D.B's 80 Series Bus

[DieselBoy]

Take one nice straight bog standard VIRGIN 80 Series Land Cruiser

and

..........................................

[mercutio]

tint it

[Sawdoc]

And what?

[dazza85]

And what?

Bob tail it Just kiding

Snork,
Lift,
Tyres - BIG ones
Winch

The list is endless

[wopass]

put a double bed in the back and turn it into the BANG BUS !

Bowww chicka wowwowww chic chic chica boww wowww

[TJ]

put a double bed in the back and turn it into the BANG BUS !

Bowww chicka wowwowww chic chic chica boww wowww

Is that after a bob tail Could become popular very quickly.

Its looking too clean at the moment.

[dazza85]

I got the bumper sticker for it



If it's rockin' don't bother knockin'

[MNC]

Thats sweeet DB - You could put the 50 inside to get from track to track

SHAGING WAGON!!! Yeah baby!

[xj]

Take one nice straight bog standard VIRGIN 80 Series Land Cruiser

and

..........................................

.............................. and............ COPY DIXIE!!!

hehe, i know where there's still some spare parts!

[DieselBoy]

Yep, she's had the Bang Bus Coversion already

[DieselBoy]

Quick fix for peeling clearcoat on flares

[wopass]

RAD !

[Baldrick]

Take one nice straight bog standard VIRGIN 80 Series Land Cruiser

and

..........................................

Notice the major comfort difference from the old agricultural buggy (sic tractor) you used to drive
Nice choice of Ride

[DieselBoy]

I've been busy accumulating parts



So though i had better make some time and get busy putting some of then on. Decided i would dedicate saturday morning to throwing in the coil spacers. 5:30pm Sunday afternoon, it was ready for a test drive

Before:




After:




Why it was such a mission............

Everything dissconnected and jacked up to the max, but the springs are still located:







What we ended up doing: (yes thats right, 6 spring compressors per spring)







Couple of tired but happy dudes on at 6:00pm saturday night:




Sundays mission left me with the castor correction to do, adjustable pan hard rods to fit and set up, all the brake lines to re anchor, shocks to fit, and swaybars to re fit:

Front:




Rear




The super ugly "gonna get caught on everything" castor correction brackets that are unfortunatly really well made work really bloody well. Will be a shame if they start to cause problems with getting hung up on them and i have to get rid of them for corretion bushes.




Looking good though:




And its still flexes ok for just the standrd shocks to say its got a 100mm lift under it now:






Gettin there, but still got heaps left to do

[86-surf]

Last three pictures did not work for me, But that might just be my slow ass computer,(eddited worked this time)
Your going to have to change your signature now because that thing ant small
It's looking half decent now, You just need some big ass 35s on her and thats it oh and the lokkas and the rest of the stuff

[doddzee]

Looks good.

Why did you go with coil spacers??

Would it not flex better in standard form as you now cannot compress the compressed side as far and the extended side would not extend any further as your shocks are still standard.

What are your future plans?

[DieselBoy]

Looks good.

Why did you go with coil spacers??

Would it not flex better in standard form as you now cannot compress the compressed side as far and the extended side would not extend any further as your shocks are still standard.

What are your future plans?

First up, i'm not trying to turn this into the ultimate off road monster, and i'm trying toavoid some of the mistakes i made with the Safari. I just want a nice comfy 4WD that you can get in and just relax and drive all day long, but if you find something interesting along the way, you can go for a look, or you can "get to the really good looking camp sight just up that track over there on the other side of the stream/bog/river hill etc"


I went with the coil spacers due to a lesson learnt with the safari, and as an experiment. The safari was great off road articulation wise, but the ride quality was horrible over river beds and rough roads. DaveM had the same problem and resorted to getting some custom springs made that worked better.

I thought i would have a go at side stepping all the drama and use coil spacers to keep the nice soft super flexi standard springs and and see what happened. So far, i think it was the right move.

I went with 100mm spacers, as to run 35's you can generally get away with a 50mm sus lift and 50mm B/L. I'm personally not a fan of body lifts even though they are simple to do, and get good results, so the idea is:

Think of the coil spacers like putting body lift blocks between the body and chassis.

I put the spacers in

I now have 100mm extra clearence under the gaurds

I don't need/realistically aren't going to get 100mm of extra travel out of the suspension.

I need 50mm above the uppermost limit of wheel travel to run the 35's.

I will drop the bump stops down 50mm to restrict the upwards travel, giving the same effect as a body lift.

I still have the same range of movement i had with out the spacers, the only thing limiting it at the mo is the standard shocks, they springs will still compress to their limit as before. If i dropped the shock mounts by 100mm and used the standard shocks, i would have exactly the same amount of travel as standard.

I will get longer travel RS9000 adjustables to restore the suspension travel to the standard range of movement (which was heeeeaps) and hopefully adjust them to cope with the soft springs off road. Its hard to describe, but the suspension travel will be over the same distance, just the neutral point will be 100mm lower than standard. Kinda see what i mean??

I don't intend to run the standard shocks for more than a week or so, but as you can see, even with it jacked up 100mm on the spacers, there is still travel, so yo can imagine how flexi ithe 80s are in standard trim.

Also have some work to do with the sway bars aswell once the new shocks are fitted, they need removing or mounts need lengthening.

Work in progress, ya know how it is

[xj]

Nice Pete, nice.

[doddzee]

I still have the same range of movement i had with out the spacers, the only thing limiting it at the mo is the standard shocks, they springs will still compress to their limit as before. If i dropped the shock mounts by 100mm and used the standard shocks, i would have exactly the same amount of travel as standard.

I will get longer travel RS9000 adjustables to restore the suspension travel to the standard range of movement (which was heeeeaps) and hopefully adjust them to cope with the soft springs off road. Its hard to describe, but the suspension travel will be over the same distance, just the neutral point will be 100mm lower than standard. Kinda see what i mean??

