Winding up the torsion bars.

[STUTE]

Is it hard??

Am i going to undo a bold and have it fly off and not be able to drive my car untill I buy special too no#6643 from nissan?

Is it easy as pie??

thanks guys , lookin forward to the replies.

Stuart

 

[Shonky]

First off, I'm assuming it's a D22 ute, if this is the case you'll need the following.

Two 19mm spanners.
One trolley jack.
One long breaker bar, or a ratchet with a bit of pipe as an extension on the handle to give you more leverage, and a 19mm socket. (Optional)

Next, jump under the car, follow the bars back to the adjusters, they are under the front seats. Then using the two spanners, hold the bottom nut still and undo the top nut a turn or two.

Now if you don't have the optional long bar, hold the bottom nut still, and turn the bolt below the cross member a number of turns clockwise, how many turns is up to you, one turn equals about 3-4mm in height.

If you don't have the long bar but just a spanner, you may need to jack the car up to take the weight off the torsion bars to make it easier to turn the adjusting bolt. Please use jack stands to support the car before getting under it to adjust the torsion bars.

Once you've done the amount of turns you think you will need, put the car back on its wheels if you jacked it up, roll the car back or forwards a few metres to take the side loading off the wheels and then give the suspension a bit of a bounce to see what the new height is.

Ideally you will want to keep about 10mm minimum between the top bump stop and the upper control arm, any less than this and it destroys the handling, over big bumps the front end will run out of down travel and the front wheels will leave the ground, not a good thing doing a 100 km/hr round a sweeping bend, and also with to the way the shock absorbers are mounted they will get weaker the higher the suspension is lifted due their geometry with the lower wishbone, which leads to the front end floating more after large bumps.

 

[Dion]

Lo, for here cometh the naysayers! I'm going to sound like everyone's mother here and spoil all the fun, but bear in mind that there are significant limitations when lifting (and lowering) independent front suspension. The suspension geometry is designed to give an increase in negative camber with the change in control arm angle associated with the wheel moving up relative to the car, such as the outside wheel when cornering hard, to keep as much tyre flat on the road as possible and to transmit more lateral forces into the tyre rather than across it. In the case of lifting it, you're increasing the amount of positive camber (positive camber keeps the inside tyre flat on the road in a turn) at default ride height, resulting in piss poor on-road handling, uneven and increased tyre wear, excessive toe-out caused by the new steering linkage angles making the car unstable at speed, and if you thought you broke CV joints before when offroading hard, welcome to a new world of pain since your CV joints, when in 4x4, will be turning at a greater angle constantly and wearing out faster.

You can whip out the angle grinder and modify your top control arm to be a little shorter to correct the positive camber. Aftermarket lift package arms are weaker than the Nissan arms. This is considered the "proper" way to do a hack job, but this still leaves you with some of the above problems. Get a wheel alignment after making any changes.

The optimal routes you can take to a greater ride height:
-Do what you like with the rear axle, but at the front get the whole diff and suspension sub frame dropped lower. Rue lack of money afterwards, and bigger tyres would have helped better anyway since you're still hindered by the clearance from the ground to your front diff's bash plates in wheel ruts.
-Perform a solid axle swap with a Hilux, Land Rover, Patrol, whatever, again rue and lament lack of money afterwards and ponder why you bought an IFS truck in the first place.
-Best for last, a body lift of 25-75mm (any more and you may require an engineer to sign off on the modification) with bigger tyres to fill your now empty guards. This will give you better ground clearance, won't lift your centre of gravity into the stratosphere and excluding the tyres is cheap as chips.

Think about why you're doing the lift? Is it to fit bigger tyres? See the above thing about body lifts. Is it to look modified solid axle Hiluxes, Cruisers and Patrols in the eye? Spend your dollars and effort on good tyres for your preferred terrain, improving your approach, departure and ramp over angles without lifting, an air compressor, diff lockers and a suite of driving courses, then go own those noobs on the tracks!

We have Navaras with IFS because Paris-Dakar 4x4s have IFS. And IRS, but we like to carry a load during the week. We can out-drive solid axle 4x4s at speed on rough terrain, cause when one wheel launches off a tussock, the other just keeps on truckin'.

Adios.

 

[Laith]

That sounds like a 4wd Act post.

 

[tweak'e]

don't forget to get the usual 2" you will have to pull the bars out and turn the correct amount of notches. the adjustment is really only a fine adjustment.
try to get it so the adjuster is not sticking out where it can be hit.

