Ford Ranger suspension towing upgrade.

As I said above Tom....Ive been over the weighbridge and will be within GCM.

What about the GVM?

I tow a 2500kg van but when i added all the various weights up including ball weight, passengers, all the added accessories including bullbar, canopy, longrange tank etc etc, I found I going to be 20kg over the allowed payload.

I had the ARB GVM upgrade done to the D-Max which gives me an additional 270kg that I can carry, not saying I ever will but nice to have a bit in there.

This gave a 40mm lift and with the van on, even without the WDH, it sits quiet level - WDH only needs 4 chain links.

I haven't added bullbar, canopy, long range tank etc in order to keep my GVM?GCM under control. I'd like a bullbar but at 70kg I'll wait and see how we go over the scales next time.

Have you looked the Smart Bars? Much lighter.

Not necessarily DW, the OP doesn't say if he has dual cab, extra cab, or single cab . . . dual cabs of course mostly have terrible back axle placement, and more overhang behind, when loaded incorrectly, some do bend when put through off road stresses.
Extra cabs are better, single cabs would be almost impossible to bend one, even in the Tritons.

That said, I haven't seen any PX Rangers bend, they are a lot stronger than previous models, and even then I haven't seen any instances of PJ / PK bending either.
Mostly it's the Triton dual cabs, they are very susceptible to the bent chassis damage, but have seen examples of Defenders and Hiluxes bent.

Air bags can certainly accentuate the problem of incorrect / over loading when not used correctly.

Great reply. Appreciate your time and knowledge....I'm tending towards OME HD package.

You're welcome :-).

There is one more thing worth mentioning - rear axle load limit.

On the BT50 and Ranger it is 1850kg unless you get a certified upgrade.
With that ballweight thing going on it is easy to exceed the rear axle load limit even before you get to GVM.

And don't forget to add the ballweight (eg, your 300kg) to the weight of the loaded vehicle and keep the total under GVM - ie the ballweight is part of the vehicle's load.

All this weight stuff with caravans and tugs and how it affects stability, braking and steering has been a topic of the road safety conversation lately.

Take care.

I think you better find someone who knows a bit more about setting up suspension or looking for another problem that may have come about as a result of the lift because if your under the belief that it's standard issue to get a shudder with a lift you are completely wrong. That's the first time I have ever heard anyone say that and actually believe it's quite ok I'm blown away by that seriously.

Batt's and Grizzle

It's a known issue with lifted Rangers and BT50s

You can fix it with a spacer kit on the tailshaft centre bearing and if necessary, wedges between the rear springs and axle to improve drive line angles.

Cheers

Thanks for that Frank,

I know he's hadvit back to ARB a couple of times to have the centre bearing spaced but we will look into the wedges.

And Batt's, yes I hear you. I couldn't believe it myself! He went to ARB because he wanted to do it "properly"!!

You live and learn eh??

"Would this van be legal with a 200 Series?"


Yes it would be and it is also legal behind a Ranger but in the interests of safety and vehicle reliability, it is not advisable.

I have never seen a Landcruiser station wagon with a bent chassis but I have seen them with broken rear axle housings and sheered wheel studs. That is caused by overloading and the extreme forces exerted on those parts when the wheels ride up over a bump at speed and they have to instantly lift the car or when they drop into a depression in the road and the car comes crashing down onto them.

They have no problems supporting that excessive weight on a weighbridge but are often stretched beyond their limits when the car is in motion.

Air bags or heavier springs can lift the car and make it look good but they can't take the excessive weight away.

Air bags have their own set of problems. They are exponential springs, not linear springs like coils or leaf springs. The more you compress them, the more they resist further compression. Bump rubbers do the same thing. The have caused plenty of problems with ute chassis.

Linear springs compress in proportion to the load. i.e double the load and you double the compression

Any tow car should be at least as heavy as the van and preferably 20 to 30 percent heavier. The wheelbase should be as long as possible and the rear overhang, i.e the distance between the axle and the tow ball should be as short as possible.