Yip i see what your saying, and if it doesnt work out its no biggie as you havent forked out a thousand or so on coils etc. Definatly worth giving it a go.

You shouldnt have too many troubles with the lower raidus arm mounts, im yet to get hung up on the drop boxes on my saf.

Wile im here, Is that rear bar custom built or available aftermarket?? Do you have the 12 valve or 24 valve diesel in it??

[DieselBoy]

Yep, quite prepared to throw new springs under and do a B/L if it doesn't work out

That rear end has caused alot of interest. Its just two end caps that replace the factory plastic end caps. I can't decided if they are home made or off the shelf. They are pretty well made and very tidy looking, so make you think they are off the shelf.

Dunno, asked the guy i got my panhard rods off if he had any other 80s bits and he dug those out of the shed. Lucky score, way nicer than what i was thinking of making

[Steve_t647]

Nice work but next time jack one wheel up to compress the spring before you attach the spring compressor that way you only need two each side and if you are brave only one (be careful putting it down tho).

you still have to do it the long way to get the new ones in if you are replaceing them but with a spacer this would have made it a little quicker, and if using the above aproach you can lower the 4wd back onto the spring before you undo it to stop all that stored energy in the bloody things.

The drop boxes don't look that bad they should be in the ruts in mud and are ramped so I would hope you don't get hooked up not with your intended use anyway.

Looks good.

[DieselBoy]

Nice work but next time jack one wheel up to compress the spring before you attach the spring compressor that way you only need two each side and if you are brave only one (be careful putting it down tho).

you still have to do it the long way to get the new ones in if you are replaceing them but with a spacer this would have made it a little quicker, and if using the above aproach you can lower the 4wd back onto the spring before you undo it to stop all that stored energy in the bloody things.

The drop boxes don't look that bad they should be in the ruts in mud and are ramped so I would hope you don't get hooked up not with your intended use anyway.

Looks good.

Dude, how do you swap springs out ????:lol:

We aint dealing with car style coil springs here, these are farkn HUGE heavy springs, there is no way you would ever even dream of using one compressor. The more you use the safer it is, one of those compressors lets go/slips off, it would take you head off, or drill a hole straight through you and probably through the wall at the far end of the work shop as well.

This was a prick if a job though. No room to work with the suspension compressed sitting at normal ride height, using just two compressors they kept slipping, farken heavy springs so needed at least 4 compressors per spring to stop slippage/projectile motion , we only had 6 compressors in total so had to do 1 spring at a time, we could fit the compressors to the middle few coils before lifting up, but once lifted up, due to super springy coils, we had to fit the other two compressors to compress the top and bottom rings to fit them back in with the spacers.

[MATT4U]

Nice work but next time jack one wheel up to compress the spring before you attach the spring compressor that way you only need two each side and if you are brave only one (be careful putting it down tho).

you still have to do it the long way to get the new ones in if you are replaceing them but with a spacer this would have made it a little quicker, and if using the above aproach you can lower the 4wd back onto the spring before you undo it to stop all that stored energy in the bloody things.

The drop boxes don't look that bad they should be in the ruts in mud and are ramped so I would hope you don't get hooked up not with your intended use anyway.

Looks good.

Dude, how do you swap springs out ????:lol:

We aint dealing with car style coil springs here, these are farkn HUGE heavy springs, there is no way you would ever even dream of using one compressor. The more you use the safer it is, one of those compressors lets go/slips off, it would take you head off, or drill a hole straight through you and probably through the wall at the far end of the work shop as well.

This was a prick if a job though. No room to work with the suspension compressed sitting at normal ride height, using just two compressors they kept slipping, farken heavy springs so needed at least 4 compressors per spring to stop slippage/projectile motion , we only had 6 compressors in total so had to do 1 spring at a time, we could fit the compressors to the middle few coils before lifting up, but once lifted up, due to super springy coils, we had to fit the other two compressors to compress the top and bottom rings to fit them back in with the spacers.

With ya there DB, bit difference in pratice than on paper a steve...

[red-devil]

DB i am reading this with inters ase my truck ha had this all done i im keen to learn how it was done.

also could you take some pic of you rear bar from under neath as that is just wot im looking for.

Due to the front diff beening repaired at the mo im looking at differant bars for the vx.

Jono

[Steve_t647]

OK the only time i did coils was on a car, and a surf to match a sas I assisted with but still using the truck to compress them initially could save time.

It would depend on the weight of the 4wd and strength of the spring.

[red-devil]

steve i have a spare set of rear springs that you can try to compress with 1 clamp if you wont

[DieselBoy]

Ok, for those that are interested in the results of my experiment with 4" coil spacers and the retention of the standard 80 series coils, here are the results

I'll let the pic's speak for them selves

















I'm having big trouble sourcing shocks long enough, between the rear mounts i have 810 mm and the fronts 710mm (both ends are around 390mm compressed)

I have a set of Rancho RS9000's on their way which are 100mm longer than standard (700mm full extention), they will limit travel by 100mm in the rear, but look at the pic's, its there's plenty there even loosing that 100mm. Also, the bushes on the links wouldn't last long if i was flexing it like that on a regular basis, they were well stretched and twisted in the photo's.

On that note, i need some Pin to Eye adaptors to get my front shocks to fit, are they available of the shelf from anywhere in NZ??



Easy enough to make, but even easier to buy off the shelf

[wopass]

make em in 2 mins dude

[turoa]

take the pass side front bolt out of the radius arm and the shock and do it agin

[LOWDWN]

nice man! if your from hamilton i seen this driving threw town the other night, one tough truck, it had some nice lookin steelrims fitted tho were a pic of them?