Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Principles of Overlanding: Theory of Suspensions

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Principles of Overlanding: Theory of Suspensions · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: So hello and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: am your host, Scott Brady, and I am cruising south
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: from Cape York here in Australia. A good friend of
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: mine ste and we're going to chat about suspension. But
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: before we get into that, let's give the audience a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: little bit of a background on your career. You know,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: how you learned to be a suspension engineer, the kind
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of projects that you worked on, maybe that you're most
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: proud of.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: A special thanks to Hanecook Dina pro Tires for supporting
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: this week podcast. Visit expedition portal dot com to see
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: our content series in partnership with Honkook, where you learn
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: about this year's Jeep Beach event in Daytona, Florida, get
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: tips on exploring the O'calla National Forest, and take a
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: tour of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America at
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: the Daytona International Speedway. We take a close look at
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: how to choose a mud train, all terrain or hybrid
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: rugged terrain tired using the Hankok Dina Pro Tire lineup
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: as examples.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: So, I started at AB straight out at UNI twenty
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: five years ago after doing mechanical engineering and commerce, and
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: I've had some great opportunities.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Over that that twenty five years.
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: And you know, I've done some manufacturing, some fabrication, a
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: lot of CAD work early days, and then started in
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: oh Man Amy suspension in I think it was the
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: end of two thousand and five, late two thousand and five.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: I was one of two in the team at the time.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: One of the guys, one of the guys left. I
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: got an opportunity. I wasn't a suspension guru. I was
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: an an enthusiast.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: I think that goes along with yeah. I think it
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: helps to be passionate. So I was passionate. I was eager.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: So yeah, one one, one of the guys in that
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: team too, ended up leaving and I was chatting to
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: the engineering manager at the time and just make his
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: small talk.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: You know, you're replacing you know, the guy that left,
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: And he said.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but if you want to have a chat, let's
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: have a chat. And so I had a chat and
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: here I am twenty years later. So yeah, I started
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: late November. The one guy that was left in the
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: team told me on my first day in old Man
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: EMU that at Christmas he was leaving to go to
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Perth and live with his girlfriend, so I was all
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: by myself.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: So I'm pretty much self taught.
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: I've had some great mentors along the way that have
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: been external as well, but basically self taught through through valving,
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: you know, working with suppliers, great supply, great suppliers in
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: you know, Oe, damper suppliers, coil spring, leaf spring suppliers.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: So basically yeah, educated, but self taught, you know. And
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: I think that that's how a lot of us.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: Are and picked it up along the way. So and
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: I've had some awesome, really awesome opportunities.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, even just when I started, there was one
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: nitra charge of product.
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: We had some coil springs, leaf springs, the basic fundamentals,
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: and then really probably around the twenty ten, we got
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: some new technology from Monroe, who was our damper supplier
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: at the time, some new internals, so we basically rebuilt,
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: revalve the whole range. So that was a fortunate timing
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: for me, you know, in terms of the range up
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: until that point existed when I started, and then basically
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: I went through after hiring another two engineers to help me,
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: we basically went through the back the whole back catalog.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Got all the vehicles in starting with.
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: The most you know, twenty ten niche like you know
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: that sort of time frame. We basically started with the
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: most recent vehicles, the most most popular ones, and revalved
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: them all again. And what backwards story the catalog probably
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: two hundred pttenham is.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And I think what's what's really neat too, is that
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and why it's so applicable to this conversation today. But
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you're a passionate overland traveler yourself. You've driven all over Australia.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: You and I just drove up through the telegraph track
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: all the way up to Cape York. You know we're
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: going to do you know, well over one thousand kilometers
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: together on this journey. And we've worked, we've worked together
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: on other projects. But because you've had access to this
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: very full range of products, everything from internal bypass to
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: uh mono to duel to dampers, you know, coil springs, parabolics,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: leaf springs, you've really had access even to bushings, progressive jounces.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: So we're gonn to go through all of those concepts
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: because the goal here is to help the listener understand
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the principles of suspension for overland travel, And I think
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: it might be good for us to kind of riff
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: a little bit on what is the job of a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: suspension on a vehicle like this seventy nine? What would
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you say are the two or three primary roles that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a suspension is playing right now with us driving down
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: this track?
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is a pretty heavily corrguided road.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: So I really want the suspension if we break it
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: into springs and dampers being probably the most fundamental parts
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: without digging into the bushings and everything. The spring is
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: holding them the mass up of the truck, and the
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: damper is basically controlling the motion of that mass on
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: the spring, you know. So they have two different functions,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: those two things. It's not like you get lift out
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: of a shock absolver or a d you know. Said
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: the springs, I support the mass and then the damp
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: that controls the mass on the spring.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and we we have a lot, we have
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of weight in motion and a lot of
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: times people think a spring's job is to kind of
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: set the ride height and get the vehicle level with
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the load, or to be able to manage a certain
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: amount of load. And that's certainly one of the things
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: that it's supposed to do, but it's also trying to
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: manage mass in motion. So not only is the vehicle
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: experiencing turning forces compression forces because of the changes in
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the surface, but also you have these heavy in this
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: On this vehicle, you have front and rear solid axles
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: that are reciprocating mass. So those things going over this corrugation,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: those axles are cycling hundreds of times a minute, if
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: not thousands of times a minute.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so you have yourn you're sprung, and you're unsprung
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: that sit above the spring.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And let's explain a little bit to the listener the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: difference between sprung weight and unsprung weight, and then how
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: we help tune the suspension to address both of those.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Sprung masses, the mass that's sitting basically on top of
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: the spring being supported by the spring, and the unsprung masses.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: That is the part that's basically.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: And this guy's under the spring and not being supported
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: that's seeing the excitation from the road, and that includes
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: things for everything that's under the spring, from the.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Axles, wheel and tire assembly.
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: So yeah, the brakes, everything that's hanging you know, off
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: the spring under the spring that wants to jump jump
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: around as well.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: That's your your unsprung.
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: Mass, and that's where you know, the weight of the wheel.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: The weight of the tire becomes such a critical component,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that a little bit later,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: because a lot of times people's first inclination is how
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: big of a tire and I fit on the vehicle,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and that may not always be the best approach. Now,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: diameter has a lot of advantages, but just a big
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: heavy tire or a big heavy wheel and tire combination
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: that looks very suitable for off roading doesn't actually mean
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: it's the best tire and wheel combination for overland travel.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: So I think now that we've kind of given those
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: those overviews, let's let's go through a couple like glossary
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of terms and I'll ask you some terms and we
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: could talk through that. So let's talk a little bit
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: about spring rate.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so spring right is basically the stiffness of the
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: spring how, how and and and it's depending on what
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: part of the world you're from, that might be unions
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: per millimeter or pounds per inch.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: So that's that's basically The definition of spring.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: Right is how many inches of deflection or change from
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: its free hot do I get as I add mass
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: to it.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: So, if you have a.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Five hundred pounds per inch spring, the people are probably
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: familiar with that top of number. Sure, if you put
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: five hundred pounds on that coil, it's going to come
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: down one inch, and for every inch after that, if
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: it's a linear righte not jumping a hit too much.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: But if that's a linear right, for every additional five
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: hundred pounds.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: You put on it, people come down another inch. That's right, Yeah, And.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: That can be achieved in a couple different ways. So,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: for example, coil springs will reflect in that way unless
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: they're progressive rate coil. Sometimes they use the way that
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the coils are wrapped. It allows for a little bit
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: softer kind of initial travel, and then it comes into
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a heavier rate as you compress the spring. And then,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of course, leaf springs, which I think it's very easy
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: for people in twenty twenty five to kind of dismiss
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the leaf spring. A leaf spring has a lot a
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: lot still to offer to the traveler. First of all,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: it does a way better job of managing a variable
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: load than a coil spring does in so many different
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: ways because you can progressively come into the pack as
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you add weight, and you can even have overloads, and
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: it's very easy to make a durable, easy to reliable,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: easy to maintain spring. And also the leaf springs do
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the great job of locating the assle.
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: At the same time.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you have a lot less components and all
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: that other stuff. I remember the BJ seventy four that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: we built years ago. It was leaf sprung front rear
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: with that little thirteen BT, just an awesome, awesome, little
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: one hundred inch wheelbase land cruiser and it was you know,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: leaves front and rear, and if you pulled the sway
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: bar off on the front, it had way more articulation
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: than a coil sprung seventy series today.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm sure you said that the other day
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: of the rear of the highlights as well, about how
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: well that.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: That was moving, really did well with those extent sections
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: of track.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think I think leaf springs are It's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: easy to kind of dismiss them, but they're they're used
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: in heavy duty truck applications for a reason, and that's
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: because they can do a great job of managing a
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: lot of weight. And here's the other thing that a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: lot of people don't realize that the weight is now
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: supported on two ends. So if you have a coil
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: sprung rear suspension, it puts an enormous amount of frame loading.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: When you have a heavily loaded bed.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: The frame, the frame is designed, is designed to take
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: the loads of those spring locations.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So if you see a coil sprung truck with a
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: bent frame, it's because they either got the load way
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: too far aft or they had it was way overloaded,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: and it actually can bend the frame, whereas a leaf
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: spring will support the load at the very end of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the frame member and further forward in front of the
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: rear axle. So it does do a nice job of
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: kind of of changing that point loading.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Really does distribute the load through the frame. That's rather
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: than being.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: A yeah, So that's I think that's it's good to
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: remind people that leaf springs do a great job. And
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: since it's kind of the oldest form of spring that
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: we have today, let's talk through what are some things
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that people should look for in a leaf spring that's
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: going to help it be more reliable, more effective in
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: your mind.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: And I think even starting with right as an example,
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: and there's probably different ways people go about trying to
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: modify a truck modify a leaf spring, often for lift, but.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Really the why way look at.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: It is around around right and about what the piload
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: of that truck is, how you're going to use that piload.
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: We typically when looking at an oe truck as a
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: project for a leaf.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Spring is can we divide up that payload?
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: And we can we look at a special design for
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: each segment, So we say maybe the first three hundred.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Kilos six hundred pounds.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: Is going to be this spring rate, this design of leaf,
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: then we might do a second one.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: With a heavier rate and heavier again.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: Because if you go if you just whack extra leaves
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: in there to get high, you're not changing the free
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: canber of the spring. You're you're just basically blocking it
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: with steel that makes it stiffer and doesn't want to move.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: Particularly if that's a light truck. You're not considering the
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: load on it. So you could almost do anything with
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: the damper and not get it right. If you've just
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: jamned all this steel in there, that's not allowing the
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: system to move.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And a lot of times it was very flat leaves
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: that even have quite a few packs, they can do
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: pretty well on travel where they're going to suffer on compression,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: which is where those parabolics and that free camera that
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: you have in the leaf pack helps to provide good
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: compression travel, controlled compression travel, and controlled extension travel. If
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: if the leaf pack is is AXL is that over
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the axle configuration? What are some ways that you see
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: manufacturers adding lift to the to the Yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: So the way typically the way we do it is
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: we start with a whole new leaf pack and we
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: start by looking at those factors exactly like you said,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: what's the distribution of traveling, how much compression up travel
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: is there, how much droup travel is there into full extension?
