I had a question:
What made you choose a coil over linked front end over TG's leaf setup. I am looking at doing a similar swap upon completion of this deployment and I was wondering what your reasoning was. I read the entire thread and couldn't find the answer I would think for expo purposes leafs would be a bit more forgiving and more easily replaced in a pinch.
Good question. What influenced my thinking was maintenance, reliability and durability. My intended use for the vehicle is driving long distances to get to a wheeling destination for overland travel of generally not more than 2 weeks duration, so I want comfortable highway manners and ride but with the ability to handle challenging terrain beyond what my IFS could provide.
I considered leafs, radial arms, 3-link, and even 4-link. All present advantages and disadvantages. I ended up selecting radius arms with a panhard bar mainly because it met my above criteria on more points than the other options. Many modern SFA vehicles use the same sort of suspension - the 70 and 80-series Land Cruiser and Jeeps are examples. These control arms really don't require a lot of maintenance and these in particular are made of some serious steel - not the thin wall stuff you see on OEM vehicles. There is absolutely nothing wrong with leaf packs whatsoever; this is just the route I decided upon to meet my needs.
Now, you can make a good case for front leaf packs on an expo vehicle, but seriously, I'm really not going to take my Tacoma across equatroial Africa where I might have to scavenge for replacement parts from ancient vehicles abondoned in the jungle; and when armageddon happens the EMP will have fried my Tacoma ECM (and I'll be annoyed that I didn't get that FJ62) and the zombies have set off the last of the Claymore's, I'll just call in the FPF on my AO and call it a day. There. Deflected that possible thread hi-jack.
OBTW, if you just read this entire thread then you are probably AWOL - go report to your 1SG.
Stay safe and keep us posted on your vehicle plans.
