Project G4 AKA Quasi-Ghetto

[Thomas Built Motorsports]

I could be completely wrong as its been a minute but Im pretty sure thats how iribe wants people to set up kings. zero preload on the top preload adjuster at droop,, and then set ride height (assuming its sprung correctly) with the secondary adjusters?

Not sure what the fox setup is, but i assume close?

 

[DialedShockPrep]

I could be completely wrong as its been a minute but Im pretty sure thats how iribe wants people to set up kings. zero preload on the top preload adjuster at droop,, and then set ride height (assuming its sprung correctly) with the secondary adjusters?

Not sure what the fox setup is, but i assume close?

That KINDA works on 3.0” coilovers since you can run a long 20-26” lower and a short 4”-8” upper. No matter what you WANT preload on the straps. Can it work without preload? Yes and no.. The simple explanation is that any setup can work as long as there is balance front to rear. If you have very little to no preload out front, you need the same in the rear for it to work. You can set a truck up obnoxiously stiff and with very heavy rebound and as long as both ends of the car are pretty equivalent, it will just skip over everything and work.

Back to springs, true preload can only be determined by measuring spring crush while on the limit straps. Without spring pressure at droop the suspension will be slow to react to things and the tires will have a tendency to skip off of whoops rather than actually roll down the backsides and help keep traction. Think of your legs when you jump on a trampoline. When you land, are you already anticipating the weight of your body coming down by stretching your legs to help catch your weight, or are you using the same amount of muscle as you would standing perfectly still? Same concept, the springs help push the trucks legs DOWN in the holes to help keep the truck propped up and ready to land and gives the tires in contact with the ground which aids with acceleration and steering control. The longer your tires remain in contact with the ground the more control you have which gives you confidence. That doesn’t mean go run zero rebound damping because you’ll have a pogo stick, but you want enough spring pressure to help keep the tires in contact and falling into holes.

Now to swing to the opposite fence, that doesn’t mean run 100/100 springs and crank the preload collar to oblivion to achieve ride height. Running too little of spring rate and adding a lot of preload to compensate makes for a very lazy truck. Lazy as in there won’t be enough spring rate to keep the chassis from slapping bumps in a G out, or going around a corner the truck will want to remain flopped over and won’t have enough spring pressure to push the truck back upright.

Every setup is slightly different, but most of my beam trucks i aim for 1”-1.25” preload up front and linked trucks i aim for 1”-1.5”. Ideally slightly more preload out back than the front as well so the front will have a bit more pop to it than the rear. Granted, springs are only a small portion of the whole recipe but they are definitely the chocolate chips in the cookies. If your chocolate chips are turds your cookies will taste like poo.

 

[FasterNU]

^^ So is that at 50% ride height?

And yea. I was going to try .75" on 2ghetto up front next. Then just make the rear match height. So... seems I am pretty close to those numbers actually for that truck

I think I might be a little stiff on G4. But it still hasn't hit full operational weight... and hasn't been operated yet... so it is hard to even know exactly where it will be sitting.
It seems higher in front though. Could be a combo of 2x things.
1. 37's
2. Because I removed some internal spacers for more overall travel in the front coil over... (which is only droop because my frame limitation for bump).... it ends up forcing you to move the upper spring seat down when at full droop... which obviously raises the whole setup.

 

[DialedShockPrep]

Yessir, 50% minimum at ride height. Ideally 50-60% showing front and rear, but you definitely need more up travel in the rear than the front at ride height. Most trucks I have setup to sit at 50-55% end up with 13”-14” up travel in the rear and around 9-10” up travel in the front. It’s pretty wild what an inch or two of additional ride height will do for a trucks handling and big bump control.

The easiest way to measure is to set your ride height, then droop the truck out so it’s on the straps and measure your top and bottom coil lengths. Compare those numbers with their free lengths and whalllaa, that is your true preload.

 

[FasterNU]

yea, i should be real close to those preload specs then. Especially if I went to 55-60%.