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: And then what is the limit of that travel at
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: that full extension condition? You know, it is a bright
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: lines at other bits and paces and that's where the
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: damper then starts.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: To come in and play.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: But typically we start with a scientific approach of how
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: much mass are we designing this thing for, what height
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: do we want to hold that mass at, and then
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: what sort of rate do we want to be able
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: to support that mass correctly?
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: And not have an overstressed design. So that's where we.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: Sort of we go through this cascading approach of establishing
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: that sort of architecture. I suppose of what height do
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: we want that mass to sit at? How does it
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: move through that amount of travel we're allowing.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: It to have within the shop movements?
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: And how much bending is happening in each of those leaves,
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: and how much stress is going into those leaves as
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: they've been Because you can make it, like you could
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: make a spring stiffer by adding steel in, you can
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: make it softer by taking it out. So you can
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: make this big, long FLEXI leave that we'll have to
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: have a lot of free camber when it's out of
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: the truck so that when you put your weight on
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: it, it comes down.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: But it's going to lose a lot of heighth as
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: it does act. It's not going to lot of race
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: in it, yes.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: But it's also because yeah, because you've you've bent it
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: so far, you're now putting a lot of stress through design.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: And you're gonna need a really long shackle to be
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: able to manage the spring lengthening as it's compressing correct correct.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: So so there are a lot of factors.
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: And I know, you know, it is an old technology,
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: but I enjoy I enjoy working with people, and I
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: enjoy working with the suppliers. And we do a lot
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: of stress analysis, computational stress analysis f e A on
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: the spring design, on the steel in the springs, and
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: and then typically we get into this point that we've
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: got a primary stage that rides really nicely, supports the load,
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: and then we bring in the helper or the second
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: stage leaf, the overload leaf sure, and that helps support
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: it as it gets further into the travel. And we
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: find we get really good results and good spring rates
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: by by pushing that primary stage away from the helper,
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: and then you have that travel, initial travel that's not
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: being ramped up and upset by that interaction with the helper,
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: and you get that really nice plush initial ride and
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: then it rolls. The way that the primary then rolls
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: and engages onto the second stage has a progressive approach
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: that doesn't give you this. You know, if you had
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: the helper that was sitting flat and a leaf that
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: came down and struck it when it was flat, you
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: just get this stop.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: So we designed the leaf so that.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: It rolls nicely onto the helper and that's normally the
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: really the.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Fine tuning part of the leaf spring.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: And that's where I often negotiate with the suppliers and
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: my engineers to understand the stress because we want it
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: to ride comfortably, but we want it to be durable
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: and long lasting.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: And that's where our level supply chain are really good. There.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: The level of quality that we have is we maintain that.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: You know, I always want to move the second stage
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: away a little bit to get more plush own. They say,
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: now that's going to increase the stress too much, and
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: and we we we get this compromise and we get
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: to this it's it's a it's a it's a joyful,
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: you know process. I enjoy it working with the supplies.
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: And we always have this banter of how much stress
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: is allowable and what the particular application is. We really,
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: you know, it's not a rinse and repeat. We did
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: consider that the pilot of the truck, how the truck's
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: going to be used.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And let's let's talk through some of the other technologies
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: that or the other considerations for leaf springs. What are
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: your opinions on the second leaf down having an islet
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: wrap so you have a secondary wrap around the islet
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: on the end, just in case you have a main
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: leaf failure. You guys have incorporated that in some of
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: your products in the past. Is that something that you
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: still do? If not, why have they gotten away from it?
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: What are your opinions on that?
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: We we would call it a military wrap, I don't know.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: That's how it's called through the industry. And it's and
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: it's a fail safe for eye breakages or overloading of
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: the eye and trapping it all there so that the
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: vehicles is still serviceable in that event at least get
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: your home. And I suppose the things that have changed
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: a little bit over the journey is that a lot
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: of the always don't.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Necessarily package for that feature.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: And when we're going to basically so when then we
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: go to make an aftermarket solution, we can't always get
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: a military wrap in there. If we can, it's a
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: good feature to have, but lots of the more recent
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: applications don't always have the room for a.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: That's good for the you know, for the audience to
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: think about. If you're looking at leaf springs and there
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: is a packaging space for a military wrap leaf spring,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: you may want to consider that and of course the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: most important place to have it military wrap is on
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the forward end of the spring, but that's usually where
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the packaging problem is because you can go with the
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: longer Yeah, you can go with a long.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: The fixed end, you know, the front end of the spring,
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: and I suppose it comes into that design and over engineering.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: I think that we're very good at that in terms
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: of we understand where the limit is. And that's why
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: I enjoy working in the aftermarket, is that we we
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: understand where that limit is through our calculations, through our experience,
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: what the stress is, and then if we need to
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: put another ten percent on it, you know, to to
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: to give that extra level of confidence or durability. If
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: the military wrap is not available, then then we've done
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: the calculation, we've done the testing to understand that it's
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: going to be okay.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: And that's part of the advantages of the modern day
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: is that you know, finite element analysis and all of
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: that stuff is so much more advanced than it would
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: have been, you know, eighty years ago when the military
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: wrap leaf spring was of a real consideration. So I
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: think I think that if you if you have the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: ability to package for it, it's definitely worth considering. Let's
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: move on to some of the other technologies that you
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: see in leaf springs. What are your thoughts on inner
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: leaf friction pads. What are your thoughts?
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: That's a an interesting one.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: And there's been lots of different theories over the journey,
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: you know, of different yes, yeah, yeah, And we do
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: have into leaf friction pads were experimented with different different materials,
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: different lubrication, running dry, running, lubricated, and when, what, what
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: environments that they're in. But in theory, they the pads
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: themselves don't need to be lubricated if they're of the
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: right material, but it and it depends how you use
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: it and how.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: You maintain it.
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: And leaf springs not modern you know, people don't expect
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: to have to maintain modern cars, but leaf springs, like
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: we're driving on dusty roads, through silted creete crossings, all
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: of this sort of stuff, a lot of water so
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: so so leaf springs do require maintenance. And I think
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: that's part of you know, the understanding of the use,
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: you know, the use that people are putting them through.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: If you're running them all day, every day on the road,
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: they're fine, and if you wanted them to be you know, silent,
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: a little bit of lubrication doesn't hurt. Also, adding those
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: inter leaf liners in between also provides opportunity for contaminants
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: to come in there that start making the noise and
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: start doing the scratching as well. I remember in minds,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: this would probably be eighteen twenty years ago talking about
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: in certain minds here where they wouldn't run any inter
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: leaf liners. They had big multi leaf packs, no liners,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: leaves up against leafs to keep all of that mud
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: and griss and turn out that you get on mining roads.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: And that's that's what they found work for them, you know.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: And and everything is so application, it really is, and
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: there's there's there's that sort of experience build up of
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: experience and customer profiles.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: That's why we enjoy working with our customers.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: We're out doing you know, some more marketing troops, but
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: we also do lots of engineering troops, and we work
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: without our specific customers, our fleet customers, like the mining
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: experience of the forestry departments, all these people that use
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: our aftermarket products for their daily jobs, where we're embedded
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: within those industries to get this feedback.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I do find that like if if I have interleague
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: friction pads just every oil change. You know, when you
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: get underneath and you grease your your prop shafts and
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you do your regular service and inspection.
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: You know, those typically are really easy to do.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Take a little bit of week off the vehicle and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: you know, put a jack stand under it, take a
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: little weight off the vehicle, and then they just have
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: these little pinholes and you just squeeze some grease up
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: and they're not too much, just a little bit, just
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit. People over tend to overdo that, and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: it does. It quiets down the packs. It does improve
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: kind of that initial engagement, the smoothness of the springs,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: or at least there's the perception of that. Now, let's
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: talk through another feature that there's wide opinions on. It
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: is the clamps that go from you know, the the
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: leaf below it clamps around the leaf above it, or
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: maybe even multiple leaves. What have you found in your
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: experience and your testing is kind of the best way
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: to go about the clamping of leaf springs.
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: We've got a nice little water crossing coming up here.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it's not that deep. It looked more exciting
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: than it was. As everybody's listening to this podcast. We're
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: literally driving through through the Australian out Back. Just do
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: a little water crossing here. So if you hear if
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: you hear me, go quiet for a seconds because I'm
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: i mean earlier, I almost whacked a pig in about
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: eighty kilometers an hour. I'm so glad that that didn't happen. No,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: it was big and he did you see it.
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: When it got off? Yeah? Geez, yeah, I mean that.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had to have been you know, sixty seventy
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: kilos you big?
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: So clips, we've we've alwise had a clip that is
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: riveted to the to the bottom leafe. So I decide
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: there's a can of sound pull in the in the
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: bottom most life typically you know the I I've allied life,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: and it's in an area that's not highly stressed.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: And then because with the why we work with that customers.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: As well in the white people build vehicles, we have I.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: I qualted clip. I suppose you'd say it comes.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: Out, you clip goes up and covers maybe the whole
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: pack or most of the pack. Sure, you might have
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: one or two clips either ends of the leaf. And
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: that's an application specific one too.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And help the help the listener know what what is
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the job of the clip, And then I've got some
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: questions after the clip is to.
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: Keep the leaf pack aligned, and it doesn't so it
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: doesn't splay, and it keeps then that distribution of load
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: through the spring in the right places so that you're
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: getting that durability, that long life. So it's all we're
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: all looking for that, you know that that's what we're doing.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: We're trying to provide a dependable, you know, robust solution,
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: you know. And and the reason we have a bolt
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: is because sometimes our customers, as they build their truck,
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: we can add an.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Extra leaf into that pack.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Sure so and and then even again, like you're saying
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: with the the interleafliners, we have a little a little
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: on that clip as well, so that doesn't generate noise
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: as the lafe splice and makes contact with that well.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: And there's a couple different ways of going about the clips.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the clips are very tightly wrapped around the spring,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: which people will oftentimes see that as a negative, like, oh,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: that's going to take away from my droup travel. But
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: like you said in when you're going application specific, certainly
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: having open clips or clips that have a very tall
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: side on them, so it allows for a lot of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: droup out of the springs. That can be an advantage
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: for extension travel, but especially if they are not clipped,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that's when you tend to see springs bent. And it
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: can also increase the amount of axle wrap that you
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: get out.
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: Of the spring pack.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: So I do like the fact that you guys allow
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: for a little bit of additional droup travel with a
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: slightly taller you know, shoulder of that you bo. But
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: then it's not so tall that you can end up
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: with bent leaves or you can end up with too
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: much extension travel.
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And it is application specific in terms of the
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: placement the amount those leaves will splay as well, because
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: the basically that the pack, the pack is bolted to
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: the axle and it'll want to move where the axle moves,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: you know. But the leaf itself, like you said earlier
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: as well, is anchored at the fixed end and at
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: the shackle leaf, so that sort of has to move,
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: and particularly in articulation events, you know, because it swings
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: on the on the shackle. As you flatten that leaf out,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: that side of the axle will travel backwards. And then
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: if the other side is going into droop or extension
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: that's going in the opposite direction. So even though you
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: know you're driving straight down the road, and as the
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: axle articulates, the wheel is actually moving front to back
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: and twisting.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: So it's that twisting.
