I didn't see the front driveshaft advantage mentioned here yet. Flexy leaves require a long slip driveshaft and as the slip grows they get harder to balance at high speed. With links set right the front driveshaft needs very little slip.
CK5
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Why to convert to coil over
- Thread starter Chevk587
- Start date
That's the biggest advantage in my opinion although you can get the same effect with front shackles
Alan2smiley
I'm in the shop
The front drive shaft is one of major issue with my leaf spring set up, the thought of the front axle traveling back and disconnecting the transfer case from the transmission is scary. The high dollar 12" splined shaft is pretty sloppy after 10 thousand miles.
Maybe I missed it but did anyone say approach and departure angle?
Approach yes with full hydro. Departure yes without the K5 tank.
I scrub my front bumper frequently. And my gas tank is about 4 gallons smaller.
Did it and never looked back. The ride is night and day and the control is better too. With the LS motor and links my truck drives like a 10 year old truck not a 30 year old.
And it looks badass.
And it looks badass.
MetalMulishaMarcus
1 Ton Status
Not that you can’t do it on high dollar leafs but it defiantly works well over the chop.
And that is a great point. Leaves still have some benefits and you can do very well with leaves. My 64 pack I built did very well and lasted way longer than I ever would have guessed they would. Another curious thing I have thought of is the maintenance cost. When my truck was c/o & leaf I went through 4 traction bars on my rear leaf setup, but that's it. I've been through more springs and sliders, as well as junking a c/o body on the front. I'm now running pac up front and eibach rear springs with AGM sliders. Time will tell how this works.
Thanks! @MetalMulishaMarcus
@Tnsejed makes a good point, big shocks and links do have maintenance, rod ends along with the spring and sliders mentioned are things that wear out. I think the biggest thing to consider is where the leaf performance threshold is compared to an equally dialed link setup, usually leafs like on @sponsoredbydad truck which are super dialed would be near the edge of what a leaf can do in a normal implementation. Where a link truck optimized might be less overall maintenance. They both in theory should drive similar but the leaf spring won’t do it as long without some sag or spring de arching etc. not saying it can’t work but there is cost associated with it.
The big thing for me cause I have leafs on the back of my truck and it works pretty good, is the back breaking weight of the spring itself, you have to have two people to do the swap safely. The link trucks I can pull one side of it off and replace the link ends with the truck on the ground. This includes trackbar heims also.. and for the record we’ve only had one set wear out, they’re all on the joints they started with to this day.. @jkroberts must have 50k miles a lot of which are offroad hard abuse and they have no sign of letting up.
Shocks need oil changes like everything else, you gotta do it. @ktmoutfront somehow gets away with doing his once a century??? Lol and I suppose I see how, every time I pull mine apart for revalve the oil is clean. But mine does not get the miles like his or jakes.
@Tnsejed makes a good point, big shocks and links do have maintenance, rod ends along with the spring and sliders mentioned are things that wear out. I think the biggest thing to consider is where the leaf performance threshold is compared to an equally dialed link setup, usually leafs like on @sponsoredbydad truck which are super dialed would be near the edge of what a leaf can do in a normal implementation. Where a link truck optimized might be less overall maintenance. They both in theory should drive similar but the leaf spring won’t do it as long without some sag or spring de arching etc. not saying it can’t work but there is cost associated with it.
The big thing for me cause I have leafs on the back of my truck and it works pretty good, is the back breaking weight of the spring itself, you have to have two people to do the swap safely. The link trucks I can pull one side of it off and replace the link ends with the truck on the ground. This includes trackbar heims also.. and for the record we’ve only had one set wear out, they’re all on the joints they started with to this day.. @jkroberts must have 50k miles a lot of which are offroad hard abuse and they have no sign of letting up.
Shocks need oil changes like everything else, you gotta do it. @ktmoutfront somehow gets away with doing his once a century??? Lol and I suppose I see how, every time I pull mine apart for revalve the oil is clean. But mine does not get the miles like his or jakes.
Can a nice rear leaf such as a 64 pack keep up with a coil over front?
I want 40+ mph on the chewed-up trails but I’m reluctant to poke coils (4” max lift) thru the bed.
I want 40+ mph on the chewed-up trails but I’m reluctant to poke coils (4” max lift) thru the bed.
That all depends on shock tuning. Right now my out of the box ADS with a standard 12/15 pyramid needs way more rebound, and more compression. I'm running ford 57's with 12" ADS 2.5's. The front eats it up, but the rear starts bucking a bit. That could also be due to I didn't have the HP to plant the rear(2wd). But yes leafs can keep up with proper shock tuning. I follow deuling(leafs front and rear) around at 60+ through our dunes, only thing keeping me at 60 is my motor. That should change now that the LS is going in.
@sreidmx said it great. I change out shock oil quite a bit. I've had some bad looking oil, and some good oil. All depends on how hard the truck was used during the season. Also heims is something I have done and not thought about as its just a replaceable item that you replace and don't think about. Natural thing I guess. Same with rebuildable joints.
But it brings about the thing that alot of people overlook. The overall goal of the build. C/O are awesome, but the types of coilovers we run do have maintenance associated with them. Not just destroyed maintenance but preventative as well. I guess to keep it short and sweet, higher performance equals more maintenance. Its easy to get sucked into the buying pitfall of going hardcore and not understanding the reality of what it takes to keep that stuff going. I Believe its a good thing to know and will help get more projects finished and continued to be used, instead of the customers being blindsided a bit. This applies to gnarly leaves or coilovers
^sorry that was a late reply.
