Ironman Foamcell Pro Group Buy

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

Hey all,

Got the new stock today, so re-valving for 27-31 is now under way!

Current strut and shock re-valve count is 118.

Best

Mark

[adrian5800 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close adrian5800]

All fitted up..

Hey Guys
My parts arrived on Thursday this week and I spent some of the day yesterday fitting it up. Pretty straightforward apart from the nuts on the top of the rear dampers were f...... tight. The 6mm flats on the Bilsteins aren’t really great for holding the rod solidly whilst heaving on the 19mm spanner. Gently jacking up the body at the mount just forward of the rear axle gives you a precious few extra mm. A decent pair of vice grips on the flats is a help.

I had to remove a layer of powdercoat/paint on the inside of the pigtail on the kings as Mark has mentioned and set the seats on the struts to 215mm. Fitted new adjustable UCAs from Superpro and set the top ball joint to +4 deg as recommended on the install instructions. You have to slightly reshape the inner guard on the left side to get the UCA bolt out to fit the arm, wrap a rag around slip joint pliers to avoid marking the paint, unlike a youtube video I saw of a install in the States on a Tundra.. Butchered is a good word. I set the camber to almost all the way in and the wheels were pretty much 0 deg with a spirit level.
I left the LCA cams at the original position and checked the toe with a tape measure and toe plates just to see it wasn’t too wild for the drive to the alignment this morning – 2 mm toe out wasn’t to horrendous.

So alignment done this morning and stayed with the guy doing it so he knew what I was after, ~3 deg castor and 0 deg camber, 0 total toe and it drives great. I will get another alignment in a few weeks after things have settled a bit – give it a bit of toe in and I might have to tweak the coil seats on the front when the c spanner arrives. At the moment it is 10mm lower on the right compared to the left.

My car is pretty heavy – 2640kg so after quite a few emails back and forth with Mark, he convinced me to go with the 487 Dobinsons and I am glad he did. Ride heights are;
Front 800/790mm
Rear 840mm
Once I loaded the rear a bit with recovery gear, tools, filled the water tank, the rear came down to 820 but an extra 10psi in the bags brought it back up.
Yet to go for a good drive and test out these dampers, maybe go for a wheel in the forest tomorrow.

Thanks for all your hard work and knowledge in facilitating this group buy Mark. We all owe you some beers..

Cheers
Adrian

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Pd9z4j7FJK5GAFEQ2

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

Good ride height figures there. Pics don't work btw

[adrian5800 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close adrian5800]

Good ride height figures there. Pics don't work btw

Cheers. Link edited

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

Cheers. Link edited

Yeah, that is looking the shizzle under there now!!!

Nice to know as well that this is keeping a 1KZ rocking on, been a few on the buy!

Time for some urban obstacle testing!

Best

Mark

[adrian5800 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close adrian5800]

On road the handling is pretty firm, corners with minimal roll compared to previously. The drive to work this morning is along a bush section of the old highway, no other cars around I took every opportunity to drop the left wheels off the blacktop in the rough and I can say it handles it amazingly. Tracks straight soaks up the pot holes and I cannot wait to take it off road for some real testing!
On the freeway it now steers accurately with no twitchiness or wander. The UCAs we're a good investment. If your on Mark's list I can recommend going that bit further and getting some adjustable UCAs.

All good ��

[FJSA Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close FJSA]

Hi all, this is my feedback on the revalved Ironmans.

Thanks to Mark my kit arrived just in time to be installed for the coming desert trip. The installation was relatively smooth, tips from Mark and people who had done it before certainly helped. Mark suggested 627 Dobinsons for the rear and KTFR-101H for the front. The initial lift on my FJ was too high with the unexplained difference between front left and right sides of around 20mm. The difference, however, disappeared after a bit of driving and the lift was reduced to manageable 55mm thanks to a magic C-spanner. A week later a TJM bullbar reduced it by further 20mm. The rear, however, stayed high even when the car was loaded up for the trip (approx 2.7t). Perhaps the air bags are to blame.