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: Motion of the springs attached to the axle of what
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: it might thems flying.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of times people focus too
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: much on droop travel. But one of the things that
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the clips do actually is help provide a return to center.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: So it's the same reason why you might anchor the
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: top and the bottom of a coil spring, so that way,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: when the axle drops away, there's actually a return spring
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: component that's pulling the axle back up into position. And
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: it's the same with leaf springs. It helps kind of
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: control some of that rebound because there's this return to
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: center or return to the static position forces that are
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: Because of those clips.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: All right, so we've talked through some of the leaf
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: spring stuff, which is kind of I mean, that's back
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: to horse and buggy days leaf springs.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: Leaf springs the technology though it's crazy that what people
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: do and I think you mentioned parabolics, which is I suppose.
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: Let's go through parabolics.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: That's great, that's a leaf technology.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: So while it is you know, horse and cart, there
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: has been refinement in the concept. So so typically your
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: leaf spring is a consistent thickness of leaf.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: So we're obviously talking millimeters. Common for us would be
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: seven six, seven eight milimeters leaf.
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: That is a flat bar of steel typically sixty seventy
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: millimeters wide maybe three inch wide, that sort of size,
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: and it's heated, and the eyes are rolled and it's
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: and then it's plates or leaves individual that are stacked
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: up to make the leaf pack.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: So that's typically how it's been done since horse and cart,
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: and from a stress point of view, a ride point
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: of view, normally more more in leaves are better than
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: one or a couple of thick ones. And the difference
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: that's evolved into recent times and become quite popular in
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: the market is the parabolic leaf. And what that is
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: is a leaf that is actually thicker in the center
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: around the axle, and then each individual leaf tapers out
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: thinner towards the eyes so that you can get some progression.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: You have the steel where you need the steel for
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: the stress point of view, so that you're not you're
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: not having failure, but but you're getting the best ride quality,
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: fatigue life results out of this parabolic leaf.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: It's so like a progressive coil in a way. Yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And because we're sort of optimized that stress distribution,
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: we've been able to take out the material where we
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: don't actually need the material, you know, it's just there
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: because it's a connector.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Between the middle and the eye.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: We can actually thin that material out and we get
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: benefits in ride, but we also get massive benefits in
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: weight as well.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Sure later, and that is a factor when you look
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: at leaf springs. Leaf springs can be significantly more wheat
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: than all of the five link components and the coils
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and the dampers combined, like for example, in a five
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: link application.
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: So leaf springs can be very very heavy.
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: And I think just on this seventy series, it was
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: one of our biggest leaf pacts was sort of the
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: high sixties up.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: To seventy kilos per side.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: And we were able to design a parabolic equivalent that
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: was the twenty five kilos aside. So let's say that's
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: what's on here now, So we've saved so, yeah, it
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: rides really well, but that that weight basically is weight
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: now that.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: You can use in your payload.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: You know, when you sit the thing on corner scale
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: and you've about the white on the tie, that's you know, for.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: Aside perhaps that you can.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Fuel all right, So then there are some additional considerations
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: around leaf packs. Sometimes you'll see vehicles equipped with a
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: mono leaf. Sometimes that mono leaf will be made for metal.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Sometimes that mono leaf will be made from fiberglass even
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: or other composites. In general, they just haven't worked out well.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: There was a mono leaf spring application for the Ranger
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: that I experienced a lot of step out, very poor control,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: lateral control out of the vehicle because the spring just
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: wasn't responsive enough. So, but there are mono leaf applications
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: that can be really effective.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: Definitely, and definitely from passenger vehicles. I think that's the thing.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: You know, we we tend to put our components into
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: hamsli you know, in these conditions, so you know, you
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: can get contact with rocks and other things off road.
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: You know, that can create stress rises, you know, in
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: the components. So it is particularly when you're remote as well.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: You need that reliability.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: So there's a reason why the seventy series still has
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: a multi leaf back in the Yeah. Absolutely, all right,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: so I think we've got the spring the leaf springs
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: themselves discussed. Let's move on to the shackle a little bit,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: because I remember when I was first getting involved with that,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: one of the cheapest ways for me to lift my
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: azuzu wrote amigo was to put taller.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Shackles in the back.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: So help people understand what does that do that's good
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and what does that do that's bad?
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: And I suppose in Australia.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: In Australia that's not a thing for us, we have
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: really good good and bad, I suppose, but we're regulated
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: that we can't increase shackle length.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: So that's all not at all.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and well, so that help help the listener understand
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: why that might be from an engineering perspective, Why do
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: you want to be mindful of the length of the shackle?
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: I mean, I have some thoughts, but I love to hear.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: But if you get if you get that wrong too,
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: you know, and it creates the It creates a difference
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: in lateral movement too, and the way that the spring
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: moves through it's what it's ark and the way that.
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: You can get a negative arch.
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: Yes, really, because which is exactly what we were talking
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: about before. If you're over I suppose, over compressing, over extending,
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: putting more travel into that leaf than it was never
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: designed to take, then you're putting it in this overstressed
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: potential fatigue condition. So yeah, if you're not adjusting bump stops,
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: and sometimes it's it's one of those snowball things you
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: are just without the full pick chop, and it can
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: stiebel into the requirement of modifying heapes and apes of
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: other things down the track.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: And of course, you know our goal in this conversation,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: we're focused on vehicle based travel. We're focused on I mean,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: we did some very technical driving the last couple of days,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: but it was stuff that could be done with essentially
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: a daily driver vehicle with some minor modifications. And of
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: course is snorkel with how deep the water was. But
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: in the US there are certainly applications like extreme rock
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: crawling where people may push the limits of that, but
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: then you're really compromising your limited handling capabilities of the vehicle,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: especially if that longer shackle doesn't have some kind of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: of a center welded element or at least a bolted
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: element to keep those those uprights from flexing under lateral
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: loads sidelights.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I suppose that's the thing.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: And again we took applications and the white use vehicles,
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: and often that rock rolling stuff will be will be
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: trucked to the location where we we haven't trucked anything.
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: You know, we've driven for days, lived out of vehicles.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: So so it is and I love those understanding those
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: segments people.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Use use vehicles, and there's a lot that can be
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: learned from racing and from rock cralling.
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: And plus, I mean, rock crawling is a lot of fun.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just that's not what It's not a negative, Yeah,
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: it's not.
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: It's just not what we're doing as as travelers.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: But I think we've found too though out of these vehicles,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: like you said that potentially our daily drivers, they literally
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: our daily drivers. But you know, the events and the
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: obstacles that we're being counted a two ish inch lift.
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: You know, with some good tires and appropriate tire pressures,
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: we've been able to really have some good challenges. You know,
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: we could have had more lift and bigger tires and
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: just you know, blasted through a lot of this stuff,
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: But I think the builds have been appropriate and.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Reliable, you know.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And that's actually one of the things that I mentioned
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: this the other day, but it's actually one of the
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: things that I really appreciate about Australia. Australian overlanding in general,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: is because of the regulations, everybody's vehicles are pretty similar.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Slight variations, you're just you're not going to see a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: truck on forties on that track, or you're very unlikely
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: to see a truck on forties on that track. Because
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: it is a named road in Australia, it's subject to
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: all of the regulations. So because of that, all of
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: the vehicles are within a very small range of capability.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, imagine if somebody went through that track on
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: forties and they were digging ruts forty inch tires deep,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: everybody that came after them would struggle and wouldn't be
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: able to get through.
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: They'd be winching.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Whereas because all the vehicles are so similar, it's so
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: much more gentle on the track and it's easier on
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the people that come behind you.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: And it's still a challenge very much so you can
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: you can ste.
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: We had to work for it. Challenges is still we
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: had to work for it.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, when that when I crossed Nolan's and that
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: water came up cresting up my windshield, that was pretty impressive.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: That was pretty pretty impressive, all right. So let's move
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: on to a different kind of spring, which is going
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: to be a coil spring, and then we'll get into
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: some air springs after that. But so coil springs have
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: become the most common application for most overland vehicles now
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: in the US. We're seeing that more and more in
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the rear of SUVs and even trucks now, and they're
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: used as a coil over in many front independent suspension systems.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: It's very rare anymore to see a torsion bar spring,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: So I guess maybe I'll just touch on that very
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: quickly early. As Zuzu's and some mids be She's and
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: and even they did have a couple generations with torsion bars.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: The one hundred series independent front had a torsion bar
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: on it. The only one that I'm aware of that
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: currently still uses it is the heavy duty GM applications
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: use a torsion bar in the front, and that's basically
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: a long spring that twists to provide rate and to
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: and then you use a key way that you and
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: a bolt to put tension on on the rod that's
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: being twisted to change the right height.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: So it's the same to, it's same to come and go.
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: Within a generation and we went from late spring fronts
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: to torsion bars that I think the one generation across
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: multiple manufacturers, and then we'rening to coil.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: It's pretty much.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: The really big downside is they were prone to failure
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and the very limited total range of travel. So it's
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: just by the nature of having a twisting rod, you
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: twisting spring, you can't you can only get so much
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: travel and packaging out of that, so you just don't
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: see people really using them anymore. So now let's move
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: on to coil. Describe what what coils are, how are
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: they manufactured, what to look for in a coil spring.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: So, so, coil springs are basically along a long bar,
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: starts out, starts out straight, and then it's it's wound
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: around a mandrel. Typically to make that long straight bar
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: into a coil spring. It can either be hot wound,
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: cold wound, and that there's there's there's lots of slightly
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: different techniques and there's lots of slightly different tweaks you
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: can do from a design point of view.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: Kilt pros.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and and and even I think you said
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: a linear spring if we start with that, is one
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: that is a consistent section, so it's the same diameter
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: of bar all the way along the length of the
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: coil spring. And then that's wound around a mandrel at
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: a at a consistent pitch between each coil, and that
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: gives you that linear rate. So say we said earlier,
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: five hundred pounds on the coil brings it down an inch.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: If you put another five hundred pounds for a total
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: of a thousand on the spring, then it comes down
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: two inches, so a tope of two inches, but it's
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: still the same five hundred pounds per inch rate. And
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: then we can we can we can sort of get
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: a little bit more advanced from that, and with a
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: consistent bar diameter, we can we can do what we
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: call progressive pitching. So if we wind the coils a
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: little bit closer together, that can give you a bit
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: more of a progressive rate.
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: So when they're.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: Wound a little bit closer together, that they're more likely
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: than to compress before the ones that are further pitched
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: to path through.
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: So that's within that's just the leverage, yep.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: And that's within the control of that rolling on the
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: mandil process.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: And then the next one, I suppose more advanced again
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: is that.
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: And this is one that we do with our springs,
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: is as that that bar comes out straight, you can
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: peel the bar down so you can have a.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: Progressive wire diameter as well. So it's not just a
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: consistent wire.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: You can as you feed, you can feed that that
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: wire through a machine to basically peel it like a carrot.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: As it come feeds through.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: You peel it down on a lathe, and you can
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: have a bar that is sort of maybe twenty millimeters
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: at one end, you know, down to ten milimeters into
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: the other. So then the skinnier wire, the smaller diameter wire,
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: it is easier to easier to compress. And so that's
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: how you can get a compressive or sorry, progressive coil
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: as well.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And it just for the listener or just it really
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: helps with that initial call it fifty millimeters or so
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: of travel compression travel. It's just going to make it
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: the ride feel a little bit more subtle, a little
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: more supple, excuse me, a little bit more comfortable. But
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: then as you come into the heavier rate through the
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: compression stroke, then now the spring is actually helping to
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: slow down the load in conjunction with the damper.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is a.
