I know I have not posted in a loooong time. My last update on this build thread was on 2/26/20 and I launched LusoOverland.com on 3/1/20 so that explains my absence as work has been super busy. But in a good way, you guys have been keeping me busy with orders and I certainly appreciate it.
Let's get back to the story of Yoshi.
6/19/20: I made a mistake when ordering the Lovells EHD front springs, a mistake that the Lovell's engineers also did not catch - The EHD springs are for Diesel Pajeros only and if you put them on a petrol Montero like me it's very difficult to get them into spec. Even with the ARB bumper, 3 skids, rock sliders, and winch I was still 130lbs shy of the minimum weight needed on the front end for these springs to be in their load range. The ride was extremely harsh, the lift was way too high, and the overall performance of the truck both on and offroad suffered as a result. On the plus side, it was almost impossible to bottom out the shocks no matter how hard I hit a bump or hole. It also explains why my truck rode soooo much better whenever my big 300lb brother in law would sit shotgun.
Now that I'm a Lovells Springs dealer, I finally got around to switching out the EHD front coils for HD ones. I also took the opportunity to put on a pair of PolyTuff poly lower coil spring pads because the pads take a lot of abuse from the HD springs and added weight. I filmed the entire process in case anyone wants to do their own lift/strut assembly:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17872947343748613/
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The difference is amazing. The truck now drives soo much better, it's faster, brakes faster, handles better, and actually performs offroad like it is supposed to. Gen3s are fickle beasts and there is such a thing as too much lift on these trucks...and it does not take much. 2" is about as high as you want to go in the front. You can go a little higher if you have racing coilovers (like King Shocks) or if you have a subframe drop, but on just a standard coil spring lift going about 2" is the max before the lift starts creating more problems than advantages.
Firstly, the stress you'll be putting on CVs and steering components is greatly increased. Staying below 2" and the angles are totally fine and shouldn't affect longevity much at all.
To complicate matters, my front end was not just too high but oversprung as well. For someone with the correct load spec'd springs in the front but then more than 2" of lift with the addition of spacers for example, this wouldn't be as big of an issue. Assuming of course that their rear end was just as high as the front or higher. But for me, I was oversprung on the front and these EHD coils were causing my front to sit 1" higher than the rear.
Which you can see here:
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This caused a lot of problems outside of a harsh ride- from reduced braking effectiveness, slower acceleration, and most noticeable - terrible traction. With the front not having enough weight on it, the traction control would kick in all the time offroad even over the slightest obstacle or undulation. I noticed that my traction control was kicking in a lot more frequently in Yoshi than on my previous Gen3 but didn't really give it much thought until I went winter wheeling in the snow and mud and got stuck for my first time ever! The mud was deep and soft and I picked a terrible line but still, I had my rear locker on and should have made it. It was shortly after this that I realized I was basically driving around in 2wheel drive as the front wheels were not making significant enough contact with the ground and were not helping much. You can even see in these photos how high my front wheels are above the ground while my back wheels dug deep into it:
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The truck drives so much better now with the HD springs and traction offroad is back to the way it should be. The traction control doesn't kick in unless I'm really getting after it.
So in the end, I went down from a 2.8" lift to 1.4" lift by switching out the incorrect springs. The only negative is that now I can get the front driver side wheel to hit the inner wheel liner if I hit a bump/divot with force and cause it to go full compression. This is not possible when going slow up a ramp as the passenger side will just lift off the ground, but when you hit something with speed it forces the tire up fast and hard enough to hit the inner wheel well/fender liner at the very top well before the lower arm bump stops hit the frame.
You can see the tire rub marks and how it removed the push clip in the fender liner hole here in this terrible photo I took with a potato:
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It's a very minor issue, waaaaay less annoying than being oversprung, but one that I'll be fixing soon. It is only happening on the driver's side even though both sides have the same lift height measurement, I think this is because of the extra weight of driver and battery on the left side that causes more force to come down on that side; but either way, I'll be lifting both sides equally but not past 2" this time. I'm at 1.4" of lift and am pretty sure that another .25" or possibly .5" at the most will sort it out. I tend to subscribe to the school of thought that you only want as much lift as it takes to clear the tire size you want to run, especially on a Gen3 that already has gobs of ground clearance. Oh and the reason I'm only getting 1.4" of lift out of the Lovells 1.5-2" lift kit is because the HD springs are rated for up to 250lbs maximum constant weight and I'm a little over that with 275lbs of added constant weight (the ARB bumper alone is 110lbs!).