As many people mentioned before, the car handles really well. Body roll and nose diving are significantly reduced. Bumps and potholes can be felt, but to a lesser degree. Overall the car feels more under control.

The real test was however in the desert. We crossed the Simpson from Mt Dare to Birdsville with deviations to Rig Rd, WAA line and Erabena track covering 642km in total. There were 3 cars - Jackaroo, Prado and FJ with EFS, OME and Mark's suspensions respectively. Severe corrugations in parts of Oodnadatta track, before Mt Dare and on the Walkers Crossing were where Mark's setup was clearly the winner. I always felt like I want to drive faster (and I did a number of times!), but had to coordinate my speed with the other cars.

After arriving to Mt Dare I had the chance to touch the front and rear shocks on every car. EFS were hot, they also suffered from significant damage to the lower bushes on the front. We later replaced one of the front shocks by the spare one and made a new bush for the second one. 200km later we simply removed it as the bush was destroyed again and we had no way to fix it. Luckily, the Jackaroo made it safe back to Adelaide on just one front shock.

OME shocks were cooler and the Ironmans were simply warm. BTW it was +28 on the day. Closer inspection of my rear shocks in Mt Dare revealed that one of them developed a leak (as I initially thought) which was disappointing. Small, but clearly visible oily patch became larger next day and then it stopped growing in size which puzzled me. I mean if it's a leak the spot should had been getting larger every day. Instead, another 3-4 days later it disappeared. It became covered by dust which eventually fell off leaving clean metal beneath. I'm not sure how to explain this, but perhaps the most probable explanation is that it wasn't a leak, but a few drops of oil left on the seal after revalving. I'll have a closer look a bit later. In total we covered 3760km of which no less than 2500km were gravel/sand/corrugations/rocks etc. After arriving home I thoroughly inspected all shocks and found no signs of other leaks or damage to the recently installed suspension parts. Overall, I'm very happy with the setup performance and expect it to be in service for some years.

The post trip actions include front ride height adjustment (it dropped approx 15-20mm), another wheel alignment, perhaps removal of air bags to see if it helps to reduce the rear ride height.

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

Hey Vlad,

Thanks for the great trip report!

So what you have seen is not a leak, it is the residual oil that sits on top of the oil seal, underneath the top dust seal. Ironman has a warning about this in their revalving pdf file, and it states that the top of the oil seal should be patted dry before doing up the top dust seal, otherwise it will weep and give a false leak appearance.

When I revalve, I leave the top of the oil seal wet, as after manually stroking up to possibly 10 times on the shocks to completely bleed them, the oil seal can move up and down slightly before the top dust seal can be threaded fully closed. This movement can potentially drag air back into the system, so I prefer to leave a bit of oil to ensure that no air goes back in. I don't have a machine to cycle the shaft, and it is all done by hand, so after 20-30min of pulling that shaft out and bleeding out every single bubble of air, you can imagine that I don't want any air going back in!!

So yes you may see a slight weep, and remember a tiny bit of oil can look like a big mess very quickly, however there is nothing wrong, and your struts and shocks are not leaking!

The oil seals on the Ironmans are actually very good, just ask John at Zordos and he will tell you he has never had a leaking Ironman come back.

Regarding your rear ride height, I went for the taller 627 as you have a long range 125l auxillary tank, so I'd definitely like to know the bottom rim to guard with the airbags empty? You will lose something like at least 10mm of ride height in the rear as the coils lose their scragged memory from thermal and load induced cycling. However, if it is still too tall for your liking we can sort something out!

So after covering all those gory technical details, I'd very much like to hear some more about how your FJ handled the dune work on soft tire pressures, how was it in the sandy stuff!??

Look forward to hearing some more of your Simpson adventure!!

Best

Mark

[drwormy Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close drwormy]

What is your rim - guard measurement when the car is not loaded up? Stock measurements are 740-745 mm (F) and 780-785 mm (R) with OEM rims.