@Dezertracer I'm not a dezert truck so I can only say my experience running a c/o front and rear leaf. The hardest thing for me was keeping the truck balanced. Valving, spring rate, pack building, and geometry all needs to be taken into account as a complete setup in the truck to try and find the balance to get it to work. I always fought rate balancing. To get my 64's soft enough to match where I wanted the front to be was untenable, short of destroying some of my needed functionality. I was undershocked in the rear but I never played more than about 6 valving changes as the next step needed was to move to a larger shock, and I had other ideas.
While that last paragraph sounds bad, it really wasn't. The truck in that setup did very well. I load it down with camping stuff, fine, unloaded crawling or blasting forest service, no problem. But you always want to squeak the last 5% out.
I think its easily doable as long as you guess better than I did on the initial purchase, and you plan for weight distribution of the finished truck, overall goal for the truck, etc..
But it brings about the thing that alot of people overlook. The overall goal of the build. C/O are awesome, but the types of coilovers we run do have maintenance associated with them. Not just destroyed maintenance but preventative as well. I guess to keep it short and sweet, higher performance equals more maintenance. Its easy to get sucked into the buying pitfall of going hardcore and not understanding the reality of what it takes to keep that stuff going. I Believe its a good thing to know and will help get more projects finished and continued to be used, instead of the customers being blindsided a bit. This applies to gnarly leaves or coilovers
^sorry that was a late reply.
@Dezertracer I'm not a dezert truck so I can only say my experience running a c/o front and rear leaf. The hardest thing for me was keeping the truck balanced. Valving, spring rate, pack building, and geometry all needs to be taken into account as a complete setup in the truck to try and find the balance to get it to work. I always fought rate balancing. To get my 64's soft enough to match where I wanted the front to be was untenable, short of destroying some of my needed functionality. I was undershocked in the rear but I never played more than about 6 valving changes as the next step needed was to move to a larger shock, and I had other ideas.
While that last paragraph sounds bad, it really wasn't. The truck in that setup did very well. I load it down with camping stuff, fine, unloaded crawling or blasting forest service, no problem. But you always want to squeak the last 5% out.
I think its easily doable as long as you guess better than I did on the initial purchase, and you plan for weight distribution of the finished truck, overall goal for the truck, etc..
I want to mention something to the OP, hopefully it's seen.
Since you are doing the rears, make sure to stretch the wheelbase if you haven't already with your leafs. The extra wheelbase helps the blazers a lot. I am 4" longer out back and on leafs. When I did my cage/shock locations with the stretch, it was also to make sure future coils would work without any fuss. Truck rides crazy nice now though, I don't need to do anything to it except engine and trans
Since you are doing the rears, make sure to stretch the wheelbase if you haven't already with your leafs. The extra wheelbase helps the blazers a lot. I am 4" longer out back and on leafs. When I did my cage/shock locations with the stretch, it was also to make sure future coils would work without any fuss. Truck rides crazy nice now though, I don't need to do anything to it except engine and trans
@Dezertracer to your question on the rear leafs, I think they can work but that’s a loaded answer, the range where the leaf works for a go fast truck and the resultant valving May make the truck only comfortable at a certain range of speed(bypasses will widen this range) and the main issue you will run into is that leafs naturally have some rebound damping due to friction from them rubbing against them selfs, this is partly why they actually work in sand stuff because most of the sand hits are fairly slow velocity( rollers, jumps etc) compared to chop, rocks, square edge bumps etc here a coil will have an advantage all things being equal because the rebound speed that is possible is faster due to the lack of the spring slowing things down at all.. this is where I am fighting with my truck currently.. rebound is a huge factor in ride comfort and traction..
What should I shoot for for an overall length ? I’m glad you brought it up actually that was a big question I had . So in the front I have Moab bumper my power assist hits my engine cross member (ord cross member) there’s multiple places to put the axel but as you move the axel forward the shackle angle will change and bring the truck down right ? To counter this do you or should I increase the length of the shackle ? Also what’s a safe length on the shackle .I want to mention something to the OP, hopefully it's seen.
Since you are doing the rears, make sure to stretch the wheelbase if you haven't already with your leafs. The extra wheelbase helps the blazers a lot. I am 4" longer out back and on leafs. When I did my cage/shock locations with the stretch, it was also to make sure future coils would work without any fuss. Truck rides crazy nice now though, I don't need to do anything to it except engine and trans
You can move the axle forward 1.5" with ZeroRates or with springs that have new pin locations. My front is 2" forward on 52" long springs, it's a safe move because the draglink is 90*. Any more and the steering box probably needs to move forward. The centering pin change doesn't affect the shackles. The 52" leaves did but I can't remember the length shackles I'm running.
My rear is 4" back. I'm not sure if I can go more. The diff is close enough to the gas tank and my 40s are close to hitting the rear part of the wheel well, where it meets the floor. Not interested in moving the tank or cutting rear wheel openings.
IIRC around 116" sounded good, but I don't see my blazer getting to that There are a few threads about "ideal wheelbases".
Since you are doing links in the rear and dealing with shock upper mounts, now is the time to move it all back and welcome a longer driveshaft
My rear is 4" back. I'm not sure if I can go more. The diff is close enough to the gas tank and my 40s are close to hitting the rear part of the wheel well, where it meets the floor. Not interested in moving the tank or cutting rear wheel openings.
IIRC around 116" sounded good, but I don't see my blazer getting to that
There are a few threads about "ideal wheelbases".Since you are doing links in the rear and dealing with shock upper mounts, now is the time to move it all back and welcome a longer driveshaft
Make your wheelbase as long as possible. Front lengthening is by far the best for weight distribution, but its a bitch. Rear is an easy grab, especially with links, so take as much as you can. My truck has been through 4 different wheelbase lengths, I'm now at 118" but my underside is pretty much flat to where the stock frame was. So its a deal between wheelbase and belly height, which depending on the million other variables and your goal for the truck will tell you which way to go.
120" works good on our trails here
