around the 27" drop out mark. This is with OME yellow CC bushings. 

Getting 11.3" of travel out of a shock that compresses to 15.25" is also a big deal. The only negative I have herd is they are very stiff... this is why I have stayed away from getting them. (EDITED LATER: I now have these shocks. They are firm & stable).  As far as the OME 1.5" coils, they flex very well to that certain point. The coil springs offer a ride that a leaf spring will never offer, but In my opinion the front suspension can't even compare to the leaf spring over full axle fj40 I use to have. It's a tradeoff, ride or flex.

At this time I am very happy with my LX450 & what it can do.

My R&D phase is complete. There are only a couple things I can do later to increase flexibility. One is to do a body lift & go back to the stock bumps stops,(Edited later: I did do this & it works very well) this would allow more room for up travel. The reason is the hitch pin & sway bar disconnected mods want to offer more up travel than down. A body lift will give the extra fender clearance needed for more front tuck.

The 1st pic here has a pulled hitch pin, sway bar connected & stock bump stops. See how the driver tire is stuffed more compared to the 2nd pic which has the 1.5" bump stops.

I also just wanted to add that I'm looking forward to getting the LX out on the trail this summer & getting some seat time, I'm long over due.

Passenger side pulled hitch pin mod

Today I pulled the front passenger arm bolt with sway bar connected. It did not have the extreme drop that was like the drivers side which was the result I was after, the less drop was most likely due to the front panhard bar & sway bar connected.  The front end did feel more free. The negitive was it was into the passenger side tie rod. The drop out measurements was 27". 

That is only a .5" more drop from it all connected this is measured at the shocks.
Once the coils start releasing there is nothing left to push the axle down. I also belive as far as the tie rod, the caster bushings & arms might have different results with bind if you play with maybe lowering the aft part of the arms via something like the Man-a-fre caster brackets. Just a thought.

I'm pretty much done playing with swaybar & pin mods for now. Another thought is to raise the fenders via body lift to allow the more up travel that the disconnected mods have to offer.
Again, all these results are from a 2.5" OME 851+25mm/860 lift w/ 315s tires.
Hope this helps
Gary

Hitch pin pulled & sway bar disconnected...

I did the hitch pin mod on the LX450 this morning to see if what they say really works & this is what I found out:

I disconnected the sway bar & it did help with more up travel than it did down. I had smaller tires on at the time & it only maybe dropped a half a inch, not worth the effort. 

But today I pulled the bolt out of the front drive control arm ("hitch pin mod"). 

This also was just acting like the sway bar with same results. 

But here is the good part.
With both disconnected created a tremendious results. 

The coil released out & dropped by 3" the shock went to full drop of 29".
This is a 3" improvemnt of drop. 

This created a whole bunch of other rubbing issues with the tie rod hitting the control arms. 

 Heres a video, click it & enjoy the ride.

As for now...I'm putting it all back, pulling the pin created more other rubbing problems than I'm ready to deal with... I will work on this later down the road... It's good to know there are more options for a more extreme results.

 
 
 
I did the other side. Here is the results.
http://projectfj4door.blogspot.com/2015/03/passenger-side-hitch-pin-mod.html

FZJ80 LX450 CDL switch mod

I did the CDL switch mod today. 

Enjoy the video.

Spare tire mod

So, I did a 3" spare tire mod the other day.

Thanks goes out to all the mud folks that has done it & posted it before me.
I went with 10 4" inch x 1.25 bolts & 3" pipe nipples.
The 3" made it kind of go past level.

Next is a 6" wide wheel & a pizza cutter tire like a Q78 mudder or a 34x9.5 swamper. Any body have those for sell cheap local near 93210 area?