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Rock Lizard/Weekend Ultra4(?); blown LS, 40s, tons, bypasses, etc.

Old HDT’s are cheap for a reason. You’re probably in the neighborhood of 50 cents per mile in maintenance costs at that age and presumably around 700-800k on the clock. Volvo support/parts can be tough to come by. They find ways to hurt you that you’d never even imagined before. On top of the cost per mile, you’re a dropped cylinder liner or a wiped cam away from being faced with a $25k inframe or it being worth scrap. Which is not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately.

That being said, I’m here for it. Assuming you’ll strip the 5th wheel off and build a flatbed for the back?
Completely agree, and we'll see how it holds up. The chassis has 1.8M on it, engine was rebuilt 400k ago, tranny seems fairly fresh my neighbor thought. My hope is I won't drive it enough and it'll have no load on it so it'll survive what I need. Maybe that's a wet dream, but if I have to leave it on the side of the road it's in the realm of being a bearable loss. I don't want that to happen, but it'll be somewhat of an experiment :grinpimp:

And yes sir, that's the current plan. Strip the 5th wheel and flatbed. I took it for a spin a few times, registered it, and parked it and focused on KOH rebuild so far. Will start working on it pretty soon now that one project is somewhat sorted.
 
Completely agree, and we'll see how it holds up. The chassis has 1.8M on it, engine was rebuilt 400k ago, tranny seems fairly fresh my neighbor thought. My hope is I won't drive it enough and it'll have no load on it so it'll survive what I need. Maybe that's a wet dream, but if I have to leave it on the side of the road it's in the realm of being a bearable loss. I don't want that to happen, but it'll be somewhat of an experiment :grinpimp:

And yes sir, that's the current plan. Strip the 5th wheel and flatbed. I took it for a spin a few times, registered it, and parked it and focused on KOH rebuild so far. Will start working on it pretty soon now that one project is somewhat sorted.

Definitely an experiment with 1.8m on a Volvo chassis :grinpimp:

You’ve got an EGR only emissions truck so that will help with some costs for sure compared to an 08+ with alphabet soup emissions. I’d just be ready with $10k set aside that you have no emotional attachment to for repairs/maintenance.

They drive easy and have great power compared to an MDT that is kind of miserable on a long drive when they can’t even hold 70 on a small grade empty. You shouldn’t even notice the buggy on the back in the hills with HDT power. D12 and a 10 speed?
 
Definitely an experiment with 1.8m on a Volvo chassis :grinpimp:

You’ve got an EGR only emissions truck so that will help with some costs for sure compared to an 08+ with alphabet soup emissions. I’d just be ready with $10k set aside that you have no emotional attachment to for repairs/maintenance.

They drive easy and have great power compared to an MDT that is kind of miserable on a long drive when they can’t even hold 70 on a small grade empty. You shouldn’t even notice the buggy on the back in the hills with HDT power. D12 and a 10 speed?
You definitely know way more than I do :grinpimp::lmao: I think it's a D12, but I wouldn't know the differences. And yes 10 speed Eaton. It's a 2005.
 
Where did you pick it up in Boise? From a dealer or individual? I am local to Boise and want a semi one day :grinpimp:
 
Where did you pick it up in Boise? From a dealer or individual? I am local to Boise and want a semi one day :grinpimp:
Dude actually picked us up from the airport and had the truck waiting at the truck stop the next exit down so we were in and out in an hour and a half. I found it on KSL :grinpimp: there was a NASCAR race trailer and truck setup I was gonna look at near Kanab UT that I thought was a good deal (again, comparing to toters and the like) and then found this pile for way cheaper and jumped on it hahaha
 
You definitely know way more than I do :grinpimp::lmao: I think it's a D12, but I wouldn't know the differences. And yes 10 speed Eaton. It's a 2005.

I worked for Dayton Freight as a manager for almost 10 years and own my own small fleet now so I've definitely had some exposure to trucks for better or worse. Holler if you ever need a sanity check on something with it.

My most recent project was stretching a Prostar from a daycab truck into a straight truck so we got some practice on cobbling stuff together for our specific use case :dustin:


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Got anything new on the buggy?
Was waiting to post until next week since I'm planning to go to sand hollow this weekend. I've done a couple things since KOH. First was moving the tie rod to the inner hole which increased my steering angle from 30deg to 42deg

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The ram isn't quite maxed out but I had to trim so much shit, and the RCVs max at 45deg so it works out. I can't steer further without hitting the shock. Nearly a 50% increase in steering plus will speed up the steering ratio, though I still want to go to a 2 turn orbital.

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Can't wait to try it out in the rocks! It's a considerable difference driving around normally.

