ericdehaven
New member
Ok so I am hoping the hive mind has some ideas here, or some input. We have a 2000 E150 (ex conversion van) that Jeremy at Weldtech did a full lift for us on. Front radius arms, bent ibeams, Rear custom 7 leafs with Fox 2.0's
The van looks great, the work was top notch and has mostly been a great setup..
EXCEPT we have 1 major issue. The Achilles heal of my van is flat easy washboarded roads.
This thing can tackle huge holes, rocks, tons of travel, all fine.. Give it a 40ft wide flat road with washboards and its virtually undriveable.
I have tried at different speeds from crawling to 50mph runs and the rear end of the van is all over the place. It walks all over the road, the vibration is enough to damage cabinets. Its honestly unbearable.
I have some experience with suspension, many years as a race mechanic on bikes so I understand the concepts. To me it feels like the springs are not progressive enough and the shocks high speed compression and rebound damping is way off. So the rear is too stiff off initial travel and too soft once it progresses.
A note is that we have fairly bad body roll in corners so again telling me that low speed damping and later spring progression is not good.
Now some history. The first set of springs Weldtech had made for us started to sag within a few days, and after 1 month the rear axle was 4in off fender center and the rear had sagged almost 3in. So we went back and had another set made to keep the ride height level. The sag is mostly gone and the axle position is good but now we have this issue.
Our build is a high top, full interior living quarters, however we used very lightweight wood so our usual load is only around 1200# fully loaded for a long trip including our build out (additional weight from empty van as we bought it)
Another note, I recently bagged it with a custom airlift setup (using detachment cups, etc) This fixed some issues, body roll in corner and put more weight on the front end which improved steering and reduced the wander (which tells me our weight bias was off with the leafs alone) But this still is a mess on the washboards. Air bags full or fully empty, no real difference. Tires deflated help, but not much..
Is this just normal for everyone or am I fighting a bad setup here. Any suggestions would be great.
The van looks great, the work was top notch and has mostly been a great setup..
EXCEPT we have 1 major issue. The Achilles heal of my van is flat easy washboarded roads.
This thing can tackle huge holes, rocks, tons of travel, all fine.. Give it a 40ft wide flat road with washboards and its virtually undriveable.
I have tried at different speeds from crawling to 50mph runs and the rear end of the van is all over the place. It walks all over the road, the vibration is enough to damage cabinets. Its honestly unbearable.
I have some experience with suspension, many years as a race mechanic on bikes so I understand the concepts. To me it feels like the springs are not progressive enough and the shocks high speed compression and rebound damping is way off. So the rear is too stiff off initial travel and too soft once it progresses.
A note is that we have fairly bad body roll in corners so again telling me that low speed damping and later spring progression is not good.
Now some history. The first set of springs Weldtech had made for us started to sag within a few days, and after 1 month the rear axle was 4in off fender center and the rear had sagged almost 3in. So we went back and had another set made to keep the ride height level. The sag is mostly gone and the axle position is good but now we have this issue.
Our build is a high top, full interior living quarters, however we used very lightweight wood so our usual load is only around 1200# fully loaded for a long trip including our build out (additional weight from empty van as we bought it)
Another note, I recently bagged it with a custom airlift setup (using detachment cups, etc) This fixed some issues, body roll in corner and put more weight on the front end which improved steering and reduced the wander (which tells me our weight bias was off with the leafs alone) But this still is a mess on the washboards. Air bags full or fully empty, no real difference. Tires deflated help, but not much..
Is this just normal for everyone or am I fighting a bad setup here. Any suggestions would be great.