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: Good one for the overland considering particularly where we load
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: unload in the rear of a track, you definitely get
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: the benefits of having that supple ride high fear.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: But then also as you add load.
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: So if we said hy as soft as spring is
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: the best riding spring, just as an example of the
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: downside to that in our overlanding condition is.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: That we might have it riding beautifully.
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: At ride high, and it's perfect when it's unloaded, but
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: as soon as you start to put load in, it's
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: going to start coming down at that five hundred at.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: That one inch per five hundred pounds, So it's.
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: Going to keep coming down like that, and you'll load
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: up for your trip if it's too soft to right
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: nice riding, But as soon as you put the weight
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: into go away or your gear in, it'll come down
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: and you've lost all of your your departure angle, you've
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: lost your ride high.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: So I mean it can affect things like so, for example,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: you'll see trucks like it's Southern California going down the
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: road with the rear end squatted like a Baja race
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: truck or whatever. That significantly changes your castor so I
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: mean there, and that has huge implications on the handling
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: of the vehicle. So the vehicle is designed to have
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of castor if it's too stink bug
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: in the rear you end up with when you put
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: a steering input in, it will be more direct, which
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: means it'll turn in more quickly. And the more that
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: that front end is high, the more slow the vehicle
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: will be to respond. And depending on how bad that is,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: you could even end up with some death wobble.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I think way, wait, the way I've
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: come to understand that is the roll axis as well.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: So if we have that raw access between front and
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: rear and how that set up, but.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: It's designed to be I mean, think about the Toyota engineers.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've I've been to Japan and I've talked
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: to these guys and they care so much about being
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: precise about how those things work. So, uh, don't you know,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: don't think that some you know, mom, and Pop Suspension
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: company in southern California or whatever has got it all
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: figured out, like really question any significant departures from factory specifications,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: whether that be alignment or the angle of the amount
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: of lift in the rear, the amount of set of
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: sag out of the springs, all of those things are
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: a big factor.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: So most fast fashion is some of that stuff. Some
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: of that stuff.
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: It's just to be a little different, just to be
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: a little different.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: And I think that's the thing with with the coil.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: So you know, we were saying that a coil that
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: can be soft can be nice, but not not great
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: for loading, so so not good for functionality for yeah,
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: and then when you do hit a buck, so that's
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: just in a static condition, but when you do hit
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: a bum.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: You're you're closer to the bump stop.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: Now you know, you've started statically closer to the bump stop,
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: and you haven't got that spring, you know, providing any
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: resistance to hitting the bump stop, And particularly as an
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: overland tradler, you've got that weight on when you hit
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: that bump style you're transferring all this load now through the.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: Frame and the components and all of that.
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: So yeah, and then I suppose the alternate to that
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: soft spring approach is the firm spring approach.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: But the firm spring approach has its downsides.
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: Too that at right height it's too stiff and jarring
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: and and.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: It effects traction.
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: So that's where the progressive coil definitely has its place
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: to provide that supple. You know, on center field, right height,
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: feel rolling plushness, But then you come into some firmer
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: rate to hold that weight up as you load it up.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: And it's all a balance because it is if the
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: spring is too late on its capacity and your load
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: is too heavy, you can get the spring compressed enough
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: that you end up with spring slap, and spring slap
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: after a very short period of time can result in
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: a broken spring. When that spring is smacking into each other,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: it can actually crack and break the spring. So we
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: never want to have spring slab, but you'll hear it,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and then we never want to use spring length to
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: address a rate problem. So if you're trying to carry
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: more load, going with the same spring rate but just
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: longer isn't solving the problem. It may look like it's okay,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: but now you're getting into that situation where you're gonna
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: end up with spring slab.
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: And you're not going to properly control the load.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: And then we also never want to use rate to
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: gain height because now you're gonna end up with a
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: terrible writing vehicle. Your traction will be affected. It's gonna
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna articulate properly. So it really is that
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: sweet spot, Yeah, it is.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: It is. It's understanding the.
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: Application, the customer, how that use it, have that loaded, Yeah,
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: and a desire one of be.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: On hospafe about that. You know, that's some of the
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: stuff we do up front.
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, take the time to do that.
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: So now let's dig in a little bit too, which
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: is common and a lot of application.
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: Let's dig into air springs.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Why would people use or why would ms fit air
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: springs or why do people put in either a replacement
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: for a coil spring as an air spring or do
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: they use a supplemental air spring or or a helper spring.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: So in Australia we have our regulations again that sometimes helpful,
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: sometimes done so much. So for us to change a
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: suspension system is a lot.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Of work and a lot of regulations.
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: So a leaf spring vehicle to take that and change
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: it to a coil spring. It gets done, but it's
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of work to change it from a coil
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: to an air bag on its own.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of work.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: So a lot of what we see is a supplementary
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: air bag that is an helper.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: I think it's in this one. So this is parabolic
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: with airbag.
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: And it makes a difference.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm at I think I'm at fifteen PSI
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: right now in the rear bags, which just kind of
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: help a little bit with the sway.
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: But we're getting that nice full travel.
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're using that. We're using the travel and and
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: like we are here. That's that's our most.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Challenging customer probably the load. The load to unload guy.
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: You know, if everybody was static in their load and
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: their vehicles set up every day.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: You can you can go back to the science of
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: of like you said, you know, the Toyota sort.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: Of approach of getting it right and getting it precise
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: and doing everything there. But that's not the breadth of
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: our customer demographic. You know, they have a lot of needs.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: There's lots of different that no two vehicles are the same.
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: They'll have different accessories, they have different needs, have different loads.
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: So that's where I think the airbag has its place.
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: Often we see it'd be a bit of a band
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: aid at the end.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: The last thing before a troop or a journey is
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: people underestimate what they're doing. They overload, and then they go,
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: I'm in this bad spot my cars to load. I'll
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: just put some air bags in it. And unfortunately, what
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: we see there then is that the original spring is
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: not designed to be doing.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: That work, and they're putting this bag into to be
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: the band aid.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: And rather than taking all of that load through the
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: hangars of the leaf springs, say, in this condition, they
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: put an air bag in the middle into an area
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: of the frame that's designed to take some occasional bump loads,
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: but not the constant load of a really stiff airbag
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: that's got lots of pressure in it, making up for
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: the fact that the original leaf spring wasn't built to
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: do the job.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's the most important point to you, and
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up. If if you know
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: that your load is going to be fairly constant, there's
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: not an argument in my mind for an airbag. If
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: like this seventy nine is a great example. It's unlikely
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: that someone that built a car like this is going
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: to be you know, taking the canopy on and off
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: and everything else. That's very unlikely. It's probably gonna sit
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: just like this. And in that case, you know, air
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: is maybe like, oh it'd be kind of nice to
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: do a little load leveling, or or maybe I'm extra
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: full on fuel. Possibly, but I think you take the
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: time to get the spring rate right for this consistent load.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: But if it is someone who's like daily driving their
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: vehicle and they're taking the kids to soccer practice, and
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: but then they're putting a you know, three and a
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: half ton trailer behind it, AIRBAX might might be the best.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: Because that's an occasional user. In my mind, you know,
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: like exactly like you said here, And that's that's been
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: our approach.
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: To parabolics actually, is that we wanted to come up
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: with this leaf spring system that was the best riding,
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: best loading system.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: So we've designed the parabolic pack.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: So it's a three leaf pack in this case that
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: replaces it i think an eleven or twelve leaf multi
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: multi leaf design. But we have no help because we're
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: really looking for that premium quality. So we're segmented the
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: payload of this truck, and I think we've got three,
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: maybe four different parabolic options that are designed to take loads.
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: So we might say, if you're typically zero to say
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: three hundred kilos, have this spring. If you're three to
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: six hundred, pick this spring. If you're six hundred to
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: nine hundred, pick this. And then if you're a fleet
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: customer or a heavy build, always heavy, you might be.
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: A thousand kilos, pick this parabolic leaf spring.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: And then what we do is we use the air
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: bag in the middle to go between those. So if
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: we say, hey, we've got a three hundred kilo build
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: on this with a fairly light.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Tray and some accessories.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: On the back, and then on top of that three
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: hundred kilos, we might put some gear in it occasionally
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: to go away. When we do that, then we pump
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: the bag up like we have in this case, we've
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: got gear on board with we've got food and all
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: that stuff.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: So we've pumped up fifteen PSI into the bags.
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: But if we were if we took all that over
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: landing type gear out, but we've still got a fridge
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: in there, We've got some drawers they might be empty
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: the mids ally trade. So we've got a constant build
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: and we picked the leaf for our constant build of.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Accessories, and we just use that little bit, a little bit.
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: With the airbag and like the yeah, like the tying
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: the boat, tying the camper occasionally.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: That's that's that fluctuation that we look after.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: And there and there are some vehicles that come from
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: the factory with error suspension on all four corners. The
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: most common of those is going to be the land rovers.
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: That gives them.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: A wide range and ride height so they can go
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: into off very high off road modes and maintain reasonable
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: quality ride. The downside to that, though, is that you're
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: just adding rate rate to get height, so that the
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: ride starts to get very busy, it starts to be
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: not as plush. There's a lot of pressure in the bag,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: so understand that there's everything's to compromise. So with those
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: air bags, once you start to try to dial in
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of lift height using a variable height airbag
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: suspension system, you're going to start to reduce your ride
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: quality as it gets taller. Now, there is another application
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that I've seen from the OEMs and Toyota uses this
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: primarily in their Lexus products, and that is they have
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: a hydraulic spring plate.
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's brilliant.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: So all it does is change the position of the
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: upper coil bucket, so it forces it down to change
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the right height height.
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: Upper spring plates.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: And I think that that's just brilliant because then the
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: rate of the coil of the coil doesn't change, just
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: the height of the coil position jet.
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because the white doesn't change, it doesn't the spring
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: doesn't compress. Sorry, I think that is where it is
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: just basically lifting the cops.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: It's very clever and you get a really supple ride,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: even at the off road ride heights. It does change
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: it a little bit because your aarms are a little
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: bit more of an angle, there's some more leverage, and
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you feel it a little bit.
• 57:19
  Speaker 5: But it's pretty good.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: And it's also the way that they manage load leveling
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: for towing a trailer and everything else like that. So
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: in my mind, if you want variable height, that's probably
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: the best system I've seen so far as that Lexus system.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: All right, I think we've kind of talked through the
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: majority of the springs. We've talked a little bit about airbags.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about one more thing on the airbags.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: What are some things that you have found to improve
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: reliability or are there products that you've found that you
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: really like. I know that ARB makes some, but there's
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: also like in Australia, there's airbag man, there's firestone bags.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Are there some that you've found these are really reliable
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: that you've found to be more.
• 58:03
  Speaker 7: Reliable and a special thanks to Warner, home of the
• 58:08
  Speaker 7: Ineos Grenadier and the Mercedes Benz van Center Garner. Whether
• 58:14
  Speaker 7: you're traveling through Canning Country in your sprinter or across
• 58:18
  Speaker 7: continents in your Grenadier, Warner has become a trusted stop
• 58:22
  Speaker 7: for serious overlanders. I have personally serviced my quartermaster at
• 58:27
  Speaker 7: Warner and have seen the work they do to their
• 58:29
  Speaker 7: successful rebel rally competition. Grenadier's Matt Scott has experienced Warner
• 58:35
  Speaker 7: iiO helping his father in law by a Grenadier from
• 58:39
  Speaker 7: the dealership a few months ago. Warner has become known
• 58:43
  Speaker 7: for supporting travelers in both Grenadier's and sprinters, whether it's outfitting,
• 58:49
  Speaker 7: maintenance or helping with complex expedition builds. I have seen
• 58:53
  Speaker 7: their team contribute to the community through sponsoring events, rebel
• 58:57
  Speaker 7: rally teams, vehicle training, and remote technical support. It also
• 59:02
  Speaker 7: helps that Tony Warner is an Overlander himself, so he
• 59:06
  Speaker 7: is committed to fitting high quality components and helping fellow travelers.
• 59:11
  Speaker 7: As a thank you for the podcast listeners, they are
• 59:14
  Speaker 7: offering five hundred dollars off a new or used INEOS
• 59:18
  Speaker 7: or sprinter, or ten percent off parts and service up
• 59:22
  Speaker 7: to five hundred bucks. Just tell them you heard about
• 59:25
  Speaker 7: it on the Overland Journal podcast. Thanks again, Tony and
• 59:28
  Speaker 7: the Warner team for your support of this week's podcast.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: Most of those are really quite reliable when considered as
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: part of a system and not just as a band aid.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: And we in this case, we chose because we did try,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: Benchmarking what was on the market and what our supply
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: is had on offer in their parts been and we
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: chose to tool off our own.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: Bag, sure, And that was as much around the travel
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: requirements that we wanted.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: We didn't want to put a bag in there that
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: was off the shelf and too short and wouldn't allow
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: us to.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: You know, you'd be ripping the bag and under.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: Full extension, so that we didn't want to then go
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: We'll fill that gap with just packer plates, because then
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: that was going to restrict our compression travel by having
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: this short little bag in there. So we've taken away
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: from the because you also need bags.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: They need brackets to mount.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: Bags, you know, so they take up space, so you
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: can have a reduction in compression travel there. So that's
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: where we found with this combination of the parabolic that
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: has a smaller stack high particularly for the above ACKs. Yeah,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: so you can maintain that that compression travel.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: So that's some of the things that I would be
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: looking at.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: How is it that like in the firestone bags, we'll have.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: That cone and and the cone is even cheaped to
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: provide some progression on pression travel. So the cone is
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a more like a cone instead
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: of just a street tube. And as the airbag pushes
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: up or pushes down onto that cone, it actually reduces
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: the amount of area, which increases the pressure. But then
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: when it drops out, the cone actually will pull out
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit to give that full range of travel.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: And is yours is the is the airb one similar
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: to that?
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: Similar but again that.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: Can come into the packaging available and trucks often use
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: that technology in that structure and that they typically have
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: more room and then don't do a lot of articulation. Sure,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: so we have these added complexities around what we do.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: But probably one of the so that one of the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: things that we have done differently is we have put
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: a gance pumper on the inside of the last That's
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: some of the things that we've we've picked up through
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: our investigations is it's the quality and the slim line
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: does of the bracket and not taking up travel.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: But then it's also.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: Including a jounce inside the bag so that we can
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: effectively we called purge it, or we can we can
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: open the bag to atmosphere for when you are unloaded,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: because that pressure that you add, like you said in
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: the land Rover example, as you add pressure, you add
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: adding that rate and that stiffness, and so we've put
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: a jounce back inside the bag so it would work
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: like the bag's not there at all, and we revent
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: the bag to atmosphere and it can just breathe, so it's.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: Not like it's like it's not there at all. Because
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: what we found is that there are many on the
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: market that you have.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: To add a four or a five psi or a
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: little bit more so that the bag can act as
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: the jounce as.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: It comes down to full compression.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: Sure, and then what we found on running that on
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: the Dino from a dynamic point of view, that that
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: that four or five psi can be quite detrimental all
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: to the right field that you you just described, you know.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: So there's some of the small factors that we've dug
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: right into understanding how we can how we can optimize
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: this as a system.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: And what are some things that you have found helped
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: to improve reliability of air bags? That's one of the
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: things that's always made them I've always been so reticent
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: to use airbags, is that you just like, even on
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: this trip, we've had several I mean, I don't think
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: that they were ARB bags, but we've had several on
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: this trip on some of the other cars that we're
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: having trouble with their the solenoid or whatever. What are
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: some things that you found help to improve reliability.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the quality of those systems as well, you know,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: and and as is not a new thing for us,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: you know, coming out of day locker and compresses, and
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: that's where that has worked for us, is how that
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: can be consolidated as a system. So as much as
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: the bag can be vulnerable and the system, the air
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: system as well mays to be.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: Of significant quality, sure to be reliable and depend them
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: on as well.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think going into it, you just have
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: to know that it's a complex system. An airbag system
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: is a complex system. It should be a helper to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: your suspense suspension. But I would not feel comfortable doing
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: what we just did on a suspension system that relied
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: on the airbag in order to work, because there is
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: always going to be a chance that a stick goes
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: up through there and punctures the bag, or there's some
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: kind of a valve failure or a line failure, or
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: a compressor failure, any number of things. So airbags can
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: they can be very helpful. They can help you do
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: leaven a little bit of load leveling in camp, get.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: That last couple degrees to get to get the tent
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: just right. Yeah, exactly, very very nice. All right.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: So now let's let's shift this is this conversation is
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: going great, thank you, Stu. So let's shift now to
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: another component of another spring in a sense, which is
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: going to be our jounces. Now let's talk about the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: different kinds of jounces like what you typically see in
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: a factory application. And then let's talk about maybe some
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: aftermarket considerations and then maybe some higher performance considerations on
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: the jounces.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so even multiple the chance, I suppose the chances
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: is a is a component. It's a bump stat to
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: just eise you in for that last little bit of
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: travel before everything gets fully compressed, so you know, you
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: want a little bit of progression in there is nice
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: so that you're not sort of compressing up then hitting
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: a dead stop.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: And and lots of vehicles.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: Have different rights of chance, more progressive, longer contact that
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: can almost act as part of the spring depending on
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: how early they're brought in. I know some vehicles had
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: this would call it a witch's hat, but a nice
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: sort of.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: Erami within within that within the.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: Coil, yeah, and some have that. And then even an
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: additional rubber jounce block on the frame where the axle
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: does the ultimate strike at the end of travel. And
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: then we have a lot more in the in the
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: front end these days, and coil overs that are coming
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: from the factory that would have had a chance, say
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: between a lower control arm and a frame, you know,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: a fairly structural area bracket on the frame where that
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: jounce would strike a lot.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Now we're seeing these polyurethanes.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Almost on the shark shaft shaft well.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: And that you even showed me the other day, and
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: this was cool.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: You even showed me a hydraulic jounce that's built into
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: the damper where the tolerance between the valve stack and
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: the body of a shock at that very last I mean,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I would call it set you know, ten millimeters or
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: so of travel, maybe fifteen or twenty. You know, it's
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: the tolerance between those two are tuned so that the
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: fluid like it takes an enormous amount of pressure to
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: force that fluid between those two surfaces in that last
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty millimeters of travel.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: And that was I thought was very clever.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: Says I'm putting a puck in a little cup, Yeah,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: they say, so. The puck has an as sod diameter. Yeah,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: that is just just smaller than the inside diameter of
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: the cup. And then we can chain that sort of
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: angular area, the gap between the pucket and the cup
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: to control how quickly that fluid can that's being trapped.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: You know, as you put the push the puck in
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: that gap is then controlling the rights at which the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: fluid flows out.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: And these these bump stops or jowns or hydraulic a jounces,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: all of them have a really important role to play.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: They are a safety component of the suspension because they
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: are they are doing there that last effort in the
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: suspension to try to minimize the chance of a hard bottoming,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: reduce the rate at which you hard bottom, to protect
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the shock shaft from bending, protect metal to metal contact.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: So adjounce is super important and a lot of effort
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: should be made in how you set it up. And
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different options. So there's in the US,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: we have a manufacturer that I really like called Timbren
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: and they make a series of jounces. Some of them
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: are are They help like a secondary load engagement if
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: you have a really heavy load, so it kind of
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: works like an overload a leaf or an or an
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: overload spring. Those can be very helpful if you've got
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: limited options. They also have a progressive natural rubber jounts
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: that you can use. It's kind of they're more overland
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: or off road specific one, so it engages a little sooner,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: so it really helps decelerate those loads. Because I mean,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: if you go through like in Baja for example, if
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: you go through these whoops, I mean it can you
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: can get incredible cyclic loads as you go to full
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: extension and then slamming down to full compression. So it's
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: it's doing whatever it can to try to save the car.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: A little bit earlier and make it a bit more
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: progressive before you get to the ultimate bottom events. You're
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: not lighting up all of those components that are around
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: the jounce, you.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: Know, but it sounds like you guys are doing that
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: as well. You've got the jounce on the shaft and
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: then you have that hydraulic jounce or hydraulic top out.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: Oh it's top out, got it?
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: Oh that's helpful.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about we just talked about compression jouncers. Let's
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: talk about rebound junces.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: So I mean back a while, you know, in recent
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: generations of trucks, some had had both a compression bump
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: stop and also an extension jance stamp as well. But
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: more more more now that that basically the coil over
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: struck becomes the limit strapped.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: For the extension and the extension of the shop.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: And it could be so horrish if it doesn't have
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: some future.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and and without going crazy stuff. You know that
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: there's the benefits in mild to extreme lifts. But as
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: often as we go up and lift, we reduce that
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: down travel.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: That extension of the shop.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: So as we're driving along the road, you can't have
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: one inch down travel because you'd be continually topping out
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: on that.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: And your wheels. The results is your wheels.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: Aren't staying in contact at the ground to be able
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: to break and steer and do all of those things
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: in traction exactly, so it becomes unside at the end
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: of the day, it's unsite.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: So, so we we like to have.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: That limit of of of a vilable travel rebound travel.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 5: So, and what do you like to aim for?
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I this was years ago, but I have
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: I remember hearing I was doing reading some some literature
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: in one of the suspension like engineering guide books that
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: I was reading, and.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 5: They were they were on a typical passenger vehicle.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: You're typical.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: You're trying to aim for about seventy millimeters minimum of
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: extension travel.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 5: Have you found that number to be?