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And then the recent thing was I found cylinder 4 wasn't firing, as well as the blower was only making 2psi and the bypass valve wasn't fully closing. I think I found the issue being a plug wire that was cracked and shorting out. I replaced that coil pack and the plugs also, and changed the oil. The oil looked great, normal super fine metal shavings and no large chunks so the engine seems happy! I bumped to 10w-40 since the oil pressure seemed a bit low and that's a common thickness to run. I also welded a new filler cap on the radiator that's oriented (more) vertically since the previous cap was next to useless for filling it with how angled the radiator is. I also temporarily zip tied the bypass valve closed to test what max boost with the new engine setup is. I then started running into issues the past two days of the serpentine belt eating itself even though nothing seemed to change. I ended up welding a flange on the back side of the tensioner pulley since the serpentine was falling off the back side for some reason, and then next tracked down that one of the idlers wasn't in plane with the other pulleys so was pushing the belt slowly off of the power steering pulley. I have no idea why all of this started having issues, it was fine at koh and then I pull the belt off and reinstall it and then everything got hacked up somehow. I think I'll scan the front end and design some billet mounts for everything in the near future, I've wanted to do that for awhile since the belt routing and mounting can be improved.

With all of that said, last night was the first successful test drive since getting it running on all 8 and having boost and the serpentine surviving!

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And holy shit it pulls like a mule now. Running as a N/A V7 it already made the 5.3 feel slow, but this feels like almost a double in power with it properly running. It pushes you back into the seat launching in 4wd pretty good, and that's only at 8psi from the blower and still with that original tune done at just idle and blipping the throttle. My Tundra does 0-60 in sub 5s and this feels not quite that fast but not far off. I'm really happy with how it feels now, and the engine is running great. This is also through the same worn out old 4l80e and torque converter. New trans and converter and maybe a smaller pulley and it has a lot of power left on the table. I'm also only spinning it to 6k, so theoretically it's just chilling and not working very hard.

Oh I also added a proper catch can!

Can't wait to see how it does this weekend, maybe do another test drive tonight to make sure the serpentine is fixed and also hook the bypass valve back up and get it adjusted, otherwise the semi needs a bit more work on the deck and then will do the first trip with the semi+buggy combo!
 
nice job on the repairs. I'll be following to hear how those knuckles work out long term.
 
Getting the boost back and the extra cylinder is probably where your belt issues arose from. You have both more pull and drag on the belt system now. Any flex, misalignment, whatever, got magnified.
 
Good trip to Sand Hollow with the new setup!

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Didn't really get any photos, and stole some from RPS1030 of Pyleit and I.

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Buggy is working great. The new steering angle made a huge difference, I would've been backing up all over before.

I'm thinking I might need to put a larger alternator in, we stopped at one point and I turned the engine off and just a few minutes of the fans and fuel pump running killed the battery (though it self recovered).

The new engine seemed a bit more tame for crawling than at KOH, not sure why. Maybe just the different rocks. The thing is so brutally loud, I might change the exhaust or try to add more mufflers. I can feel my ear drums shake even without full throttle if I don't have a headset on, and I can live with it being loud but when you're trying to crawl or idle and can't hear anyone talk it's a bit much. We were talking about having the exhaust exit up and over the vehicle instead of dumping in front of the axle might help too, thats obviously how a lot of Ultra4 setups are and a lot of them run the same mufflers I do.


The carrier bearing had some issues coming loose, got it tightened up temporarily and then dropped the front driveshaft off at Driveline Tech just down the street. He's building me a new front driveshaft and I'll drop the rear off to get copied soon too. There's a race end of April and the front was thrown together for KOH and needs to be proper to go fast.


I did a quick sprint through the West Rim loop at the end, the buggy is all around doing awesome. Shocks need some more tuning but it's handling great, has tons of power, and does alright rock crawling so I'm very happy how it's working. Turning into a really fun dual sport setup!
 
Threw some GoPro mounts on the chassis and spent a few hours fucking around.



I need to pull the plugs again and see how it's looking, it feels fine but one of the exhausts sounded a bit weird. I ordered a second wideband, but the Holley somehow doesn't have misfire detection which blows my mind, so besides monitoring left vs right AFR and how the engine sounds there's no easy way to know if it's firing on all 8 (I've used a IR gun but that's not very reliable since the rear header tubes are hard to get a good reading off of). I should probably buy ANOTHER set of plug wires and swap them all out to be safe, course for all I know it's running on all 8 fine... It certainly feels fine, but I thought it felt fine when it was only running on 7 too so now I'm worried.

Still waiting on the new front driveshaft. Talked to Tyler @ ADS a bit more (not about the video, just in general) and he gave me some valving recommendations and sent me some .020" shim packs.

