[pbmcauliffe]

Weird, I wrote this last night and it is gone now, I get to re-type it.
Overall the rig worked great for a test run, had a few little quirks, but overall was a good day.
-The electric fuel pump switch died, so we wired it off the parking light feed,
-Brakes started off working okay, got worse at times, still not as good as I hoped for,
-Roots can rip valve stems out real quick.

-The new wheelbase, width and lower height makes for an extremely stable ride,
-The gearing allowed me to idle over most stuff,
-Seats were ultra-comfortable all day,
-THe bikini top and Lexan windshield kept us amazingly dry inside
-4 link worked out as expected
-FOX air shocks worked without problems, but will take some getting used to.
There are still some things to finish and tweak abit, but it is getting there.
Here are the only pictures that turned out enought to see.

 

[Dirt Dog]

Thats great. There's always a few bugs to be worked out on something like this. And I'd say that overall it was a huge success.

And looks like you were having a ball.

 

[general420]

Haven't done anything to mine in months, and it still has that many bugs

Looks great. Well done

 

[815]

How did the Fox Air shocks work out?

 

[pbmcauliffe]

The Fox shocks are extremely well built, highly tunable, rebuildable, small lightweight package and overall work really good out of the box, but will take some getting used to and tuning for best results. They have some strange characteristics that most shock/spring setups don't though. When they only had 200psi of N02 in them, two people could easily pick the back of the Jeep up to full extension of the shocks, and it will slowly go back to about the same height as before when released (doing this numerous times resulted in resting height variances of around an inch or two). Pushing down on the Jeep resulted in a more normal quickly coming back to ride height. When I chraged the shocks up to 300psi, it seemed harder to pull up to full extension (probably the extra 10 gallons of gas I added

), and when released was consistent on returning to the same ride height (6" up/9" down). Since they seemed to offer very little resistance to uptravel, I was a little leery on how they would resist body roll in off camber or downhill corner situations, but on the trail it wasn't bad at all. They seemed to have little roll resistance but more predictable than a similarly set-up Jeep with 1/4 elliptical, and a coiled rig (link design does some have effect also).
The spring rate on them increases rather quickly as you get to the final few inches of travel, so they are pretty soft at the begining, then get stiffer as they compress. I will probably keep the psi where it is now, and start playing with the oil levels to see what they are really capable of.