 

[Dion]

Probally tell us the earth is coming to an end next year too. I can't say my nav handles any worse nor wears different to standard height. And i don't drive like a old man on the road either. I have noticed if anything with uprated t bars my onroad cornering and change of direction is quicker and has less body roll. As for the angle of the CV....its such a small change that its really not going to effect its lifespan.

No, I won't, I know nothing about the earth's end and don't mind much what you do with your car, but torsion bar cranking is still a hack job and it'd be good if everyone knew the pro (it's free) and cons.

If you have the stock torsions, tightened, less body roll is due to the fact that you've moved the default position to a point in the torsion bar with a greater spring rate. Normally harder springs are favoured by road car tuners, not offroaders, but each to their own. Your change-of-direction responsiveness is due to your wheels being toe-out, which is a trade off between turn-in and straight line stability. I suppose it won't matter on a utility since it's not going to go that fast anyway.

woznme, how much did you crank yours up, do you mean by uprated you've replaced them with higher-spring-rate units? Have you renewed your tyres since you made the change? In the interests of proving me to be a PITA whinger, I'd be very interested to hear about the tread depth on the outside half compared with the inside half on the old fronts.

Within about 1.5" of extra ride height you won't do very much damage at all, but why bother?

 

[Dave]

Play nice everyone.

Hey Pro-Nav, how come your location is Gold Coast and Central Victoria. Do you travel alot for work ?

Dave.

 

[tweak'e]

...........
Within about 1.5" of extra ride height you won't do very much damage at all, but why bother?

lets face it most people only do light 4x4ing.
certainly when you get into the big lifts you need camber adjstment etc and in bigger lifts CV angle becomes an issue and SFA is a better choice.
you don't need 18" lift if your only driving over paddocks

 

[Laith]

My stock torsion bars have been wound up approx 2/2.5 inches for over a 100,000 kays. On the same set of tyres during that whole time. Obviously they are wearing evenly.

Tread depth the same inside and out. (Although getting low now).

I dont think I'd blame that on winding my torsion bars up though. More like the 100k+ that I've driven on them.

 

[tommy222220_0]

If you have the stock torsions, tightened, less body roll is due to the fact that you've moved the default position to a point in the torsion bar with a greater spring rate. Normally harder springs are favoured by road car tuners, not offroaders, but each to their own. Your change-of-direction responsiveness is due to your wheels being toe-out, which is a trade off between turn-in and straight line stability. I suppose it won't matter on a utility since it's not going to go that fast anyway.

Actually the spring rate of the torsion bar will not change. There is the exact same weight on each front wheel before and after 'cranking'
The only way to increase the spring rate is to upgrade to HD items.

Within about 1.5" of extra ride height you won't do very much damage at all, but why bother?

Also consider the amount of time in 4wd. This is the only time ur front CV's are under extra strain, But as long as the bumpstops havent been touched, the cv's are within' their limits.

 

[Dion]

Actually the spring rate of the torsion bar will not change. There is the exact same weight on each front wheel before and after 'cranking'
The only way to increase the spring rate is to upgrade to HD items.

You're right, the spring constant doesn't change, the displacement changes, I didn't think my words through. What I was thinking to say is you're altering the point of equilibrium, so whilst the applied torsion and the reaction torsion are unchanged at the equilibrium position, as you move through the spring's range of movement and approach the bumpstop for upwards wheel travel, the reaction force is greater than you would have experienced near the bump stop in stock configuration as you've introduced an extra few degrees of movement. That wouldn't affect the degree of body roll you'd experience on the road, so for woznme it must be the aftermarket bars. My mistake.

It would however limit the useable wheel travel as it would require greater force than the vehicle's weight will normally exert to reach the last few millimetres of travel; the torsion bar diameter is chosen to match the vehicle's mass and that hasn't changed. Unless you frequently hit the top bumpstops, hard, when offroading in stock form, you'll experience little advantage in wheel travel from the modification.

Thanks for the input, Laith. Did you notice any change in body roll before and after the modification?

Tweak'e, I don't see why anybody would need 2" of extra clearance to drive around paddocks, either. I've driven around a lot of paddocks and have never run out of ground clearance. When you perform this modification, you limit your downwards wheel travel, which is just as important as upwards wheel travel with regards to maintaining traction on uneven ground (like eroded and rutted tracks), so it makes for a worse fourby if you don't have a diff locker. You'll have a more capable car with regards to ground clearance if you perform a body lift and fit taller tyres.

