SLROC Forum

Hello,

  I'm breaking out of my rebuild thread to ask for help - I'm fitting the front axle to my chassis and have now just about bolted the radius arms into the chassis and the axles, but in doing so, I've somehow managed to push the axle forward, out of line with the dampers:


Here's the problem;

1. The NS radius arm is bolts to the axle and chassis - all nuts loose.  The holes in the bushes wouldn't line up on the OS, so I pulled it forward with a ratchet strap attached to the back of my van.
2. This worked fine...
3. ...and the front bolt went in no problems.

You can see in the last picture that the spring seats are angled too far forward for the springs to sit on properly, but it struck me that without the weight of the engine on top of it, the front suspension is over-extended, hence the forward canted angle.

4. So, I compressed the front suspension using ratchet straps...
5. ...and the result was the springs bedded down on the seats much better, as the rotation between the chassis and the axle is now reduced.
6. For comparison, here's the NS spring before I compressed it.

But, I still couldn't get the rearward NS bolt into the radius arm at the axle mount, although it's fairly close and probably just needs a bit more force applied to compress the suspension.  The problem is what the last picture shows;

7. The damper is obviously not straight up and down relative to the chassis.  The only way I can see that this has happened is because the radius arms are forcing the axle forward, but they're bolted in fore and aft as intended, so what the hell's going on?  The only thing I've changed since I took this axle off the chassis is the springs, the dampers and the bushes.  The radius arm bushes are all in place properly, so the problem's not there - has anybody else ever done this?  Is this how it went?

Any help here would be very much appreciated - I tried kicking it again, but this still didn't help

Thanks

4.

Ok when i have done this (no expert by the way) i found that fit hockey stick to axle, then hockey arm to rear chassis mount, then when chassis weighed down a bit fit shocks and turrets. Also keep springs loose, don't clamp to axle until doing shocks. Worked for me.

Hiya,

  OK, that's good to hear - did you find your front springs had a particular way up?  Mine aren't progressive so seem to have the same winding-width all the way along.  I've not been stupid here and swapped the radius arms, have I?  I couldn't find any mention of a left or right-hand one...

  Thanks

Right - I've done a bit of reading on this and what I've discovered is...

the dampers aren't straight up and down here:


...or here:


...or here:


...so, I'm going to say that my suspension has gone together as it should have done...and the beauty of saying it here is that now it's written on the internet...so it's probably true...that works, doesn't it?

Anybody fancy posting a picture of their front damper setup?

Play on the rebuild is currently stopped by lack of bolts, but I'll be returning to my comfortable old other thread imminently, though...

Cheerio

Don't have a picture of mine to hand, but yours isn't knackered. It is just a 'symptom' of having vertical dampers mounted to a swinging axle.  If the truck was fully loaded and the front springs compressed, the bottom of the dampers would angle more to the rear.   If you are still having problems aligning the hockey sticks to the axle brackets, a wee jack under the nose of the diff may help line things up.
Another wee tip may be to not fully tighten the suspension bush bolts until the truck is fully assembled and sitting 'square' in its normal stance.

I agree with Sandy, also had the same issue on my 130 to the extent of grinding some metal off the mounting flange of the top shock mounts to clear the shock. I also fitted an adjustable panhard rod to "square up" the front axle from side to side and as Sandy said, fully tighten once the weight's back on the suspension and it has settled.

Thanks chaps - that's really helpful to know.

I've got all the bolts into the radius arms now - lifting the nose of the diff is definitely the trick to getting the axle bolts in.  I've tightened and torqued the chassis/radius arm nuts to see if it changed the geometry at all, but it didn't noticeably.  I'm taking your advice to leave everything else loose until there's more weight on the chassis and it's all settled a bit.

That double-damper setup's a bit neat!

Thanks