Daily drive long travel? With overland setup, top-heavy?

Enjoy Baja next week bud! I’m super jelly lol. Favor please , hit that cattle guard jump over 70mph? Lol that’s my goal next year

 

I have LT front and LT (wild) in back… but on a 1st gen. The rear is cantilevered and the challenge is tuning it. It donkey-kicked like mad, first installed. But over time, and after a buddy helped me dial in the King shocks on back over the course of several days, it’s a great set-up. It handles as much speed as the 4.6L 1st gen can muster (nowhere near the power and speed of later gens tho-) and is awesome for rock crawling… because the added droop on all corners keeps rubber on the ground, for increased traction. I don’t have a locker, but so far, the LT has gotten me where mid-travel and a locker gets others. It does widen the stance in the front though— my outside tire width is the same on this 1st gen as the outside width of my stock 3rd gen. Meanwhile, the rear— with the cantilever under— is stock width + BORA spacers, but still significantly less wide than the front. When I’m rock-crawling, well-meaning spotters don’t anticipate that the rear tires on this truck won’t “follow” the same line, as they would on a “normal” truck, so I’ve learned to plan lines for all 4 tires. Just telling you all this, so you can better pick your poison. You’re is a later gen, bigger engine, wider stance to start… and only you know if you *need* your bed intact. If you don’t, cut the bed and put in a proper cage and skip the cantilever— what no one tells you is, it’s really hard to tune… and not good until you do.

Hmmn. What else? Oh yes, back to road manners: removing the front sway bar and loading high and heavy will make you feel kinda out of bounds and scary coming down a steep grade on turns at high speed… picture the south grade down from Big Bear … or whatever that road is that runs up (and down) the California side of Prescott, AZ. For both, when the truck is loaded, I just have to let my trip buddies go on ahead. Trying to keep up, down hill on turns, at the speeds those guys want to go, feels stupid. So I don’t even try.

 

Hahaha, thanks Reggie. I'm really looking forward to this much needed trip. Pretty sure we'll hit the cattleguard near the end of the trip. We'll see how the truck's doing and how I'm feeling when we get there.

 

Initially I ran with the rear track narrower than the front. I didn't like it. High speed, negotiating parallel ruts, I could see and control the front but the back often seemed to be trying to make up it's mind which side to be on. Not that I mind being sideways but preferably not when I'm trying to go straight. So, I widened the rear to match the front and I've been a lot happier with the handling.

 

Yeah, I know you’re right— I’d need to replace the axle to get the width to match the front. We occasionally chat about it, but this is probably about as dialed as Hulk will be. And I’ve gotten pretty capable keeping the back, in the back.

Once Stewie helped me tune the shocks in back, life got a whole lot better. That cantilever is a weird, cool device though, moving as it does in multiple directions at once, so it generates atypical movement. OP, if you go with a cantilever, I’d suggest really focusing on tuning— either learn everything yourself to do it right after install, or get it done by someone that does these all the time. Otherwise, learning to drive your new truck could be a bit like learning to rodeo… also fun!

Edit. Better advice: Before you purchase a cantilever, have that seller/designer help you get into a truck that has one, well-tuned, so you can ride. Even as a front seat passenger, you’ll be able to get a handle on whether or not it handles well, or is squirrely, and you can assess for yourself how that would trouble you.

 

I'm going LT rear and I alread have mid-front, with bypasses of course

 

Share pics! We'd love to see the completed product!!

 

The daily-driven Rampage kit from LSK is what I plan to use for the rear. I debating if I should pay full price now, or get the black-Friday deal in six months.... I can order the dampers now regardless. Should be fun, going hard in the desert with a stock-geometry rear is AWEFUL.

 

LsK is having a 10% off right now.. so Front MT and Link rear? Hmmm interesting

 

I'll do the front, just need LCAs and to build new coils, I think my bypasses will be fine. Not intending to stay MT forever.

 

Holy smokes, I was in the phone with them last wed, and they told me to hold out for the BF-day sale haha. Good looking out man! Are you running 8" or 10" front suspension?

