rokhound wrote:Now you are cooking Reece

you have no idea how long I've spend thinking on this... that is the simplist system to achieve adjustable control
Talking of silly ideas, I was looking at creating the coil over's with the adjustment retainer nut as a slider that is connected to a hydraulic ram. This would in turn adjust pressure on the spring pack, and create forced artic, but I am doubtful as to how useful this system would be for drive ability, as all it does is put more pressure on the springs (that you have already picked to be the right rate for their application)
Your starting to think outside the sqaure

now add dual action air rams (with accumulators) swing arms, all working on the coil over and you have a suspension system that tracks high speed whoopdee do's, jumps etc yet without any valving changes can give all the rock crawling performance

well in theroy

we'll have to wait till I've built it to see if the air rams can handle it
Also remember reading about traction bars (when they were the thing in the 80's). The write up stated that all they effectively do is turn the axle housing into a giant sway bar. If this is the case, then why can't clever link design, with disconnecting joints in the all right places (for off road use) create exactly the same system?
Yes it would but to work effectivly you would have to go to steel bushes or bearings at your pivot pionts this will lock the arms to the housing as one structure, this will mean alot of extra road noise and vibration also there is the issue of calculating what spring weight an axle tube assembly and linkages would be...

a swaybar would be so much easyer in fact I'd suggest using two light ones clamped together with the end clamps being able to be adjusted in to soften them up or vice versa
I am ditching the current 4 link plus panhard set up i have in the front in favour of a 3 link plus panhard. If there are disconnect- able joints on the main control arms that mount up higher on the axle housing (essentially a Y shaped arm), then this should work, shouldn't it?
your current 4 link is the eqivelent of a three link for calculation perposes, (you still use the panhard to locat laterally ) so no real gain there, yours works well why not leave it there
what you would effectivly be doing with your Y design is turning the outer links into radius arms

and I think you've driven a rangi before unless your willing to go the path of hard bushing it won't make enough difference to be worth the trouble, oh and I just thought of another thing

the "window" of opertunity where the syspension would be sitting just right to bolt them up or unbolt them if they were hard bushed would make using them a bastard and a half

I could just hear it now ... "bleed the right side .... bit more ... bit more ... bugger na still got a twist... try some out of the back .....pump up the

" how goods your patience Rok

I know I'd never use it