As I mentioned in my third or fourth post, the reason I'm doing it is because the coils just won't work with the amount of travel that I have and the geometry of my setup. Not saying it hasn't been, or can't be done, but when you start talking 15" or so of actual wheel travel, things can change quite a bit over that range. For me, it's purely a packaging issue. I have had many different configurations for front end brackets and geometry, and honestly I'm sick of changing it to make everything work together the way I want. Everything behaves the way I want it to with my current setup, but the lower coil buckets have angle problems. There are ways around it with pivoting lower mounts etc. but coilovers will be a much cleaner and better performing setup in my opinion.
Initially I had the Rock Krawler 3-link with stock brackets. Not great for the lowers and the upper wouldn't work as the pinion u-joint would hit the upper arm at full stuff. So I cut every bracket off the axle and started over. I went with a truss and tied a new upper mount into that, raising it a few inches so it would clear the driveshaft. I also went OTK steering/ trackbar and extended the wheelbase a couple inches. This of course changed the geometry of my front end, and the consequence of that was the coil problem that I'm facing now.
For me, the pinion angle was set to change with travel, keeping it pointed at the t-case at all times. As you can imagine, with the drivers side at full droop and the passenger side at full compression, the axle was rotated considerably to maintain the pinion angle. The passenger side coil wasn't even close to tolerating the angle. It was basically an "S" shape and the traditional bumpstop inside the coil wasn't going to work either, since you have totally different lower coil mount angles with full flex vs. full comp. or droop of both sides at the same time. Full comp of both sides was ok, but that hardly ever happens the way I use my rig.
Then you have the lower mounts shifting forward and aft as the lower arms cycle. I guess I'm just a stickler, and I feel that the coilovers will get rid of the kinked coils and packaging problems that I've been having. Sure, there are other ways to get it to work out again, but I didn't want to build any more axle brackets (except new lower mounts for the c/o's) and coilovers with spherical bearings should do the trick nicely. It's all part of the game I guess.
As for cost, the FOA's with remote reservoirs, 90 degree swivels and dual rate hardware were only about $450 shipped for the pair. The springs were about $140, so the total for the pair is still less than $600. Not much more than a set of decent coils and decent shocks... Whether or not you consider FOA's "decent" or not is another story, but for my use and the cost I think they will be fine. I'm not looking to get into that debate though, they are already paid for Hasta
Oh yeah, what's SMOG? We don't have that up here:gee:
