Amada vs Cal off-road/Bilsten

[AussieAndy Find all posts View Profile Close AussieAndy]

What Andrew said, the spring being too high is causing the front strut to top out before it can dampen anything. That is the clunk you are hearing, and also why you get the feeling of no dampening, because the travel comes to an abrupt end as the strut tops out.

[zerosecta Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zerosecta]

Yip, got it - So the morel of the story is simply that CalOffroad are selling a 3" lift kit with a strut length that in my opinion is in fact to short to effectively really realize the true 3" inch lift without the risk of the Strut Topping out...

False advertising quite simply put - not to mention the rear end only went up barely 2" as well...

My advise would be if you truly want a functional 3" lift on the front end then you need to look at getting a front strut with minimum 600mm open length.

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Also post your droop measurement currently as this tells you whether the strut provided is also adequate after changing to the shorter coils.

[zerosecta Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zerosecta]

Also post your droop measurement currently as this tells you whether the strut provided is also adequate after changing to the shorter coils.

Yip - Will do mate. I was thinking that I should do that to get it fact based :-) I take it I do the same measurement but with the car lifted up and the the difference is the droop (or aka in MTB'ing suspension setup, Sag) ?

Cheers

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That's right. You've got the suspension height at rest. Now you just need to jack up at the chassis until the tyre is off the ground and do the same measurement.

[zerosecta Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zerosecta]

And because a picture tells a 1000 words... :-)

Car in the air - 860mm Car on the ground 850mm but lets say 840mm since thats where it was before I lifted and droped it for the pics....

So a whole 20mm of Droop

in the air


on the ground

[Guest Close Guest]

20mm !!!
Even with the shorter replacement coil, it will give you 50mm droop. This is still not enough as you would want to aim for 70mm. So the strut's open length needs to be 10mm longer and paired with the 15mm shorter coil.

[zerosecta Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zerosecta]

Just spoke with the "expert" at Cal and according to him about 40-50mm droop is what we need.... man I wish I could turn back time....

I'm going to hang out for another week or so to see what happens with the new springs he sends me and if it's not right then I am going to go viral on the Internet on these guys....

Does anyone know what the name of the person who actually owns the place is? If I could actually to to them about this story perhaps I could start getting somewhere.

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Name's Cal.

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Just spoke with the "expert" at Cal and according to him about 40-50mm droop is what we need.... .

I have 95mm droop in my 120 with a full 2" lift, 40-50mm is not going to cut it, you will be lifting wheels going through spoon drains with that setup.

Cheers Andrew

[Pugaree Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pugaree]

I know this doesn't help you now but I have never heard anything nice about CalOffroad.

[Whitey Shockie Maker of the Month Award Find all posts View Profile Close Whitey]

Hey zerosecta,

20mm of droop is not surprising given your very tall ride height on the front.

I know this is a 150 we're dealing with here, but take a look at the plot in this thread to give you an idea about how the open length of your front struts relates to your lift and droop;

http://www.pradopoint.com/showthread...-Prado-120-IFS

Also, you can't run an open length strut of 600mm on the 150 IFS, you will hit CV bind well before 600mm. On the 120, the CV typically binds in the 570-580mm length, and most 120's running long travel struts will use 570mm maximum.

Assuming around 90mm of lift on your front end, or 3.5", then for 20mm of droop, this suggests you've been given a strut with open length 555mm, which is the short version of the 24-218528 strut series from CalOffroad.

Keep in mind I'm working off the plot for 120's, so I may be wrong for your 150.

Can you redo your droop measurement, and measure your strut open length from bottom of washer to bush center.

This may clear up your problem.

If you were given the 575mm open length strut, you should have at least 50mm of droop at 3.5".

I would double check all of this, and also check the free height on your front coils.

Take a squiz at the 120 series suspension database which lists the closed-open lengths for the CalOffroad struts;

http://www.pradopoint.com/showthread...nsion-Database

Hopefully you can sort this out!

Best

Mark

[zerosecta Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zerosecta]

Thanks Mark, I am going to need to pull it all out when they send out the replacement springs over the next few days (if I'm lucky as I have yet to see anything arrive in a timely manner from them) So I'll messure it all up (the struts) when I take them out.

So you reckon they might have sent me shorter struts than they could have..... Hmmmm he did mention something to me about having custom longer strut lengths but tried to steer me away from them saying they would open up a whole new can of wroms....

Starting to sound to me like this guy and in fact stuffed up and sent me the wrong length struts and trying to cover up.... OK, inocent until proven guilty so I'll hold off on flaming until I get it out.

Actually I posted a pic earlier in this thread of the OEM and new strut next to each other and you can see that the new strut is only marginally (mabey 20mm) longer than original.

[zerosecta Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zerosecta]

OK - You just saw on that DB that Cal has a Strut has has an open lenth of 595... Now that sounds like the sucker I need :-) Going to talk to him about this first thing in the morning.

Or even with the 1" dif drop do you think it would bind CV's??

[zerosecta Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zerosecta]

If open for OEM is 555 then I guess from the below the new ones must be 575

Where exactly do I messure from?? when you say bottom of washer, do you mean where the top of the spring is??