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: So where we we have a rule of thumb that
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: we like to start at sixty Okay, because because we
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: are pushing the limits and getting into the gray areas
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: of these the you know, operation of these systems. Do
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: you find that sixty sixties our target to start to
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: stop application specificly sure unsprung mass, tire and wheel and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: all of that, so we could get a sixty miil.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: And that sort of sense how much lift we.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: Can we can give something as well, So we'd like
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: to maintain that sixty milimeters of droop and then if
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: there's opportunity to lift, then we'll lift.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: Higher than that. But we like that.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: For the reasons we spoke about safety and steering and breaking.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: You need to keep the tire in contact. But because
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: we do, you know, sneak it up a little bit,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: and and the events that we put it through, often
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: you do get into that position where you get to
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: the end of end of travel and it can be
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: a metal metal you know bang.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Experience, right, you know, And for a lot of people,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: they think how much lift can I get out of
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: my independent front suspension vehicle? And you really want to
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: be mindful of that. I mean, there's there's other things
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: that you can do to fit a bigger tire, you know,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: consider maybe twenty mili body lift or do some trimming,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: or maybe just accept the fact that you can't go
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: with such a big, big tire. But you really in
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: an independent front suspension vehicle, you have an operating range
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: primarily of the CV axles. So you can put on
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: upper control arms and we're going to talk about that
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: in a little bit, but you can put on these
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: fancy upper control arms that give you another three quarters
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: or so of an inch of travel, But all of
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: that is going to start to push the limits of
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: the operating range of the CV axles, so you really
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: want to be careful doing that. So you have a
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: static ride height of an independent front suspension vehicle, and
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: that's going to maximize breaking effectiveness of turning forces. The
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: steeper the angle of those A arms, the more poorly
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: the vehicle will manage lateral forces, the more likely you're
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: going to get body roll. There's a reason if you
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: look at the back of an F one car, those
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: arms are either perfectly flat or they're actually a little
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: bit negative, so that way, when they come in to
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: a corner heavy lateral loads, the role center actually drops.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: It actually forces it down. It forces those arms down,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: So the opposite is happening when you have the arms
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: that are really steep lifted angle, it's actually causing increased
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: body roll and increased body lift and you really don't
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: want to have that. So you want to make sure
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: that you get proper compression and extension travel. So anytime
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: you're adding lift, you're robbing extension travel and you're gaining
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: compression travel.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: But there is a limit, Yeah, there's definitely a limit.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: And then often it is you get all those detrimental
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: geometry results that you discuss. But then as you need
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: to protect the save A angles and the save A giants,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: the bow giants of the steering system, and the bow
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: giants in the upper control.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: And I've seen all of those things fail.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen knuckles bend, especially on some of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the recent generation toyotas when you end up with a
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: lot of lyft height. I've seen those long knuckles bend
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: as well, and so that people are coming out with
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: braces and all kinds of stuff. But all that means
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: is you're operating outside of its intended engineering specifications to
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: get a problem.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: Thing that's right.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 5: Solve that and think about it.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: If you've got an independent front suspension, and let's say
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: you pull the front sway bar off. Now you have
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: lots and lots of droop on one side and lots
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: of compression on the other side. Now you're in a
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: tight main shaft angle. You put in a lot of
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: steering input, you're in a really tight corner, and you
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: flip on a front locker. That front CV is maybe
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: operating at thirty percent of its available strength, and that's
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: when you pop an axle. So there's a reason why
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: these things have operating ranges.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: So let's come back.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: To like what Stu said, let's aim for that minimum
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: of sixty millimeters of DROUP travel.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 5: It's really easy thing to measure.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: You don't even have to take the tire off the vehicle,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: put it, you know, sitting in your driveway, and put
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: the jack up underneath their measure. Measure the distance to
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: your fender, well to the top of the tire, and
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: then lift it until the tire starts to you know,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: not be forced down on the ground. You can see
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: the tires starting to lift, and then measure it again.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: And if you don't have sixty to seventy millimeters of
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: DROUP travel, you've got too much lyft.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So and because of that, you know, you can
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: tune a car around to try and and.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: Not have these events where you're you know, getting this
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: top at knucking noise. That's unpleasant, it's not good for
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: the way. Apart from all of the geometry issues and
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: things you're concerning in the safety, it's not a pleasant
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: kind of drive. So you've also now asking, you know,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: the rebound tuning of the shock to work in such
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: a shorter range, you.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: Know, so you have to stick a whole.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: More rebound control in there to then try and catch
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: that that front wheel in the event that it wants
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: to come off the ground.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: So that it's not topping out.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: So that's that's why we've included this hydraulic enzone in
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: MT sixty four for that that top out event to
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: catch that last little bit of travel and control that
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: last little bit of travel to take that metal to
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: little and loading through the system out of it.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: And that's why for most overland vehicles, let's say you
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: buy a new Grenadier or you know, you buy a
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: new Wrangler, or you buy a Tacoma, you really are
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: aiming for that fifty to sixty millimeters maximum of left.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: You just don't need more than that that's what all
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: of these vehicles are running. That we just did one
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: of the more difficult tracks in Australia. You know, you're
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: looking at that to one point five the two point
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: five inches of lyft and and that's just going to
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: give you that sweet spot where you've got enough rebound control,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: enough to extension travel, good articulation, great ride quality, good
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: limit hand handling characteristics.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because we're.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: Because we're driving it, we're not trialing is so we
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: did we need those limited handling characteristics.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: But we've just found that to be a pretty good
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: recipe as well.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: I mean, we were we were sort of overlanding, and
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: we're discussing we were sort of overlanding before it had
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: a brain.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 5: It is just the way Australia has invented it.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: But but what we found is that type of range
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: works well for the for the customer and for the application,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: but it also works well for an industry. You know,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: we're not loading upon the components that we're not touching.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: You know, we can address the little bits and paces
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: that were modifying. But like you've said, what are those
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: loads that we're imparting all of the other bits you know.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: Whether it's save as or frame or control arms, the
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: bits that we're not modifying through doing a lift.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: By keeping it within the realms of you know, reasonable,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 4: we're not loading up.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: All those other components as well.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: And we're making it easy for fitters to fit or
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: for the customers to fit themselves at home.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: It's not a complex sin.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: You're more likely to be able to still get a
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: warranty claim done on your car and and all kinds
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: of things. I mean, once you once you start to
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: push the limits, it may look cool going down the road,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: but you're really not gaining much, especially on the safety
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: side of things.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: So before we get into dampers, which will kind of
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: be the last segment, I want to talk a little
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: bit about uh sway bars. So they could be called
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: an anti roll bar, they could be called an anti
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: sway bar. And what that's trying to do is limit
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: the amount of body roll by using another form of
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a spring. And there are cars that don't need them
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: at all because they're tuned in a certain way. Early
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: land rovers didn't have them at all because they wanted
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: to maximize articulation. So anytime you're trying to control everything's good.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: Anytime you're trying to control body roll with and and
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: anti roll bar, you're typically going to be giving up
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: some articulation unless it has a disconnect, which some jeeps
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: come from the factory with.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 5: A disconnect, which is which is very clever. Some of
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 5: the new toyotas do as well.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: So let's talk what's what's your what's some of your
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: approaches around anti roll bars.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so we do a little bit of anti roll
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: wide work. Typically for us we work within the bounds
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: of the OI anti ROLLA and and really focus on
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: it more on the heavy duty overland builds, like I think, you.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 5: Know this one's got this one's going to have a
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 5: heavier one in the back.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: I don't think this one for a long time came
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: from the factory without it, so it had a front one.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: So we did.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: We did a supplementary kit like bracket mounting kits. Often
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 4: the axles would have the brackets and the mountain provision there,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: so we would we would we would have the sway
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: we work with a supplier.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: We designed, we did.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: All the cad for the swave bar, have a manufacturer
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: build that florest, but we located all the brackets and
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: the droppers and everything from the frame. But we we've
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: done it definitely for the seventy series. We have a
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: number of different and to roll by diameters. So basically
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: it can be as simple in these cases of going
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: up in bar diameter, it gets you more rate to
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: control the amount of So seventy series we had a
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: number of different bar diameters that we could use depending
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: on people's builds. We also had some really interesting cases
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: where we were doing armored vehicles, you know, whether they
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: were sort of military applications or private, you know, applications
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: where we have a heavy vehicle because of all of
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: that armoring that you've added. So we've done definitely anti
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: roll bars for for armored armored applications because particularly within
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: the glasshouse or or the extra you know, ballistic protections
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: where you get a lot of mass up a lot heavier.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: Some that might have a turret in the roof.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 4: Yes, you know, so changing that center of gravity of
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: the car, you know, changes its role characteristics.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: So we do, well, let's help the let's help the
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: listener understand how raw bars anti roll bars can affect
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: the way that the vehicle over steers and under steers.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: That's it's something that's a very rarely understood. What's the
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: reason why you usually find a front anti roll bar
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: with a really heavy rate. Why do you typically find
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: that in the front of a factory vehicle.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: Normally to be able to get around corners and not
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: transfer light laterally.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 5: That's certainly one of the things. And this is what's interesting.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: All of the safety features of a vehicle are built
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: for a front end impact, because that's the thing that's
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: the most dangerous, is an off center impact or a
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: head on collision. So as a result, manufacturers tune sway
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: bars to cause understeer, so that way you go straight
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: into the ditch where all the airbags can work, the
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: crumple zones can work, you go straight into the tree.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: So the same thing happens so Toyota in particular, but
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: most manufacturers heavily favor understeer. So the heavier the sway
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: bar is on the front, the more likely you're going
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: to have understeer. If you were to take this sway
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: bar off the front and put a heavy one in
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: the rear, you would be.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 5: More likely to have oversteer.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: So you can, as a driver, depending on your preferences
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: and your experience and how you want the vehicle to handle.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: I like a vehicle that handles very neutral around a corner,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: So that means that just it's going to hold the
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: line and maybe even favor a little bit of oversteer
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: because I feel comfortable with that. But what I don't
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: want is under heavy breaking or heavy turning loads the
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: vehicle to just push through the corner and plow through,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: which is very difficult to resolve as a driver.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 5: So just be mindful.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: If you take a seventy series that had no rear
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: sway bar at all and you put on a super
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: heavy one in the back, that vehicle is going to
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: be now favoring either being more neutral or even some oversteer. Yeah,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: So we have to just be thinking about all of
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: those impacts of that and make sure that we come
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: in eyes wide open of like why do we want
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: to do that? And there are certainly times that we
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: do want a rear a heavier rear anti swave bar.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: It's it's a consideration as part of the system really is.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: You know, when you have your life springs, you have
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: your mask that's on it, and then you have your
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: swie b as well, it's that characteristics.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 5: Right, all right.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times people will put in disconnects
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: on their anti sway bars. That way you can get
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: gain back a lot of articulation.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 5: I would have liked to have had that on this
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 5: seventy series.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: After that trail, I was doing some big wheel lifts
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: because it has a heavy front anti roll bar. So
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: that's kind of That's kind of the last of the
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: components that I wanted to talk about as far as
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: that goes. Let's get right into the dampers now, so
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: let's describe to the listener. You know what what a
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: shock absorber, what a damper, How it's made, what it's
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: what is its job?