Despite all that, what an absolute blast it is to drive around. Without the front driveshaft vibrating away it's so smooth, flooring it and accelerating past 70 still seems surreal to me, this big lumbering crazy vehicle I built actually being able to do that. I'll probably look back in 5 or 10 years and go wow that thing handled horribly, but right now I'm enjoying it and loving it! Hopefully get the shocks revalved in a week or two, go down to Sand Hollow and throw the GoPro on it to get some footage in the whoops and do some shock tuning before the race in Vernal.
 
Took the buggy out over the weekend, no rockcrawling but put 65 miles on it with my buddy fully suited up.

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I got a new driveshaft from Driveline Tech in Hurricane, I had dropped off the old shaft after the last trip down.

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Beefed up the carrier bearing mount and made a new bracket for the new setup. This is the 3rd front driveshaft iteration and hopefully the last. I was hoping the Busted Knuckle carrier bearing kit I had could be reused, but the dude said their kit was really weird and recommended replacing it all for parts that are off the shelf and easy to replace, so I bit the bullet and said sure.

A quick drive the other day to test it and started getting a misfire again. Found that the same #4 cylinder spark plug wire had gotten fried. The heat protection sleeve wasn't doing as good a job as I had thought, so as a temporary (or permanent?) fix I wrapped all the plug wires in aluminum foil and then put the heat sleeve over them. Kinda ghetto, but I think will do exactly what I need. There was also a plug wire on the driver's side that was starting to get brittle and have the coating flake off. I'll probably rig up some plug wire mounts to try and further secure the plug wires from the headers, but the headers I made are pretty tight.

For the test run this weekend we also hooked the boost bypass valve back up. At this point I think the bypass valve may just be inherently fucked up, since it's extremely inconsistent revving the engine and watching it actuate. I won't fix that before the next race, so decided to hook it up and I'll get that sorted in the future. Since my intercooler is really small, I'd rather the bypass valve be hooked up and not make much boost since it'll keep the intercooler/steering cooling loop cold, where as when it's always in boost that cooling loop gets really hot.

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The next Bonneville Offroad race is in 2.5 weeks, so this was a good test run doing a loop around Sand Hollow and Warner Valley. It was also the first time my buddy was able to fully suit up and properly check out the fire suit/neck restraint/helmet combo. She runs like an absolute animal! No issues whatsoever, no front driveshaft wobble anymore. I'd like to solve the boost issue, but I don't know if I'll ever put more power through this thing than what the current pulley can do. I had thought about putting a bigger blower on, but it makes so much power I don't think the chassis can take anymore. There's so many things that limit it before power---bigger shocks, front suspension travel, steering fidelity, etc.

The biggest thing it needs is a better alignment. It's not horrible, but past 50mph you can feel some oddities of how the suspension is cycling and the steering. Last time I raced I got a proper alignment and it made a huge difference in how controlled it felt and how it handled.

There's also a handful of other small things I'm going to change before this race. The pedals are pretty awful in how they're positioned, really have to crank your ankle back at rest so going to fix that. I ordered a larger master cylinder to try and stiffen the brake feel up too but we'll see how well that fits. I'd still like a 2-turn orbital, but for how expensive orbitals are I think that will wait. The steering is improved with the tighter turning radius from moving the tie rods though so that helps. I'm also going to revalve the shocks again, I got some more shims in from ADS and some more advice about setting them up.

The suspension is alright, I thought before it was pretty good but pushing faster through stuff and I'm finding the limits again. I'm going to stiffen the shocks up a bit more, and then open the ride height bypass tubes more to try and make small shit feel better. The bump zone actually seems pretty good, the whole loop and I never got into the bump stops more than 1" which is where I want. The bump zone is incredibly stiff, combine that with the bump stops and it takes an extremely hard hit to fully bottom the suspension which is what I want.

I'm debating increasing the ride height 1-2" to make it ride a bit better, though that'd compromise handling somewhat. But right now I think I'm only at 8" of up travel in the front, which is really 6" before you hit bumps. Another inch or two would help quite a bit.

The drivetrain ran extremely cool the whole time. Engine never got over 192 I think, trans was sub 150 the whole time. Diffs were nice and cool. No misfire issues finally! It still amazes me how reliable this thing is, I don't really think of something built from scratch to be reliable, but she's been an absolute champ. If I can keep the tires alive and avoid running into any fences, should be a good race in a couple weeks!

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Enjoyed the detailed write up of updates. What is the format for the Bonneville race?
Super tiny, your registration dictates starting order, and there's effectively like truck/buggies and UTVs, maybe small buggies like 1600s if they show up. And broken into sportsman and pro which is just a matter of how much you pay and how many laps you do.

This is the same race I did last year, for some reason it was the last race last year and the first race this year. Course is still TBD if it's similar to before or maybe opened up to like a 70 mile loop.

