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94 Bighorn front suspension sag

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94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby jafaandproud » Fri Dec 26, 2014 10:35 am

I have noticed my LWB 94 Bighorn bottoms out a lot more off-roading than it used to so I did a measure up against another one and found mine has sagged about 1.5 inches in the front. It feels the same to drive on the road as it always has, and all the suspension is factory. Both front corners sit at the same height.

It definitely used to sit normally. It does have a hard life off-road though.

Just wondering what it might be? I have had a good look around under there today, nothing seems to be out of shape. I've taken the shocks out and they are quite old, but I'm thinking it's more than likely something with the torsion bars. I don't want to wind them up in case something else is the issue.

Any ideas?
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby geeves » Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:57 pm

Unless somethings actually broken the choices are either adjust the torrsion bars or the tyre pressures. Only other option is that your mate has upgraded his tyres when you wernt looking
Can you supply the measurement for ground to top of the guard and also the centre of the hub to the top of the guard. Also what size tyres are you running.
1.5 inches or 75mm is a lot
Sanding your knuckles before starting work can help. That way you cant skin them
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby geeves » Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:58 pm

other question for a well used ubs69. Do you have any problems with the rear trailing arms getting bent?
Sanding your knuckles before starting work can help. That way you cant skin them
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby jafaandproud » Fri Dec 26, 2014 4:11 pm

I'll go measure it now. You can see it's sitting lower in the front now, his sits the same height in the rear as mine (measured that as well), measured from center of hub to guard when we checked it. Tyre pressures are all normal, yea it seems to have dropped a lot

And nope I haven't had an issue with trailing arms (yet). The old girl gets a hard life on the rocky and/or rutted trails around these parts
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby jafaandproud » Fri Dec 26, 2014 4:15 pm

Front:
Ground to guard = 83cm
Hub center to guard = 47cm

Rear:
Ground to guard = 86cm
Hub center to guard = 50cm

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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby geeves » Sat Dec 27, 2014 5:57 am

the measurement from hub to guard is tyre independant Mine measures 48 so not that different although mine is standard hight. If there was a breakage I would expect both sides to be different although the sway bar can affect this.
Disconect the sway bar and readjust. Have a look for broken bits at the same time. Reconect the sway bar afterwards if you wish.
Those allow steps are holding out well on rocky trails
Sanding your knuckles before starting work can help. That way you cant skin them
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby jafaandproud » Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:09 am

I found this (image below) and measured up, it was sitting about 29mm low from these measurements. I have just been out and wound up the torsion bars, the bolts were very easy to turn with a breaker bar and didn't even need cracking which surprised me. So it's back up to normal, I'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure it stays up. It seems very weird. I'm starting to wonder if my mechanic played with them for no apparent reason without saying.

And the side steps have been bashed up quite a bit, but I'd much rather the step than the sill, so I just use them as a "ok that was a good bash, avoid that" kind of thing

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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby geeves » Sun Jan 04, 2015 6:07 pm

You should check your wheel alignment and also mark the adjusting bolts so you can see if they are turning. They are normaly quite tight to turn
Sanding your knuckles before starting work can help. That way you cant skin them
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby jafaandproud » Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:07 am

I had a wheel alignment recently after replacing my tie rod ends and a few other bits and pieces. I am starting to think they wound it down during the wheel alignment, hence why I was suddenly noticing it was lower and both sides were even. Also might explain why the adjusters were easy to turn if they had been done recently as well.

I can't work out why they would lower it below standard, but that's the only logic I can come up with...
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby geeves » Mon Jan 05, 2015 8:05 am

"I had a wheel alignment recently after replacing my tie rod ends and a few other bits and pieces. I am starting to think they wound it down during the wheel alignment"
Ive heard of that happening before. 2 possible reasons 1 they ran out of camber adjustment so adjusted down to suit or the more common reason was they adjusted the hight to get the camber correct rather than playing with shims.
Now the tricky bit. Unless it was done in the last couple of weeks you are going to have a devil of a job getting an honest answer out of them or getting them to redo it for free which is what you really want honest answer or not.
It is however a good time to do a ball joint flip before the alignment then you can tweak it up to 50mm lift or so then new rear springs when you can.
Sanding your knuckles before starting work can help. That way you cant skin them
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby half65 » Sun Mar 06, 2016 6:31 am

Ive got a 98 Opel "wizard" But in fact after some searching it is a Frontera body and settings I spoke to the previous owner a couple of weeks
ago and he asked me how the truck was going I told him I had 2 wheel alignments done because it seemed to be a bit heavy in the steering and bit on corners. He said he had 3 done while he had it and had the same problem
So this weekend I thought I will sort this First look at the Frontera book and the first thing to check was ride height. So had a look and the drive shafts were going up to the wheels and when you looked at the truck from the side it was down in front . 40mm out So jacked it up and with some CRC help, adjusted the front trim to the book
Man what a different truck, light steering, no bit on curves . So I think this is a regular check for me, say at warrent time
I stuffed up the data so deleted it Forgot about the tape measure width I will check it again next week when it settles down and do a precision setup with the right gear good rule, height gauge and venier
Last edited by half65 on Sun Mar 06, 2016 4:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby geeves » Sun Mar 06, 2016 3:44 pm

Interesting but just to make life harder that adjustment will of effected the wheel alignment. Probably only tow in though. You need another alignment.
Sanding your knuckles before starting work can help. That way you cant skin them
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Re: 94 Bighorn front suspension sag

Postby Roderunner » Sat Oct 29, 2016 8:55 am

I think that it's normal to get some suspension sag after a decade or 2. The front of my Jackaroo had sagged by 1.5-2 inches when I bought it, and the rear about an inch. To raise the rear end I purchased a pair of shock absorber overload springs, ( https://www.amazon.com/Superior-14-0890 ... B000CPJMCU ) these slip over the shock absorber and are held in place with a clamp on each end of the shock. Now the back sits about an inch higher than a standard jack. For the front I used a rattle gun to wind up the torsion bar bolts, and got back at least the original height, maybe an inch more. I did have a wheel alignment done at the sagged spring height, but it didn't steer very well even though the wheel aligner guy was constantly talking about how good he was at his job! Winding up the torsion bars bought the suspension geometry back close to where it was supposed to be, all I had to do was adjust the toe in a tad and now it steers better than it ever did. The book specs for the toe-in is about 1 degree toe-out, but this often results in tyre wear on the inside of the front tyres, along with imprecise steering, so I tried about 1 or 2 degrees toe-in which works really well. The car rides heaps better with the raised suspension. I recently got a new set of tyres put on it and the wheel alignment guy (a different one to above) didn't have to adjust anything.
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