Downey suspension kit - Page 3

4cedRunner · 03-31-2004, 10:19 AM

If you tune a long travel IFS kit only for flex with really soft springs etc, it will flex as well as a basic leaf sprung live axle. Now if you 4-link and coil spring a live axle and use the right shocks/valving it will flex better of course but it will never be as versatile or near as comfortable on road as IFS. There is a lot to be learned about the benefits of IFS, regardless of if you personally care to listen. and also regardless of opinions on this or any other board. I have been a member on this board since it's inception and I think it is a great forum, but it important to visit other forums so you don't get locked into a certain way of thinking, I surf the desert forums, pirate, 4x4wire, and many others almost daily to stay up to date. With a properly tuned IFS kit you can wheel 90%+ of trails most live axle vehicles are capable of going on and you still have a vehicle that is buttery smooth on the highway and a lot safer due to less body roll. Trust me I know from experience, I am not a desert rat kid with 2wd who thinks he can wheel, I have a lot of experience with live axle vehicles, we have a CJ-7 that is very capable and has been wheeled all over in the 6+ years we've had it, and we have an IFS Tacoma that is also very capable, ask the TTORA NorCal guys how our red Long Travel Tacoma did at hollister hills with open diffs and stock gears. This is a moot point really, We are all allowed to spend our money on the mods we think will benefit our trucks best. I Just want to help people choose the parts that they will be happiest with in the long run by lending advice from my experiences.

Napoleon047 · 04-01-2004, 05:21 PM

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Originally Posted by 4cedRunner

If you tune a long travel IFS kit only for flex with really soft springs etc, it will flex as well as a basic leaf sprung live axle. .

show me a long travel IFS kit with 24" of travel. every properly done leaf sprung SAS i have ever seen has at least 24" of travel.

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Now if you 4-link and coil spring a live axle and use the right shocks/valving it will flex better of course but it will never be as versatile or near as comfortable on road as IFS. .

what are you quantifying as versatile? there are lots of people who say that their leaf sprung SAS is way more comfortable than the IFS they replaced it with, simply because of the softer springs.

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There is a lot to be learned about the benefits of IFS, regardless of if you personally care to listen. and also regardless of opinions on this or any other board. .

dont assume that i havent looked into IFS and researched what it is good for and what its downfalls are.

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I have been a member on this board since it's inception and I think it is a great forum, but it important to visit other forums so you don't get locked into a certain way of thinking, I surf the desert forums, pirate, 4x4wire, and many others almost daily to stay up to date. .

once again you are assuming that this is the only forum that i browse. i browse many others as well.

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With a properly tuned IFS kit you can wheel 90%+ of trails most live axle vehicles are capable of going on and you still have a vehicle that is buttery smooth on the highway and a lot safer due to less body roll. .

'proper tuning' of IFS does not necessarily remove its weak points. body roll is easily controlled with swaybars and disconnects.

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Trust me I know from experience, I am not a desert rat kid with 2wd who thinks he can wheel, I have a lot of experience with live axle vehicles, we have a CJ-7 that is very capable and has been wheeled all over in the 6+ years we've had it, and we have an IFS Tacoma that is also very capable, ask the TTORA NorCal guys how our red Long Travel Tacoma did at hollister hills with open diffs and stock gears. This is a moot point really, We are all allowed to spend our money on the mods we think will benefit our trucks best. I Just want to help people choose the parts that they will be happiest with in the long run by lending advice from my experiences.

im also trying to help people choose the parts that they will be happiest with in the long run. for most wheeling, an SAS has more bang for the buck performance than any IFS kit.

ive posted this before, here is a post by scott at rockstomper.com that made me abandon IFS in the long run.

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put years into IFS. Thousands of dollars. It's fun stuff... but 44's aren't what broke it. For those who haven't been watching since, oh... 1994ish (when I started building IFS) through 2002 (when I finally gave up and started parting my last IFS truck)... I built the following:

Custom A-arms
Custom centersection
Custom halfshafts (repeatedly)
Custom steering
Custom skidplate
Custom frame mounts
Custom diff mounts
Custom frame bracing
Custom CV's.

This was all to keep it alive with 36's, a *stock* Ford 5.0, and 123:1 crawl.

I finally found the weak links:
Steering--Suspension travel over 12" at stock track width, or over 14" at widened (don't bother going wider than 2" per side wider) track width, will crumple up the steering. My own superburly steering held up (mostly) but didn't fit without thousands of dollars of further modification to the vehicle.

Steering mounting bolts--idler and steering box, will break grade 8 bolts. Good luck.

Upper A-arm mounts--rip off the frame. Bracing them helps, but only temporarily. Sufficient flight time will tear them off.

Torsion bar sockets--braceable with a little tube bit. Rear sockets aren't braceable--the porkchop arm will eventually collapse. If it doesn't, the bolts will pull through the frame mount. Whee!

Halfshafts--just no good way. Did the Porsche 930 thing for a while, works on the inners... no fix for the outers. Maybe Bobby Long can fix it, but I was 50/50 on breaking joint guts (cages) and outer stub shafts. 300M CV's might fix it... but I don't have the coin to throw at it.

In my not-so-humble opinion, I think the only way to make IFS work, and work well, is with portal hubs, huge-dollar CV's (Porsche 930's or bigger), limited travel on driven IFS (don't tell me about desert-race trucks with feet of driven-travel independent suspensions unless you're willing to throw the kind of money at it that they do--I already know about what they're running, and there's a reason I don't have those part$$$), and probably custom frames.

4cedRunner · 04-01-2004, 06:09 PM

Napoleon, I think you totally misunderstood my post, let me try to clarify.

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