Another green laner build

A bit of finishing off. First a wooden floor for the back:

   

Next Putting all of the ECUs back in place. Here's the ECU stack. Gearbox, engine and suspension. The black wire is a temporary USB connection for configuration and firmware updates.

 

It took some gymnastics to get it crammed back in the footwell.

 

I obviously have a bit of a reputation with my MOT tester.  When I went there for my test the conversation went something like this:
"What have you brought me this time?"
"A jimny"
"Hmm. OK, what have you changed?"
"Well, it's pretty standard - from the outside"

It sailed through the MOT. The headlight aim was a bit out on one side (no surprise considering how much welding I did in that area) but he adjusted it for me. Now I can try it out on some lanes and get the suspension properly set up. On the road to and from the test it felt noticeably more stable than before. At road ride height the suspension is a little firmer than stock, which is nice. With the firmer suspension I may get away with removing the anti roll bar. I'll have to do some experiments and see how it feels.
 

I went for a bit of a test run and it's much nicer on the road. In the lanes however the shock damping is wrong, making it harsh over rough surfaces even with the adjusters set to minimum. It's not nearly as bad as the original suspension but it's still not what I'd hoped for.

They'd probably work great on a heavier vehicle such as a Discovery. I'm a bit disappointed really. I should have accepted the long lead time for GAZ shocks. As it turns out the delay would not have made much difference. I have GAZ on my other off-roaders and I can adjust them to be very smooth and controlled over rough surfaces.

I'll have a chat with AVO on Monday and see if they have any suggestions.

Looking forward to see it all finished!

Soeley wrote:

Looking forward to see it all finished!

Thanks. It's pretty close now, well it's probably going to forever be a work in progress but it's close to the end of this round of mods. I took it out for a decent run today and it mostly worked very well. I experimented a bit with the suspension settings and found that it works better on the rough stuff at 50% lift - i.e. static ride height exactly half of full travel. My original guess was that 60% would be best. Sometimes less is more.

It climbed up this in 4wd almost as easily as it drove down. The rest of the lane wasn't quite as rough and it did the rest in 2WD. As usual photos never show how rough and steep the lane really is. I was tempted to back down this section and try it in 2wd but the chunks of someone's side window glass embedded in the bank showed me what could happen if I messed up.



A couple of times it felt like the the steering was jamming on right hand lock with lots of articulation but every time I looked under it I couldn't see anything wrong.  Eventually I spotted this:



The drag link is catching on the anti roll bar.  When I was building the suspension I spent many hours checking for fouling or interference at full articulation but I couldn't do that with the anti roll bar connected. It never occurred to me that the ARB would be an issue.

On very rough surfaces the suspension feels a little unbalanced with the rear doing more work than the front due to the anti roll bar. I now have two reasons to do away with the ARB. I'll disconnect one end tomorrow and try it out. Hopefully removing the ARB won't mess up the road handling too much.

At extreme articulation one rear wheel hits the cover over the ride height sensor. I'll have to modify the cover to get a bit more clearance. That should be an easy job. Overall for the first test drive I'm pretty pleased with how it all went.