Leveling out the Front

I would like to get a few opinions from those who have been down this road.

I bought the DPG Offroad 3.5" Ultimate a year ago. I changed a few things from the original plan and added some weight. Added bumper, Winch, BWE Comp Mount, and twin air compressor. Now the front is sagging very noticeably and my wife stopped complaining it was too hard to climb in.

Current leafs are Old Man Emu CS033RB with third leaf from top removed and on stock shackles. Coils are OME 2930 with 2.25" spacers. The front coils give about 1.75" lift without all the extra weight. So I had about 4.0" lift when it was fairly leveled. Slightly higher in the rear. Those OME coils have a spring rate of 162 lbs.

I was thinking of replacing the front coils with full length to ditch the spacers at the same time. I'm looking at BDS 034452. They are 4.5" lift and have a spring rate of 240 lbs. This should level out the front and if it's too high I can toss the third leafs back in. I'm also planning SRB's for the rear so I can tune the difference in height.

Do I calculate my added weight and go with a spring rate (X2) that equals the weight?

Does this sound like I'm on the right path or will it make the front too stiff?

All feedback is welcomed. Thanks

put a set of ACOS on the front & adjust until level

If you like the ride quality it has now, buy taller lift coils with a similar spring rate. Think of spring rate as a measure of soft or firm ride quality, not as a measure of load capacity. You may still need poly spacers to compensate for extra weight on the front or to fine tune the rake.

srb531
put a set of ACOS on the front & adjust until level

Click to expand...

I can save about a hundred bucks selecting the proper length spring over the ACOS. Plus, My current OME springs are squished down quite a bit. If I go ACOS, then to reach level with my current springs i'de be nearly at the max of adjustment. I'm not going to rule out the idea yet though.

Tim_MN
If you like the ride quality it has now, buy taller lift coils with a similar spring rate. Think of spring rate as a measure of soft or firm ride quality, not as a measure of load capacity. You may still need poly spacers to compensate for extra weight on the front or to fine tune the rake.

Click to expand...

You gave me something to think about and do some research on. Spring rate is the amount of weight it takes to compress a spring 1". Not the same as load compensation as I was thinking. So I did some calculations:

Using the spring rate of my OME springs of 162lbs, I verified the unloaded spring height of about 18.375" to the compressed spring height of 12.75". Essentially the springs are compressing 5.625". From this I calculated the front end weighs roughly 1822 lbs.

I raised the front with a jack until I had no rake or a level condition. I found raising it 1" leveled it out. Therefore to remove the 2.25" spacer and add the 1" my new loaded springs needed to compress to 16".

The original BDS spring (034452) I thought would work will indeed compress to 16.33 inches. They are 20.13", and advertised at 4.5" of lift. That fits very close to my calculations. But they are 240 lb spring rate.

If I drop down to a 175 lb spring rate, BDS (034611) has one 21.75" tall. It will compress with my calculated weight to 16.54". Again very close to what I'm looking at. I do like the ride quality from the OME springs so choosing BDS's 175 lb springs will keep the ride quality nearly the same. I cannot find a similar longer spring from OME.

From an article I read on fourwheeler.com, "A rockcrawler may want a fairly soft rate for slow-speed articulation, whereas a high-speed rig may lean toward a stiffer rate for better resistance to bottoming in big whoops or landing from jumps." My off-roading is more slow than go.

So now I'm wondering, is there much difference in handling and ride quality between 175 lb and 240 lb spring rates? I honestly don't know how to compare.

Perhaps this is the reason some say they run just fine on the highway without a sway bar. A heavier spring rate would prevent more body roll. I'm keeping my sway bar for now.

Greenz said:

So now I'm wondering, is there much difference in handling and ride quality between 175 lb and 240 lb spring rates? I honestly don't know how to compare.

Click to expand...

oh **** yea... i went from a 130 pound progressive spring from PAC to a 245/285 dual rate spring from deaver. from one extreme to the other, the difference is extremely noticeable.

now... its use dependent. a 175 pound spring is not going to be as enjoyable playing go fast as a 280 pound spring. sure, you can valve the crap out of your shocks, but to me that is treating the symptom, not addressing the issue. i have also heard the argument that a soft spring lets the front flex. there is a trade off there too, too soft and your front is doing all the work while the rear leafs are controlling the body rather than navigating the terrain. there are a lot of different arguments to be made on this rate vs the other. but MOST people are also not going to notice the difference between a 200 or 220# spring.

from what i found, a spring in the 200-240 pound range does well for a cherokee with click and buy shocks that sees road use. if you use a swaybar on the road, you should be fine on the bottom end of that range. no sway bar, i would recommend staying closer to the top. outside of that range, you are looking at purpose built vehicle with a goal in mind.

VAhasnoWAVES said:

oh **** yea... i went from a 130 pound progressive spring from PAC to a 245/285 dual rate spring from deaver. from one extreme to the other, the difference is extremely noticeable.

now... its use dependent. a 175 pound spring is not going to be as enjoyable playing go fast as a 280 pound spring. sure, you can valve the crap out of your shocks, but to me that is treating the symptom, not addressing the issue. i have also heard the argument that a soft spring lets the front flex. there is a trade off there too, too soft and your front is doing all the work while the rear leafs are controlling the body rather than navigating the terrain. there are a lot of different arguments to be made on this rate vs the other. but MOST people are also not going to notice the difference between a 200 or 220# spring.

from what i found, a spring in the 200-240 pound range does well for a cherokee with click and buy shocks that sees road use. outside of that range, you are looking at purpose built vehicle with a goal in mind.

Click to expand...

Thanks, This is the experience wisdom I'm looking for.

VAhasnoWAVES said:

oh **** yea... i went from a 130 pound progressive spring from PAC to a 245/285 dual rate spring from deaver. from one extreme to the other, the difference is extremely noticeable.

now... its use dependent. a 175 pound spring is not going to be as enjoyable playing go fast as a 280 pound spring. sure, you can valve the crap out of your shocks, but to me that is treating the symptom, not addressing the issue. i have also heard the argument that a soft spring lets the front flex. there is a trade off there too, too soft and your front is doing all the work while the rear leafs are controlling the body rather than navigating the terrain. there are a lot of different arguments to be made on this rate vs the other. but MOST people are also not going to notice the difference between a 200 or 220# spring.

from what i found, a spring in the 200-240 pound range does well for a cherokee with click and buy shocks that sees road use. if you use a swaybar on the road, you should be fine on the bottom end of that range. no sway bar, i would recommend staying closer to the top. outside of that range, you are looking at purpose built vehicle with a goal in mind.

Click to expand...

Yea there is a big difference.

I went from RE 3.5" 240lb springs to RE 4.5" 164lb springs and the difference was night and day.


I came to recommend RE1310 4.5" lift springs if you wanted to keep the spring rate down.

Update:

Liked the idea of going with RE 4.5" coils to maintain the softer ride and rid the spacers. Problem is the RE coils will sag a little leaving me low in the front again. So the solution was to put the third leaf back in the rear. Use the RE 4.5" springs in the front with the ACOS to accommodate the heavy front end. That way when the front sags I can bump it back up.

Well it was more than I wanted to spend but it worked. The rear now sits at 4.5" lift over stock and the front at 5.5". I love the new stance without the hot rod looking rake and the ability to quickly fix sagging when it shows up. The ride is perfect. ...Well I do need to do another alignment.

Here's a couple of pictures. Got to dark to take a final pic. Will add later.