And yea, one inch makes a HUGE difference. Ask my lady friends about that inch... that I am missing. HAHAHA

 

[FasterNU]

STILL waiting on Culhane for my trans. So, that means I need to keep doing body work.

Made some hood bumpers with Rivnuts and button head bolts (just tighten nut to bottom to lock in place) ... to raise the floppy ass hood up across the back and make body lines correct... Maybe I can find some real rubber ones in 1/4-20 later. Cuz, I bet they will rattle with the stainless button heads on it now.

more bondo. Only have a-pillars left on cab. Then gotta do tops of front fenders at least. they seem pretty wavy

And the clear coat was fucked on this truck. So, lots more sanding than before. this is work i do not like...

 

[Klever]

Came out tits man

 

[FasterNU]

^^^ Still a ton more body work to do... and not looking forward to it.

Got some good news yesterday. Culhane finally opened up my trans. He said it was smoked. He said about 1K more for upgraded shaft and hub? I decided NOT to get that. I feel like the trans should be OK without it. Hope this doesnt bit me in ass. So just doing full rebuild. With reverse manual body. I think he said Extreme makes them? Gonne liquidate $3,300 from my account. ouch.

Just stoked I will be getting the trans back soon. Then I can try and drive it and see how many problems I have to fix. Got a lot of "hope it works" stuff going on for this build. From steering to brakes. nothing important. LOL

 

[theycallmeWALLY]

^^^ Still a ton more body work to do... and not looking forward to it.

Got some good news yesterday. Culhane finally opened up my trans. He said it was smoked. He said about 1K more for upgraded shaft and hub? I decided NOT to get that. I feel like the trans should be OK without it. Hope this doesnt bit me in ass. So just doing full rebuild. With reverse manual body. I think he said Extreme makes them? Gonne liquidate $3,300 from my account. ouch.

Just stoked I will be getting the trans back soon. Then I can try and drive it and see how many problems I have to fix. Got a lot of "hope it works" stuff going on for this build. From steering to brakes. nothing important. LOL

Dang. Building a show truck now

 

[FasterNU]

^^ "Business Class Prerunner" Gotta look good while you workin good.

Make it stop though.... finally have most of body sanded. gonna need to fill a few spots. So, I am still nowhere near close to done.

Oh and remind me to never buy a ranger that has the door protector thingies down the entire side. nightmare to get that glue shit sanded off. Shit was in the clear coat, I swear.

Culhane says trans is done, just need to dyno. So getting close!! Oh, and here's my custom hood bumpers for now to get the lines to match up. I was able to find a plethora of 1/4-20 hood bumpers online. So I will switch those button heads out at some point once I research the dimm's I need

 

[FasterNU]

I finally drove it down the street.



Not impressed out of the box. LOL. Too slow off the line. Won't even peel out from a stop going straight on pavement. gears feel super duper long.(i think the third that came with the rear end had 4.56?). But the biggest set back. The brakes. They are terrible. I can't drive it like this. So, going to try switching masters around. If it's worse... then I try a 7/8 one.

Oh yea// gonna try some better pads. anyone have any recommendations? Wilwood Polymatrix A look like they have high initial bite at fairly low temp.



If i need to... maybe try to figure out how to add some sort of a pedal extension and or move pedal up higher. If I can't get any of that to work. I will need to just start over completely from scratch and probably do hydroboost or something.

 

[FasterNU]

here was trans install. I think it is over filled a little bit. oops. Also had to remake the harness for lockp that I fucked up when dropping the trans. doh.

 

[FasterNU]

In the meantime.. just keep working to knock shit off the list.

Speakers are finally done.... and wired in and everything as of 8 minutes ago. Shit sounds pretty good. 2x 10's and 4x 5x7's is more than enough bass and sound for me.

Bondo the holes on the front and top you would see...

Mixed up some black with the white tintable raptor liner I had... to make a gray. Installed boom device

Admire on bench after wiring

And then final install.

 

[Cleandezert]

speakers came out legit. i like it.