I have a 2011 FJ with 115L LPG tank at the rear. I installed a lift when it was stock (but with the LPG). I used the Dobs 327, and the lift was initially right on 50 mm, and over about a year sagged to 40ish mm. Load it up, and that dangling LPG tank would be the lowest part of the vehicle. Now i have a Dobs 487, and empty (at 2.38T) i have 73 mm lift in the rear, which drops down to 60-65 when i put fridge and gear in the back. The 627 is 10 mm shorter than the 487 ( and a slightly softer spring rate), so my guess is your lift should be around 65 mm empty, which would be 45 mm once you put 200 kg in the back, which id think is a pretty good height. My guess is you probably dont want the airbags.

Did you do the middle section of the French line. Last year that was the most chopped up bit, and really slow going. I had to sit on 20 km/hr otherwise the back and forth pitch motion in the suspension would get out of control (with my Bilsteins). That section is the best test of suspension i can think of.

... Mark suggested 627 Dobinsons for the rear and KTFR-101H for the front. The initial lift on my FJ was too high with the unexplained difference between front left and right sides of around 20mm. The difference, however, disappeared after a bit of driving and the lift was reduced to manageable 55mm thanks to a magic C-spanner. A week later a TJM bullbar reduced it by further 20mm. The rear, however, stayed high even when the car was loaded up for the trip (approx 2.7t). Perhaps the air bags are to blame.

[FJSA Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close FJSA]

So what you have seen is not a leak, it is the residual oil that sits on top of the oil seal, underneath the top dust seal.

So I was right thinking that it's not a leak! Thanks for the explanation Mark! Big relief to know that the Ironmans are tough as!

Regarding your rear ride height, I went for the taller 627 as you have a long range 125l auxillary tank, so I'd definitely like to know the bottom rim to guard with the airbags empty? You will lose something like at least 10mm of ride height in the rear as the coils lose their scragged memory from thermal and load induced cycling.

After doing some reading last night I've actually changed my opinion. The current rim to guard measurement is 840mm (10psi in the bags, approx. 130L of fuel onboard, total weight 2.24T) which is normal I believe. Perhaps the false sense of excessive height comes from the currently dropped front which needs to be lifted by 25-30mm. I'll fix it this weekend, this should improve the look.

So after covering all those gory technical details, I'd very much like to hear some more about how your FJ handled the dune work on soft tire pressures, how was it in the sandy stuff!??

The short answer is excellent. In many places the sand was very chopped up and the closer we got to Birdsville, the more chopped up the track was, both slopes. At 16-18psi tyre pressures the going was slow due to deep ruts rocking the car from right to left. I never experienced the full compression of shocks, but I heard a few times knocks from the rear shocks being fully extended. Having no weight on the roof apart from the maxtracks gave us some advantage in those choppy conditions limiting the amplitude of the left-to-right-and-back motion. This advantage was very apparent when we finally came to Big Red. I climbed it 3 times in 3 attempts on increasingly more difficult tracks. The last one was quite scary due to very bumpy beginning of the track where I needed to get some momentum. So driving there was more like flying and the Ironmans did not disappoint swallowing the hits! Once I built up the speed the further driving was easier with the main concern to stay on track and not to be thrown out due to improper handling in soft sand. It was great fun and both the shocks and the FJ delivered 100%! According to the spectators my attempts looked like easy climbs. On regular dunes I mostly used 4H mode switching to 4L before soft patches. We backed down on some soft climbs a few times, but we never got bogged. I'm not sure though if this is due to track condition or proper driving techniques, although everyone we spoke to on the way commented on the track condition saying that it's bad. I don't know, this was my first crossing so I cannot compare. Overall, dune work seemed relatively easy. I think this suspension setup mostly shines when the track is corrugated or has medium size ruts/bumps allowing you to drive faster. On clay/salt pans between dunes I was comfortably driving 80-100km/h even in quite bumpy conditions and I never felt the car getting out of control. The worst driving conditions on this trip were not in the desert actually, it was a section of horrendous corrugations before Mt Dare. No wonder the EFS bushes were almost destroyed there. I cannot comment on the OME bushes, but mine after the trip look like new!

[FJSA Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close FJSA]

What is your rim - guard measurement when the car is not loaded up? Stock measurements are 740-745 mm (F) and 780-785 mm (R) with OEM rims.