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: So show comes over as bicycle. As we said earlier,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: its job is to control the motion of that mass
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: on the screen. So as the shock absorbent goes up
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: and down, there's an outer body, an out of tube
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 4: and a piston rode in the middle, and they're joined
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: by a piston on the end of that rod that
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: pushes through fluid that's within the body of that the
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: outside of the shot consortant. So as you push the
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 4: ride in, fluid has to flow typically through the piston,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: and the restriction in that piston is what creates your
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 4: damping effort.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: So if it flows through the piston really easily, you'll
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: have a soft shot.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: If you have more restriction there and it's hard for
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: the fluid to flow, then you'll have a firmer shot.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: Typically in most dampers, that's a stack of shims or
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 4: thin plates thin disks on either side of the piston
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 4: that flecks open.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: As the oil pushes against them.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 4: So if you have thin, thin discs, they don't provide
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: much resistance to that oil flow. If you have thicker
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 4: or more discs, then you provide more resistance. And that's
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 4: how you tune the shop CONSILM.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: And then how does it manage rebound? This is kind
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: of clever. How sharks do that?
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So then on rebound it has a similar shim
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: stack on the other side of the piston.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: So on the.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: Piston itself, the way the piston's created, oil flows in
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: around the shims on one side, but then has to
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: push shims open on the other.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: And then on the rebound side, same thing.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: It flows in freely on one side, then flexes the
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: shim's controlling the rebound motion.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: And that's how you can tune compression and rebound differently
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: based upon how the shark is set up. So, now
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: the more the more compression and rebound control that we
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: put into the shark, what is that what's the byproduct
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: of that all that control?
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: And that's probably the concept of the shot consilver really is,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: and that is that it converts that motion, that up
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 4: and down motion into hate. So the restriction, the friction
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 4: that you're putting in there as as as it's restricted
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: flowing through that vista, and it's generating hate. So you're
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: converting motion kinetic energy into into hate energy, and that
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: hates up the oil and then that gets out into
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 4: the atmosphere through the body material.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: Of the Yeah, heat management is the main of most
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: damper manufacturers because they're they don't want what will happen
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: once that shock gets hot. The viscosity of the oil changes,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: begins to thin out. You can also there can be
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: mechanical damage done to the inside of the shock, which
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: can include damage to the seals. But most of the
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: time what happens is the fluid gets very thin and
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: then it is gonna what's going to be called shock fade,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: but that's actually just because the fluid viscosity isn't as
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: thick as it used to be and it's flowing more freely,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: so you're getting less control.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And then and then, as before, we go into
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: nitrogen and pressures and try to cannotation and all of that.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: But that's it, and and and and definitely heat is
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: your enemy, particularly around seals. One seals give up and
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: oil goes and the whole game is pretty much over,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: So so heat, heat is the is the enemy.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: Nitrogen, Like, let's maybe talk through nitrogen nitrogen, as I understand,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: it has two important roles to play with.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: What are those?
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 4: Yes, Rogen, So for me that the nitrogen keeps the
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 4: pressure up against the the fluid up against the faces
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 4: of the piston, up against the shims to make sure
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: that that's flowing through them.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 5: So it reduces cavitation.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 4: Right. That's because hair bubbles or cannotation within the shop
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 4: will flow through that valveing a lot easier than thi.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 5: And it can cause filming of the oil and all.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: And once that start, then then you've lost that control,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 4: you've lost that performance.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the mechanical characteristics of the
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: damper so let's talk through what should people be looking
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: for in the shaft, like shaft diameter, shaft materials, things
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: that how do you protect the shaft from rock and ding, So.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: Again depending on your application.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 4: You know, the shaft basically connects that shot comes over together.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 4: So if it's too thin, it's gonna bend, you need
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 4: you need the right materials to have it not bend
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 4: as well and be durable enough. And then you need
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 4: to finish on there that is going to to be
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 4: durable against any sort of damage that may compromise the
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 4: ability of the seal to.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: Seal against that shaft as well.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: So that's that's normally where shocks normally where shocks feel
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: is they feel at the seal and then you get
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: a weeping shock or a leaking shock, and then it's
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: just a matter of time before the fluid volume goes
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: down enough or the Yeah, it starts to compromise the
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: effectiveness of the shop.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then and then you know, depending on the
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: more aggressive night sure via yas you know, you can
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: go out there in the quality of those materials for
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 4: their structural integrity as well.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we want we want the there's there's a
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: couple of balances. If the shock shaft diameter is too big,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: now it's taking up fluid volume, you're reducing and you're
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: reducing the adjustability that you can have on compression and
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: rebound with some of your valving. But you want the
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: shaft to be big enough that it doesn't bend. You
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: don't want the shaft to bend under a heavy impact,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: and a lot of times that can happen. Shocks can
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: bend and get damaged. Yeah, and then how do you
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: how do you like to or what are some of
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: the more effective ways you've seen of protecting the shaft
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: from rocktings and.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so typically and historically they were steel probably steel dampers,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 4: steel stone guards. Then we get with then we sort
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: of got into the polyurethane style boots, constantina boots.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 5: You're just less expensive and they're later.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: They keep the dust out.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: And then depending on whether that's a twin tube damper
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 4: or a monotube damper. You know, some monotubes can be
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 4: susceptible to stone damage, which can compromise the ability of.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: The piston on the inside of that wall to work.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 4: So often a monotube will will be will be mounted
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 4: so that the body is up the top and out
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: of harm's way. But then that can make the shaft
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: more susceptible to damage. So then putting a guard on
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 4: that shaft, particularly in the terrain that we've been through,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: you know, where there's stone roost from front tires and
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: and and these types of trips with you know all.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: Will drive vehicles now or just being in constant full.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 4: Driver in high thought, you know, with mud, mud or
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 4: aggressive you know, al terrain tires picking up big rocks
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 4: and throwing them at those rear shock shafts. You need
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 4: to have some guarding on there. And and the way
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 4: we've found to be really successful is is an injection
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 4: molded it was clamp one plastic plastic, plastic boot that
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 4: there can be a consumable. You know, they you don't
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: want them to be brittle and you don't want them
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 4: to break in service, you know, but if you do
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 4: a really aggressive trip and they you know, they get
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 4: some damage, they're still purely they're very functional. But if
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 4: they're purely cosmetic damage, it's it's a consumable that you
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 4: can replace.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 6: And a special thanks to tread for their support of
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  Speaker 6: this week's podcast. One of the age old problems of
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• 1:34:09
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  Speaker 6: a lot of money into your truck, chances are that
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  Speaker 6: e dd Er dot com, thank you again for the support.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: Tredder well, and a lot of people don't know the
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: difference between a monotube and a dual to damper. The
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: mono tubes have advantages on heat dissipation. They're also just
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit smaller on packaging. But what are some
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: of the benefits of duel tube.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, a twin tube. You know, our nintry charges
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: a twin tube and historically in this overland type market.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: Twin tubes have been very popular because, as their name implies,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 4: there's two tubes. The piston runs inside the pressure tube
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 4: part where all of the damping happens, and then it
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 4: has a base valve that the oil comes out the tube.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 4: As the shaft comes in and displaces that fluid, it
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 4: pushes out a base valve and then round into a
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 4: space between the inner and the attitude.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: So that we call that the reserve tube.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 4: So as the rod pushes in, it pushes fluid through
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 4: out of the base valve and it takes up the
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 4: gap in between those two tubes. So a little bit
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 4: of damage on that autitube, as long as it doesn't piss,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 4: if it's deformed, a little bit can be okay to
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 4: the function because it's pretty acting that that inner tube
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 4: that can still operates of increased fluid volume. Exactly, you
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 4: have increased fluorid volume and the benefit, a big benefit
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 4: of a twin.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 3: Tube is the travel.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 4: So it's quite efficient in producing extended links for its
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: compressed belief. So when you put that within the in.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: The architecture of the vehicle, you don't have to compromise.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: The amount of shock absorber compressed links for what achievable.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: Which is so if we use that now and we
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: and we sort of compare that to a monotube.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: So a monotube is one cylinder being the monotube. So
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 4: within that you have the shaft holding the piston, and
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 4: then below that you would have a floating piston that
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 4: would separate the oil from the gas in a monotube,
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 4: So in that monotube, so that's the packaging. Yeah, So
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 4: the floating piston or the separating piston and the gas
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 4: come out of that monotube, come out of the tube
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 4: and now occupy.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: That space between the two tubes. So twin tubes typically
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 3: don't won't.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 4: Have a floating piston to separate that oil from the gas.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 4: The oil naturally falls to the bottom of the tube, sure,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 4: and the gas sits above it and.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 3: Then it goes through the base veilve. So that's why
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: a twin tube.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: Has to be mounted up that way to keep the
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 4: gas in the autitube up near the top and the
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 4: oil down.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 3: Near the bottom.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 4: But the benefit of that is we don't have a
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 4: floating piston and a gas chamber and a gas volume
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 4: that is in series of the whole operation of the damper.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 5: That's cool.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: So if you're looking for a little more travel out
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: of your damper, you can gain some with the twin tube.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: And if you're looking for a little bit more efficient cooling,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: sometimes you can get that with the monotube.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 5: And a lot of people like monotube shocks. They like
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 5: the way they ride, and they like the way that.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: They handle a lot of times.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about some other components of the shock.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: Let's talk through the benefits of synthetic bushings or the
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: benefits of natural rubber bushings in dampers.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we've probably used both for different applications. Our
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 4: direction at the moment is a long natural rubber and
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 4: we like it for its its suppleness. It's very quiet,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 4: very quick, no rattles, no squakes. It's it's quite stable
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 4: either a temperature range as well.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 4: Definitely heat is the enemy of the damper, but so
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 4: is so is cold, you know, And we learned that
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 4: through our initial brief A fifty one testing. You know,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 4: we were testing in national parks and state forest when
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 4: it was well into the forty mid forty degree temperatures.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 4: There were bush flis going on around us. Because that
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 4: was the thing, you know, it was it was the
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: hot you know, that was going to be detrimental to
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 4: the shock and detrimental to the seal park and the
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 4: way it all operates. But cold can be can be
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: detrimental on seals and on bushings as well. But rubber
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 4: has that good stability over that temperature.
