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Date:         Tue, 12 Mar 96 20:36 CST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         khooper@wsp1.wspice.com (Ken Hooper)
Subject:      Re: Derek's Syncro alignment specs

Derek Drew wrote an excellent article about Syncro alignment specs. I'm always amazed by minds that understand steering geometry, I've never been able to get it.

But he also wrote this:

>Another method I used to raise the van is to raise the rear end. I did this as >follows: in between the rear springs and the body of the vehicle there is a >small doughnut sized wedge of about 3/4 inch thickness. I went to the dealer >and bought a pile of these little wedges and put 2 or 3 more on each side of >the rear of the vehicle. I am still puzzling over how to lift the front of the >vehicle so right now it tilts down at the front a bit.

Do not do this. Here is why:

If you lift a truck this way and drive severely off-camber (which is when one side of the truck is higher than the other laterally; left-to-right, say, because your left wheels are on a hump and your right ones are in a rut) the truck can fall right off the axles. This is a very bad way to raise a truck.

If you are going to do it anyway, then you *particularly* should not make the lift blocks higher than they are wide. I don't know how big a donut is, exactly, but three inches is probably excessive.

And after all that if you are still going to do it, then you *emphatically* should not make the lift out of little pieces clamped together. Go find some shady four-wheel-drive shop staffed by mouth-breathers who will sell you a single solid block of the appropriate (?) size.

Trucks are properly raised in one way, and that is by increasing the diameter of the tires. For any significant increase in tire diameter there is a commensurate change in wheel size, gearing, compensating for radical driveline angles (CVs and U-joints have a finite range of motion), compensating for extra driveline stress, and compensating for extra unsprung weight.

When you put hockey pucks in your U-bolts, you aren't raising the truck, you're raising the suspension. There is but one reason to do this, and that is because the tires rub on the body or frame. If your tires don't rub, don't even contemplate a suspension lift.

The Syncro is not the truck for this for several very good reasons. If you want to drive over boulders you should get a Jeep like everybody else. ;)

--Ken '71 Bus, '68 Westy


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