I had hydroboost in black betty and wasnt really a fan.. not sure if it needed to be tweaked but if i got on the brakes hard while turning it would stall out the truck completely. I also had CNC manual brakes on my ranger, and truthfully they felt the same as the hydroboost on the f150. Never felt real unsafe with manual brakes, so i feel like you shoudl be able to get those dialed without hydroboost.

 

[96f-u250]

Awesome to see this one moving finally!! Congrats!

 

[DialedShockPrep]

speakers came out legit. i like it.

I had hydroboost in black betty and wasnt really a fan.. not sure if it needed to be tweaked but if i got on the brakes hard while turning it would stall out the truck completely. I also had CNC manual brakes on my ranger, and truthfully they felt the same as the hydroboost on the f150. Never felt real unsafe with manual brakes, so i feel like you shoudl be able to get those dialed without hydroboost.

I have a feeling something was choking down your system on Betty. I know of at least 3 trucks that went from full manual brakes to a hydroboost unit/slave cylinder mounted over the rear axle and they all told me that it was night and day difference and their trucks would stop better than a new truck (minus the ABS). I’ve got a new unit to put on the ranger with pump and setup from PSC, we’ll see how it works someday

 

[Cleandezert]

I have a feeling something was choking down your system on Betty. I know of at least 3 trucks that went from full manual brakes to a hydroboost unit/slave cylinder mounted over the rear axle and they all told me that it was night and day difference and their trucks would stop better than a new truck (minus the ABS). I’ve got a new unit to put on the ranger with pump and setup from PSC, we’ll see how it works someday

that could totally be the case. that truck was never 100% dialed in.

 

[FasterNU]

I'm gonna give the following changes a shot, since I don't even want to think about redoing shit.

I will try a 7/8 master on the front. I will move the 3/4" to the rear. What's funny is... this is what I was going to originally start with!!
I also bought some Wilwood PolymatrixA pads. Holy shit those are expensive!! Over $200 per axle. They had the highest coefficient of friction I could find on the charts. Also high initial bite.

I will see if i can get more pressure to front. Technically I shouldn't... but that is only if I am not displacing enough fluid(and I still seem to run out of pedal and feel is too mushy) ... So we will see.

Probably have been reading too much internetz too. I read about static balance on Joes Racing website. Basically what braking would be balanced at when centered on balance bar.
Current setup with 3/4F and 11/16R I believe is a 54% static bias to front
If I switch to 7/8F and 3/4R... I think it was like 84% front bias.

If I calculate the pressure, with 175lb leg force and 7:1 pedal (1,225 lbs)... and only 50% of force goes to front master(612.5 lbs)... I should be able to generate just over 1,000 PSI.(612.5/.6 = 1,021psi) That's quite a bit of leg force... but the static balance should put more pressure on the front, right?

So yea, bet that pedal is gonna be stiffer than wood pecker lips. Hopefully pads will make up for some of that lower line pressure. Really need a longer pedal... like I think barge told me a long time ago. hahah

 

[FasterNU]

here's another brake calculator. Hoping this works.

Removed the 11/16 rear last night. What a bitch with dash in and inability to open doors 100% in garage. Had to make my own extended allen key to make removal easier(bolt on das boot interferes with standard allen socket). Basically cut the right angle off a 3/16 allen key and then stuck a 1/4" drive 3/16 socket on it and taped it.

Gonna stick the 7/8 in its place since that is easiest one to test first... and will only have to bleed back brakes.

found another brake calculator too. like this one the best I think with brake torque. It showed some good numbers with 3/4F and 7/8R with 125lbs of leg force on 7:1 pedal for a 5000lb(2600F/2400R) vehicle with 5" swept radius, and .55 coefficient pads, 24" CoG, 125" wheelbase, and 37's. With balance bar centered it is real close to "balanced" on the chart.

I should be able to pull a .8G stop. Not sure I get that much traction?:

https://www.tceperformanceproducts.com/dual-bias-calc/
View attachment 239255

 

[Turboyota]

You don’t have Allen sockets? Cheap ass motherfucker!

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