 

lol. I’m running their bolt on kit and SSBuilt bedcage/SUA/3x16 bypasses. No need to link unless your planning on going over 60mph on whoops which will then require a cab cage lol

 

Nice! Wish I could take a ride in the passenger seat! so... their bolt-on front with 8" ADS and 8" triple Bypass? I might go that route, and my front suspension is already 8"

 

King 8x2.5 and 3.0 bypasses

 

Hell yeah, I love their UCA to spindle connection. Jealous. And since I did MT I cheaped out and did 2.5 Bypasses, so hopefully those work out. in the long run.

 

This set up is capable, was able to go 60mph on whoops when we got the suspension tuned by King Shocks.. IMO, I could’ve gone faster but the no helmet/bed cage kicked rule in lol.

 

Get rid of it, you gonna want more lol.. believe me, I know a couple of guys who first went the full MT route lol

 

Oh btw, I’m not those dudes that sends it all the time. I’m more like those, I don’t want to break shit type dude lol. When we went to Baja, I was behind a MT guy the whole time so I pretty much cruised it lol

 

I don't send it super hard. I do need to have a functioning truck at the end of the day.

I saw a freshly rolled Ranger (stock, and brand new) at Pismo beach a couple months ago. Imagine trying to explain that to your insurance ahha

 

oh yah, she’s my daily lol. I know my limits and for sure I can control myself when it comes to that lol

 

Speaking of controlling myself, I have the full 3-link kit in my cart, and I'm heming and hawing about hitting the go button....

 

Do you have PRP seats?

 

Do it then haha

 

I got the Corbeau XRS reclinable

 

Too much money, I bailed :|

 

Just in general terms, the vast majority of people can do the vast majority of things with a mid travel set up as opposed to L/T. A lot (in B4 NOT EVERYONE) of people end up using their L/T as a band-aid for an ill set up mid travel. You really need to figure out what you want the truck to do, what the weight will be, where the weight will be, and then what options work well for that weight and if it will do what you want it to do.
Do you want the added width? Would you have the run fiberglass on your truck? How will 4wd be affected with L/T? If you live in an urban/suburban area how will those changes manifest in getting around your town/parking?

We have everything in our shop fleet from just a UCA, mid-travel, and L/T and they all have pros and cons to each of them.

 

Amen. Can't wait to get my bypasses in with my Total Chaos MT that I've run and towed with for the past 15,000 miles, living on the road.

 

As the saying goes, a tuned 12" of travel is better than an untuned 20" of travel. Majority of long travel and fancy shocks you see (in general, not this forum necessarily) end up still going 4mph down the trail or riding like ass. I had a FJ80 I built into a racecar and it only pulled 14" of travel with triple bypasses and coilovers all around on 37s, and it was one of the smoothest vehicles I've ever been in. Big travel requires big money, and when setup properly can't be beat, but spending time dialing the truck in and not dropping all the coin to get the big travel can result in an extremely comfortable ride still. Most people I've met talked about how much travel they had, not about how they spent 20 hours running different whoop sections and tweaking the bypass tubes by 1/4 turn to get it where they wanted.

 

Good info here ^^

I'm intimidated by the tuning process! I see this as a King brand advantage, as they seem to have regular tuning days. I hope I can accomplish adequate tuning with ADS one day!

 

While I don't disagree it's helpful to have the shock company with you, you can get most or as good by yourself--they'd just get there a bit faster. I think it's a blast, assuming your suspension is remotely correct to begin with just find a section of little whoops or bumps and hit it and then make a huge adjustment to your bypass and then adjust a huge way in the opposite direction and keep tweaking it until it goes from better to worse and then switch direction. Where it can get daunting is if your shocks aren't even in the ballpark and need to be taken apart for the shims to get swapped out, which isn't hard to do but is a considerable more endeavor (or find someone to do it/help you). I think it's fun, have all your wrenches in a pocket and you run the section, get out and modify stuff, rinse and repeat. Get a nitrogen fill setup too so you can adjust pressure, especially if you have hydros. In the beginning you'll make fat progress as you do gross adjustments and start to dial in roughly where things feel good, run into a bump and bottom out? Crank all your tubes like 5 turns and hit it again.

Or just pay someone, lots of guys who specialize in it besides the manufacturer and will go out for a day of tuning, though it won't be free. Probably some guys on here who can give some advice or a baseline too.