Sidekick front suspension travel
I have been on a Quest for maximum wheel travel on my sideKick for awhile now and so we are all on the same page let me tell you what I have done and what I found tonight when I took my front end apart.
5 years ago or so I started with the old 2" Calmini lift. at the time it was the best you could get. I soon realized that I needed more ground clearance as I was getting stuck in mud holes (read not fun). So after some research I decided to combine the OME and Calmini lifts to create a Hybred lift which turned out to be about 4" in total lift once I got it together, (I was very pleased). during the install I bolted everything together without the springs and found that I could use the whole travel of the OME strut If I dropped the strut tower mounting point 2" Once I fabricated spacers for this I found I had a front wheel travel of 9" (I was Happy). Soon however the OME springs started to sag I am not sure why but my best guess would be that the added leverage of the longer Calmini control arms put to much stress on them? at any rate to keep the lift I wanted in the front I frabricated spacers to put under the springs to get back what I had lost to the spring sag. This still worked great in the mud where I had 18" of clearance under the skids at full extention, I could go anywhere. However once I got out here to Colorado I found that the OME springs would not Compress enough under the weight of the Suzuki to give me full suspension travel Infact tonight I could not get more than about 5" of travel out of the setup using a floor jack under the A arm and a Hi Lift under the back bumper to place most of the weight of the truck on the front suspension. when I pulled the OME springs out They were the Same length as the Stock coils (they were longer before). When I put the stock coils back in I again could get the full 9" of travel I'm not sure what the ride height of the truck will be when I put it back together, but at least it is compressing. I wish I knew why the OME's failed because they sure were great when I first put them in. I remember taking the truck up to the corner for gas right after installing the setup and being surprised when the back end bounced. I had driven over a speed bump with the front suspension and not even felt it, It was great.
Ok thats where I'm at right now, if the ride height of the truck isn't right I will probably talk to a local spring shop about building a spring which will work for this aplication.
in the meantime here some questions for the other Sidekickers on the list.
has anyone else tried to max out the front suspension on their Sidekick?
How much travel is there with the Calmini 3" front suspension?
anyone else had problems with OME springs saging after instalation?
PLease no flames about how straight axles are better. Lets talk about how to get the most out of the Sidekick like it is.
Sidekicks Rock
Dave