Suspension Revamp

[monkeyracing]

I've decided to tackle a complete suspension rework on my CR - the silky cantilever thing was getting on my nerves - and I'm looking for consensus on the most successful method for doing so.

I've stripped off the cantilever stuff and have begun removing the spring mounts. My idea from here is to refit the stock dampers in a more direct manner, with a typical coil over setup. I'm also trying to strip some weight off the top, so the trays on top are being removed, relocated or reduced in size.


Any thoughts?

[monkeyracing]

Here's my first attempt. Used the stock shocks, but had no suitable springs, so I chucked om some CC01 springs for now, with collars to hold them up. Looks okay, so far. Can't wait until the weather doesn't suck so I can try it out.

[OSRC]

Off to a good start. That's the pretty typical set-up. Much better consistency I've found, and a huge drop in weight with all the misc. stuff gone.

I've tried it a few ways if this helps. Truck is so easy to mod, I've tried a few permutations over the years.

Trimmed the cantilever mounts so I could use the stock spring, and just added a shock per side for dampening. Really like this set-up, works well and keeps the spring look.


Same set-up, just fabbed some towers so I could mount a 4" shock


Going back in the weeds for this one - quite an old pic. One of the issues is the lack of space between the axle mount and the chassis. Unless you lay the shock down (as you did) there's not a ton of room. If you want a sprung set-up and are using 90-110mm shocks, you'll need to fab up some towers to accomodate. Very simple to do, I just cut up 4 pieces of aluminum, and traced the mounting holes from chassis itself. Now you can pick from a huge selection of shocks as you have plenty of room to mount them. Plus, with all the holes in the chassis, you can move the mounts around and experiment. Best mod I made for this truck was the stand up shock mounts.


Finally, GMade droop shocks work very well on this chassis, and they are short enough in droop to bolt right to the stock chassis and axle. Almost like they were made for this truck. I liked them as they allowed the truck to sit a bit lower at static ride height, and I added larger tires to get some ground clearance back. Was a pretty nice set-up.


Hope this helps give you some ideas.

[monkeyracing]

Thanks! I hadn't seen the last two yet, but I read through the threads containing the others. I'd have gone straight to a stand up if I had some softer springs around. As it is, I laid them down to compensate, at the cost of losing some droop.

The really tough thing is getting the wheelbase to line up with the Pro-Line Honcho shell: just can't get it short enough with making new links, or getting the geometry all bunged up. Seems like a good excuse to look for a new shell.

[OSRC]

Which body are you running? Parma honcho?

[monkeyracing]

Oh, I guess it is a Parma. The guy I got it from stuck Pro-Line stickers on it. Looks like I'll have to do some hacking to gain some tire clearance.

[OSRC]

A 10" WB is going to be tight. The rear axle really gets awkward in relation to the trans when you shorten things up in back - the driveshaft angles are not the best in the first place. To counter that, I dropped an Axial trans in my Bug - the outputs are lower and much closer together on the trans compared to stock, and really takes the stress off. You can go much shorter that way without interference. Not sure you'd be able to get all the way down to 10", but you should be able to get close.

[monkeyracing]

I put some smaller 1.9s on it yesterday and it still got caught up. Maybe I'll chuck the Honcho on another chassis and find a new shell for this one, if the wife lets me. It's her truck.

[Scottd9990]

Finally, GMade droop shocks work very well on this chassis, and they are short enough in droop to bolt right to the stock chassis and axle. Almost like they were made for this truck. I liked them as they allowed the truck to sit a bit lower at static ride height, and I added larger tires to get some ground clearance back. Was a pretty nice set-up.


Hope this helps give you some ideas. [/QUOTE]

I think this is my direction. Is the droop setup much better than normal coil spring shocks?

Thanks! Trying to figure out how best to mod my CR01. I do like a lower stance on the rig.

[OSRC]

The cool thing about these shocks is that they have a floating piston...they have a bit of uptravel and lots of downtravel, or vice versa depending on how you set them up. It's a very different driving style from a sprung set-up. It's not as flexy, but it's super stable. This rig sidehills like a cat. Not sure how much I like it, I think I'll experiment with sprung in the back and the droop up front. Should be a good set-up.