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: Right, and natural rubber itself has its own natural lubricant
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: to it, so it does keep for most squeaks from happening.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 3: You don't tend to get that squeaky shock.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that natural rubber bushing can be one of
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 4: the most challenging parts of the whole suspension system for
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 4: us these days, you know, coming up with that bushing,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 4: particularly on front factory replacement coil overs, so not fancy
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 4: coil overs, but just strup that's as a factory replacement
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 4: that has to provide all of those features of the isolation,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 4: of the loading and of the compliance to be able
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 4: to take those those loads in both sort of that
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 4: radial direction and in etuision as the arms twist, so
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: they have to be very capable of There's a fabiit
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 4: of science that goes into developing those bonded bonded bush's
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 4: that work in compression and in extension, and.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: Then of course the worst kind is going to be
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: like a full full race suspension where it's a time
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: joint or something on one end that doesn't have any
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: damping characteristics, and they can they're designed for racing, so
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: if you've got a little bit of a rattle on
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: a race truck, it's not a problem. You're looking for
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: durability for ultimate strength, and then it can be rebuilt
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: after every race. We don't want to be rebuilding our
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: shocks after every trip, so I think we want to
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: be looking for a quiet, comfortable, either synthetic or rubber
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: bushing in the dampers on both ends, if you can
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: sometimes applications specific There just isn't a bushing on one end,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: but it just depends. If you've got a little bit
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: of room for a good bushing, it can help really
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: reduce that noise, vibration and harshness from the damper itself.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: All right, So let's shift on to another component you
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: see on a lot of shocks, which is going to
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: be a remote reservoir. Tell us what a remote reservoir does.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: What are some things to look for at a remote reservoir.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 4: So the remote reservoir, luck we spike between a twing
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 4: chabe and a mono jube. One of the first obvious
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 4: differences is we can get that travel back that we
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 4: might have compromised in going from a tween to a
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 4: mona by taking that flooding piston and that gas out
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 4: of the shokuns of a body, out of the travel
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 4: zone and put it into the canister on the remote reservoir.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 4: So that allows us then to get that travel back, but.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: Also so you can have a monotube with a remote
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: reservoir and gain some of that packaging back and put
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: and yeah.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 4: So and that space that was just in a pure
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 4: monochain taken up by the floating piston and the gas
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 4: that's now got oil in it, and also through the
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 4: hose if that's the way that the remote is connected.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 4: And in the top half or in the top section,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 4: maybe not half, but in the top portion of the
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 4: canister there's oil as well. So we have that oil
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 4: volume now to be able to spread that heat that.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 3: The piston is generating through more oil volume.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: And a lot of times those remote reservoirs will have
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: cooling fins or they'll be made from aluminum to help
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: dissipate heat. A lot of times are in an ideal
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: packaging situation for airflow. I mean airflow is really important
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: when it comes to keeping shocks.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is, and we've done testing. It was probably
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 4: it's probably two thousand and eight twenty ten. We went
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 4: out into a different, different part of the desert towards
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 4: the center of Australia.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 3: Broken Hill, I'm sure you're familiar were there.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 4: We're running up and down sections of corrogated road there
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 4: and what we were finding is like today, where we're
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 4: sort of got the wind blowing across the road. We
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 4: were running these corrugations at the worst possible temperatures we could.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 4: So we would we had everything firmer coupled and we
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 4: had potentiometers on sharks to see what was going and
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 4: we'd drive it at a pace that would generate temperature
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 4: in the shop sure to try and find that worst case,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 4: to really really give it a hard time.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 3: Test all the test, the oil test, the seals, test
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 3: the components.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 4: And what we found is we'd run for perhaps a
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 4: couple of kilometers up the road in one direction, turn around.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 3: And run back and we'd get.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 4: Different shock tents depending on the direction we were going,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 4: So not only into the into the wind, but as
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 4: the wind was blowing across the car, the left vestus
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 4: the right hand side of the cow would have different
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 4: chunk tips. So it definitely makes a big a big
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 4: influence on cooling of the.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again heat is one of the biggest considerations,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: particularly when you're doing heavily heavy loads, lots of corrugations
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: for hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers, you're really trying
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: to manage heat. So the remote reservoir is something that
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: we see oftentimes on shocks. It helps increase that fluid volume,
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: increases the service life because the fluid can last longer,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: run cooler. There's a lot of advantages that come for
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: it also could give some tuning even in the reservoir itself,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: but then you always have increased cost and then you
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: also have like where do you how do you mount
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: the reservoir, So that becomes a factor making sure that
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: the reservoir can't be impacted by the front tire during
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: a steering sweep compression of the suspension. So there's a
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: lot that has to go into making sure that gets
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: mounted properly. And heaven forbid doesn't come loose and fall
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: down into where the wheel is. That would be quite catastrophic.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: So we always want to be mindful of high quality
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: components with good mounting hardware reliability. Yeah, you want to
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: manage a liability, all right. So then there's another piece
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: of technology that we're seeing more and more of now,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: which is going to be People have seen external bypass
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: shocks on race trucks for Baja one thousand or for
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: the Dekar and things like that, and that's where these
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: there's these huge external tubes that allow for fluid to
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: move from one region of the shock to another to
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: change the way that the shock manages impact throughout the stroke.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: But now what we're seeing, and it's very clever, is
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: internal bypass, So it's done within the shock body itself,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: within the machining of the shop body. And the only
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: couple that I'm familiar with is BP fifty one, and
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: then the multimatos are the ones that I'm familiar with.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was a big challenge. BP fifty one
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: was a big challenge that we were set some time ago.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 4: Now I think we finally got that product of market
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 4: in twenty fourteen.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: It took three four years of development.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 4: Work and the concept of that technology is a great
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 4: one for our customers and the way they use vehicles.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 4: And basically those tubes that almost look like handles, you
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 4: know on the race shocks take fluid around the piston.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: Rather than having to funnel it all.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 4: Through from one side of the piston to the other,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 4: they create this alternate pass path through the tube, which
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 4: they call the bypass, so that it hit five passes
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 4: the piston.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: To go from one side of the piston to the
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 3: other side.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 4: And then you can put a valve on that tube
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 4: that by and pass path to create some different some
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 4: different valveing or different performance effects as well. And the
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 4: positions that you basically put the holes or position that
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 4: tube also affect the performance.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: So you not only now have fluid flowing through the piston, you.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 4: Have it flowing through these bypass tubes and traditionally with
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 4: it a monotube, a twin tube damper. The faster you
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 4: push it, the more force that provides, and we call
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 4: that velocity sensitive. So the higher the speed, the faster
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 4: you push the shock, the more force you get. So
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 4: these bypass shocks are still operating in that same manner
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 4: that the faster you push them, the more force they provide.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 3: But we also get what we call is.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 4: A position sensitive damping or bypass stamping, where that the
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 4: fluid not only flows through the piston but round this
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 4: bypass tube, and that the results or the benefit of
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 4: that to the customer is that you can have a
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 4: a plush middle section where you're pushing fluid through the
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 4: piston but also from one side of the piston to
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 4: the other through these bypass tubes. And the more tubes
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 4: I suppose you have that right high, the more opportunity
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 4: there is fire to flow around, and the softer you get,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 4: the flusher.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: You get it.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: And then once you come into the middle of the stroke,
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: or even closer to the end of the stroke, then
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: that's where you're you're you're valving in. Your piston becomes
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: more it does all the work, and that could be
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: very firm.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 4: Past that junction of the of the tube coming back
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 4: into the into the main body of the shop, there's
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 4: no way now, there's no other path, no other opportunity
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 4: for the.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 3: Fluid to bypass the piston.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 4: It's all going to flow through the piston and ultimately
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 4: the damping ramps up in that end zone once you've
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 4: run out of bypass tubes to be using. So so
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 4: the benefit again there to the customer is that you
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 4: can be driving along here quite you know, a ride high.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 4: But then for us, you know, that's that unexpected event
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 4: as an overlander.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 3: And then in the travel.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 4: We've been doing, yeah, you know, you come around a corner,
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 4: you're a bit hot, you're carrying a bit much you
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 4: know pace, and you jump on the anchors and and
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 4: then you you know, your brace for impact, and you
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 4: get into those end zones of travel and the damping
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 4: rams up when you need it. And I suppose the
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 4: alternate is, yeah, you could have a a generic twin
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 4: mono tube and you could have that same effect by
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 4: just putting more damping in the shop.
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 5: But then you have to deal with it in every
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 5: other proct.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 3: Every other so every other bit of the travel, it's
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 3: going to be way too firm on.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 4: The on the flip side to that you make it comfortable,
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 4: you soften it right off, but then you hit that
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 4: g out event and you bottom out.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 3: And I think you know it is it is a
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 3: race technology.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 4: It's come out of you know, the scene and the
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 4: way those guys, you know, throw those trucks and buddies around.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 4: But it is really it is really applicable to I
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 4: think the overland travel because overlanding you're typically carrying a
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 4: lot of weight, you're driving for long distances and unfamilar
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 4: to rain, so there's potentially g out and and and.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: You can be remote.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 4: So if you have that g out event, there are
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 4: safety question marks there what that can do to people
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 4: and two vehicles and to durability of components. So we're
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 4: providing this technology now that if you've got all this
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 4: weight on board, you've you've found yourself in that event
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 4: and you haven't had the impact you're you're you're now
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 4: able to carry on.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 3: On your journey exactly.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 4: And for that and for the remainder of the journey,
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 4: when you're not having that event, you have the level
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 4: of comfort that the bypass.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 3: Or that position sensim damping gives you.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 4: So you're not being physically fatigued, you're not being fatigued,
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 4: your passengers aren't being fatagged. You're arriving to the camp
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 4: refreshed and alert so that you can physically drive the car.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 4: You're attentive, whereas you know, you valve that shock up
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 4: to hit the g out and you're rattling your way
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 4: down the track, You're going to be just drained and fatigued. Question,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 4: which is not good for safety, It's not good for
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 4: the You know, you're on holidays, you don't want to
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 4: be living like that.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: Well, this has been an amazing conversation. I mean for me,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: I think that this is my takeaway. Kind of the
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: wrap up that I would give to the listener is
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: they call it a suspension system for a reason. It's
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: an entire system that works together that can include upper
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: and lower control arms. Some people do change out their
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: upper control arms, but be very mindful of that. Again,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: you don't want to go with that time joint style system.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: We're going to go with a proper ball joint that
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: has a lot of durability and a long service life.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: But that can provide some correction to camber that's necessary
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: depending on the lift height. It can also give a
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: little bit better range of travel. Make sure that the
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: wheel travels properly. And then we're always going to be
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: mindful of the types of pushings that we use, the
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: types of control arms that we use. We always want
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: this stuff to be serviceable. Anything that makes a permanent
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: modification to the vehicle, Think long and hard before you
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: do that, because if that component breaks in the middle
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: of Baja California, it's going to be maybe easier to
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: find a stock you know, upper control arm or a
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: stock lower control arm, or a stock five link component
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: from a jeep than it is to be to find
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: some super unique component. So you want to make sure
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: that you're using a system that is as close to
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: stock as possible. Keep that ride height change to a minimum,
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: just a couple of inches, and just a couple of
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: inches maybe on the tires to match that. Go with
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: a high quality shock absorber to help control the heat
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: and give you some more confidence in your driving. Tune
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: your spring rate to your load so that the vehicle
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: sits properly. And then at the end of the day,
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: always be focusing on safety. Drive within your limits, drive
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: within your experience, and make sure that you're not introducing
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: failure points in your suspension that could end your trip.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: So how about for you, Stu, what would kind of
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: be your wrap up on this segment.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of it is a round function and
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 4: around reliability.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 3: You don't exactly what you said you don't want to
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 3: be in the middle of the bush.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, anywhere in the world when I have bush. And
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 4: you know why, you remind you buy yourselves. You want reliability,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 4: You want to be able to depend on become the
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 4: potchet got.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 3: If that's what you're doing. If you're just doing it.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 4: In town and it's a fashion project, then it's it's
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 4: something you know different altogether that I think what we're
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 4: focusing on is is is product that that functions correctly
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 4: and that we can rely on, Yeah, to have to
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 4: have an enjoyable, an enjoyable vacation and an enjoyable journey
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 4: around the world.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 5: Awesome, Stu.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: It has been such a joy to have this conversation
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: with you. And the timing couldn't be more perfect. We're
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: just coming into Archer River or I know they've got
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: good coffee and I feel like I need a coffee.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 3: Even though pretty crazy, it was riveting, it's coffee time.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 3: We stop and get a good coffee.
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: But we thank you all for listening and we'll talk
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: to you next time.