Play nice everyone.

Hey Pro-Nav, how come your location is Gold Coast and Central Victoria. Do you travel alot for work ?

Dave.

I do, yeah. If home is where all your stuff is, then home is Central Victoria, but I only go back every two months or so, most of my time is spent on the Coast.

 

[Dion]

Also consider the amount of time in 4wd. This is the only time ur front CV's are under extra strain, But as long as the bumpstops havent been touched, the cv's are within' their limits.

This depends entirely on the individual usage of each vehicle. People who've gone down the path of performing a torsion bar lift in order to fit larger diameter tyres are going to have trouble because they're not far from the lower bumpstops, and their CVs will spend a lot of time operating at the lower bumpstops in combination with the extra load introduced by the larger diameter tyres. Conversely, the majority of the CV damage that occurs I would assume happens when the wheel in question is the most heavily loaded on the vehicle, and therefore the wheel would be close to the top of its travel. As I mentioned before it's much harder with the modification to reach the top of the travel, so this would provide for some protection against CV damage.

I guess I assume everyone's going for a vehicle that can tackle more than light four-wheel-driving. Who knows how the OP is going to treat his vehicle.

 

[tweak'e]

Tweak'e, I don't see why anybody would need 2" of extra clearance to drive around paddocks, either. I've driven around a lot of paddocks and have never run out of ground clearance. When you perform this modification, you limit your downwards wheel travel, which is just as important as upwards wheel travel with regards to maintaining traction on uneven ground (like eroded and rutted tracks), so it makes for a worse fourby if you don't have a diff locker. You'll have a more capable car with regards to ground clearance if you perform a body lift and fit taller tyres.

a small lift is handy. certainly makes it easier going through ditches etc on the farm, a bit more front and rear clearance.
incidently i had 2" lift for a while but dropped the front back down to stock due to the heavy weight i tend to carry. i do mostly farm style 4x4, sometimes that extra few inches help but i can usually get away with stock height but not as easly as when i had the lift.

 

[tommy222220_0]

...the majority of the CV damage that occurs I would assume happens when the wheel in question is the most heavily loaded on the vehicle, and therefore the wheel would be close to the top of its travel. As I mentioned before it's much harder with the modification to reach the top of the travel, so this would provide for some protection against CV damage.

Most CV damage happes when the cv is at the biggest angle (in both directions) ie. full steering lock and max travel. Also very prone to break if they suddenly regain traction from wheel spin. (Snap!) Are designed to be the weakest link in the driveline. Alot easier and cheaper to replace CV's (than transfer chains, oops my bad nissan) Diffs, Gbox's etc

 

[Dion]

a small lift is handy. certainly makes it easier going through ditches etc on the farm, a bit more front and rear clearance.
incidently i had 2" lift for a while but dropped the front back down to stock due to the heavy weight i tend to carry. i do mostly farm style 4x4, sometimes that extra few inches help but i can usually get away with stock height but not as easly as when i had the lift.

Front and rear clearance through ditches - by that do you mean it gives you a better approach and departure angle?

Which part of the truck bottoms out without the lift?

 

[tweak'e]

i didn't do a lot with front wound up.

even with rear lift towball is the first thing to hit, rubbed the sils a bit. i don't push it hard enough to hit the front. but tend to get rather close to bottoming out the chassi when driving onto some of the banks or going over a small drop.

i usually try to avoid places where i might get stuck

 

[Matt - VNET Pro]

Just picked up for ute the other day from getting 2" lift done, has been back twice as now as they originally put in the wrong rear springs, more info on another thread. But my question is should the torsion bar adjusters be equal on both sides when looking under the vehicle......I also have about 6-7mm difference from drivers side and passenger side to ground......? Your thoughts. Pics for your thoughts below.

 

[SOLID D22]

Yeah seems odd doesnt it but i dont have a clue if its right or wrong.
Bloody clean underneath, take it off road!

 

[Matt - VNET Pro]

Yeah does look pretty clean doesnt it, only done 15,000 k's on it, and worse still only hit the serious dirt half a dozen times or so to date. . . . . . . snorkel & winch to come them I'm set.

 

[Jason]

The adjusters could be like that and the height be the same, it depends on how the splines are set. One of the torsion bars could be a spline or two further around than the other.

Very weird being so new though.