It's currently 840mm with 10psi in the bags, approx 130L of fuel and total weight 2.24T

My guess is you probably dont want the airbags.

Maybe. Before these bags I had Polyairs which seemed a bit softer, but these ones are quite firm. I guess having kevlar sleeves over the bags also contributes to increased stiffness limiting bags bulging.

Did you do the middle section of the French line. Last year that was the most chopped up bit, and really slow going. I had to sit on 20 km/hr otherwise the back and forth pitch motion in the suspension would get out of control (with my Bilsteins). That section is the best test of suspension i can think of.

We did French line from Erabena track to Poeppel corner. It was mostly slow going which took almost a day to complete. For comparison, a bit from the Lone Gum to the French line took a little over 1h

[drwormy Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close drwormy]

Do you have any videos.....Id love to see your attempts!

This advantage was very apparent when we finally came to Big Red. I climbed it 3 times in 3 attempts on increasingly more difficult tracks. The last one was quite scary due to very bumpy beginning of the track where I needed to get some momentum. So driving there was more like flying and the Ironmans did not disappoint swallowing the hits! Once I built up the speed the further driving was easier with the main concern to stay on track and not to be thrown out due to improper handling in soft sand. It was great fun and both the shocks and the FJ delivered 100%! According to the spectators my attempts looked like easy climbs. On regular dunes I mostly used 4H mode switching to 4L before soft patches. We backed down on some soft climbs a few times, but we never got bogged. I'm not sure though if this is due to track condition or proper driving techniques, although everyone we spoke to on the way commented on the track condition saying that it's bad. I don't know, this was my first crossing so I cannot compare. Overall, dune work seemed relatively easy. I think this suspension setup mostly shines when the track is corrugated or has medium size ruts/bumps allowing you to drive faster. On clay/salt pans between dunes I was comfortably driving 80-100km/h even in quite bumpy conditions and I never felt the car getting out of control. The worst driving conditions on this trip were not in the desert actually, it was a section of horrendous corrugations before Mt Dare. No wonder the EFS bushes were almost destroyed there. I cannot comment on the OME bushes, but mine after the trip look like new!

[FJSA Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close FJSA]

Do you have any videos.....Id love to see your attempts!

Yes I do actually! Unbeknown to me my first(?) 2 climbs were recorded, I just need to contact the other person to get the videos and upload them somewhere. I'll post the link when it's done.

[krisblucher Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close krisblucher]

Thought I'd throw some feedback of my own in there too guys. I received my goodies just over a week ago and found the time Saturday to catch up with a mate who helped me install the new setup. I've got a 150 and went with the 352/327 setup. I don't have a dual battery (yet) and the car isn't driven as a daily driver. When we go camping, she's loaded to the hilt with camp gear.

We gave John a quick call mid-way to verify what he does with all the additional rubber bushings that come with the kit (unnecessary). We set the lengths on the front to 215 (actually managed to get it there by fluke the first go...). I should have grabbed some photos of the stock and Ironman gear side-by-side - it made the stock stuff look pathetic. My mate couldn't believe how solid the Ironman kit was. He might even install some on his own Hilux.

The install went well and the car juuuuust fits in the garage. There is a decent lift there and I'm hoping it will settle slightly as I had to take my awning off for safe measure to get in the garage. I've got 4-5mm difference at the front (higher on right - probably settles when I jump in to drive).

I took the car over to Mark for him to inspect his handy work with some urban obstacles in Brisbane. We slammed into some gutters and over some concrete islands (safely) and the wheel simply travelled up with minimal bounce felt in the car. I'm really impressed with how such large obstacles were soaked up by the suspension. I can see how corrugated roads and potholes would now be fun to drive on! I'll be planning some short drives with my in-laws who have a standard 150 setup to do some more comparisons soon.

TLDR: another happy customer! Thanks for your hard work Mark!

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

Hey all,

An update from my garage!

John is away taking a hard earned break until the end of this month, so there won't be any more gear sent out until the 1st week of October.

I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who is posting great reviews and trip reports! It's great to hear how well the Ironmans are performing out in the rough stuff!

Best

Mark