I was considering using the same kit on my Ex. However, after more digging, I am leaning toward a mix of Carli springs and OUO adjustable radius arms, instead.
Mated to a 2005+ D60 of course. I'm not a huge fan of coilovers on a go slow vehicle. On a rail, trophy truck, comp buggy with a cage, different.
Easier to rebuild/replace a shock that isn't structural. If you plan on 100 MPH across the desert...then I get it. In a van? I think you can achieve as good
or better results with external shocks and progressive rate coils in buckets. Just seems more practical/less overkill.
The adjustable radius arms are interesting, thanks for passing that along. It looks like a nice option for people looking to alter as little as possible, attain a level of adjustability for their caster angles, and avoid using drop brackets on the radius arms. I think though that swapping out the factory mount/bracket and running a proper 4 link is a better way to go, especially since it would cost about the same.
The coil overs seem fun. I'm not running them for huge articulation. To get that I'd really have to build the mounts up into the engine bay, and then the rear is still running leaf springs anyway. I'm really just interested to see what kind of a ride I can get out of one of these setups. And, although the van is a big heavy beast, it's also not driven the same as a trophy truck, which isn't all that light of a vehicle either. It's unlikely that I'll be putting the level of force on my suspension that the typical coil over user will put on theirs, and that the shock is designed to hold up to.
If I did manage to break a shock though, I can just weld on some pads and swap over to a coil/bucket setup, like you're saying. I'm discovering a lot of sites designed for building suspensions, like Rusty's Off Road, Parts Mike, Barnes 4wd, that make me not too worried, since most of the fabrication is done and really it's just a weld in place kind of thing. I've also been watching Extreme 4x4, and whatever the other show is with the same guy, and that's been really helpful. Shoot, I was watching it last night and I was ready to build a hybrid, Corporate 14bolt / Dana front axle! Just kidding ... but only because a truss wouldn't fit well under the van and I don't want to replace that ma$$ive axle tubing. But the price / performance of that truss'd axle can't be beat! He built that thing for like $300
Well in defense of the build plan, coil-overs make ride height adjustments and suspension tuning on the fly pretty simple. At least up front. I think the plan is still leaf springs out back. There are plenty of go-slows out there using the coil over setups. Massive articulation can be had using the design so it was real popular in the rock crawling crowd. I think it's progressed to rock "racing" now, but I've pretty much quit following all of it for the time being so I don't know what the suspension fad of the moment is.
Buuut, overall I agree. Buuut, it's his money, his ride, and he's the only guy he needs to please.
To the OP. One thing to consider. When Jeep came out with the TJ they used a factory short arm 4-link setup. People started mucking about with it, using aftermarket lift kits engineered by the "experts", and there was a pretty serious problem with death-wobble. If you aren't familiar look that up. It can make you crap your pants like a world class olympic level pants crapper, and tracking down/eliminating its cause can be frustrating and expensive. It doesn't always follow the rules so to speak.
Before you start building you really should look into that. Talk to the people that have had it, what caused it, etc etc. I had that in a chevy truck I had bought back in the 80's and I'll tell you, you want nothing to do with it. It would show up randomly and vary from just a mild shimmy and gone, to the entire front end of the truck jumping off the ground, at speed. Nooo thanks.
Thanks for mentioning death wobble. I've been reading a bit about that and it sounds downright frightening. I remember a professor of mine talking about it in a Differential Equations class that I took, he thought the oscillation was pretty awesome. He also talked about the Rancho adjustable shocks in that class.
In every case though it's going to come down to some component of the system being loose, or otherwise failing. Either that, or poor design, likely improper angles, causing forces to go up somewhere that's not designed to handle them. Or, forces exceeding the limitations of the system, like from running too large of tires, or improper offset of the wheels, or something like that.