That distance is a lever. On most cars it is around 1.2 meters. That makes it very easy for a big van that is subjected to a sudden change in direction at speed to grab it and give the car a really good "wag" around. It happens far too often when huge vans are put behind lighter weight and fairly short wheelbase cars.

Big long end heavy vans of that weight should be behind cars like F series Fords, small trucks or maybe an Iveco Daily.

" Air bags are perfectly ok to use if used correctly and for the right application,"

What is the correct way and what is the right application when you are dealing with a car than has not been designed to work with them?

Can you direct me to any credible research that has proven this?

If you do some research you'll find air assist bags have been around for a long time while I don't know the exact date but they have been used in race cars, drag cars from memory as far back as the 50's if not the early. They were used in some of their tow vehicles and sometimes their trailers as well so they are not a new idea but as I said if you use them correctly and for the right application which if people were smart enough to figure that out some 70 odd yrs ago surely it can't be that difficult a challenge today one would think. But to me it seams like it has been for those who have damaged their vehicle from misuse and it is likely to keep happening and air assist bags will keep getting bagged because of this.

I know they have been around for a very long time and they certainly work well when they are part of the original equipment it whatever they are being used in. Race cars would be one of the many examples.

We see them today in new cars but each design has millions of dollars of research and development behind it by car manufacturer's chassis design engineers. That is totally different to buying a few hundred dollars worth of them and installing them in another multi dollar chassis/suspension design that has not been designed to have them added to it.

It is hard to blame car owners who have damaged their cars with them when there are small companies selling them and praising their benefits as well as an endless number of people on net forums telling others that it is alright to use them and they do a great job.

So far on the net I have only seen one person who does know how they work say they can be useful in one particular situation. That was Collyn Rivers about four years ago when he said they can be useful for softening the ride on an empty ute but then stressed they should not be used to lift sagging suspensions or carry higher loads.

The pressures required for high loads and the exponential compression characteristics of air bags is like sitting the chassis directly on oversize bump rubbers. Those rubbers have to bring a fast falling chassis to a very rapid but slightly cushioned stop. It is either that or it slams into the axle housing with a hell of a metal to metal bang.

Bags become the springs in cases like this and, given enough pressure, they can easily be like rocks by the time they are around 70% compressed. When that happens, the chassis stops instantly on top of the bags while the rest of it behind the bags keeps going down without anything on its far end to support it. No wonder so many have bent.

You always see bent chassis cars with the bend right on the top of the bags while those without them bend further forward near the front spring hangers. You also see a lot more bent air bag equipped cars than those with just heavier springs.

As long as we have companies telling customers their standard suspensions are rubbish and their springs or air bags can lift the the car and enable it to carry heavier loads in the bush of all places, we will continue to see many broken cars.

You can't always blame the owners for it.

You also have another issue with leaf spring utes. When they are fully loaded with the load correctly distributed, the rear springs are supposed to be flat or very close to it. The front eye will be down at axle level or lower while the rear shackles will be up much higher.

When the car leans into a corner, the spring will compress even further on the outside of the corner while the other one will have weight taken off it. That changes the angle of the axle in relation to the centre line of the car and assists in cornering stability but that is another story for another day.

If you have the thing jacked up with aftermarket springs or air bags, that vital stability assisting feature will be stuffed up.

That does not help one little bit when you have a 3000 kg caravan on the back.

The trick is don't play around with car suspension designs unless you know exactly how they work and what gains and losses your alterations are going to give you.

I meant 60 odd yrs not 70

Not sure how you soften the ride on an empty ute by adding air assist bags that would make it slightly firmer as you are suppose to leave some air in them when not in use. Any way obviously your against them and will never be convinced they can be used safely on a leaf sprung vehicle without causing damage so I'll leave it there.

" Not sure how you soften the ride on an empty ute by adding air assist bags that would make it slightly firmer as you are suppose to leave some air in them when not in use".



Contact him and ask him to explain how.

http://caravanandmotorhomebooks.com/collyn-rivers/