Super chill, show up, camp in parking lot, prerun lap, check gear and the car has the basic shit, and that's it. I like it, though there's nothing that requires 4WD usually. But it's still fun to race around and find the limits, and not all the pressure and drama of a bigger events, just go out and have fun, then load up and be home that night.
 
Super tiny, your registration dictates starting order, and there's effectively like truck/buggies and UTVs, maybe small buggies like 1600s if they show up. And broken into sportsman and pro which is just a matter of how much you pay and how many laps you do.

This is the same race I did last year, for some reason it was the last race last year and the first race this year. Course is still TBD if it's similar to before or maybe opened up to like a 70 mile loop.

Super chill, show up, camp in parking lot, prerun lap, check gear and the car has the basic shit, and that's it. I like it, though there's nothing that requires 4WD usually. But it's still fun to race around and find the limits, and not all the pressure and drama of a bigger events, just go out and have fun, then load up and be home that night.
Awesome!
 
It's not horrible, but past 50mph you can feel some oddities of how the suspension is cycling and the steering.

how many turns are your comp/rebound tubes open? whats your valve stack look like? how far are you from the bumpzone at ride height?
 
Went out to Vernal this weekend to race with Bonneville Off-road! The course was similar to the same one last year, and was 8x laps at 18ish miles per lap so around ~140 total. This was also the first race with the semi, just got a mini bike, first time sleeping in the semi, we bought a projector to play movies on the back of the semi, just tons of fun planned all around!

I did extremely minimal prep beforehand. I joke that it doesn't need much prep since it's not a dedicated racecar. I spent most of the time messing with the semi and making improvements to it, and only an afternoon after work really screwing with the buggy. I made a new brake pedal and adjusted the gas pedal, moving them back around 3" which was really nice. I also threw a hi lift mount on the spare tire carrier. Otherwise it was just checking bolts, new oil filter, and a tape measure and string alignment!

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The semi worked great, the gear pass through had all the race gear, the passenger box had all the tools, and the driver's box had some random stuff like fire extinguishers. Then we threw a cooler for food on the deck and strapped the Jerry cans on and that was about it. Picked up my buddy to codrive and he slept most of the way to the race with the wife riding shotgun.

It ended up raining or snowing most of the drive which was great.

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As soon as we arrived the race director told us to go do our prerun lap since it wasn't raining at that moment, so we quickly unloaded the semi and took the buggy out!

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This was the first time my buddy had been codriver in anything, and since it was starting to rain and get muddy he got a quick speed run how to mark hazards in the low rance and then we putted around the course. We also got the custom molded ear plug/speakers which are an absolute world of difference, and this was the first time with both of us having them in the car so got to make sure everything was playing well together. And that was about it!

This whole race was extremely chill compared to any other race I've done, even this same race last year. There was no wrenching or screwing with things, no late nights leading up to it, just everything was happy and the prerun lap went great! Which really worked out since it started raining quite a bit after we got back.

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We went to the driver's meeting, I got shit because the course now went through the whole in the fence I created last year :grinpimp: you could say I was directly involved building the course the course! There was only a dozen or so people racing. Super tiny turn out, they almost pulled the plug not to do it. Quite a combination of vehicles, a full on trophy truck (actually pitted for that guy for the Baja 1000 in 2019), a class 7, 5, 11, 12, and some UTVs, and I guess a pseudo-Ultra4!

After the meeting we chilled and went to bed. The race was pushed back the following day until a 10am start to try and let the course dry a bit. I actually was hoping into turn into an absolute cluster of mud since it'd give me a big advantage with 4wd :grinpimp:

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We ended up starting 2nd behind the trophy truck, the starting order was mainly based on the heavier guys up front.

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The trophy truck of course ran away instantly. It was cool to see how it compared to the buggy, since I think it's taller and of course wider than the buggy. Maybe similar power to weight, similar tires, closer in wheel base than I am with most crawlers, lots of similarities and differences. Same thing with the class 7 which was a Ranger, he passed me after a few miles and it was similar, I could easily outrun the Ranger in the straights, but corners I at least wasn't confident or even know if the buggy could keep up, and the Ranger would take off through the chop and I just didn't trust the hydraulic steering and my abilities to keep up.

Overall I was really happy with the buggy, and it was cool to be on the same course before and see the changes I had done to them buggy. The shocks were way better this time being setup a lot stiffer, before I would drop into things and bottom out even with the bypasses all the way closed and this time I could carry 50-60mph through those same dips and be fine which was wild. I have everything to revalve the shocks stiffer too so I'm excited to make the suspension handle better, but it didn't feel like it was slowing me down for the most part.

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The engine is an absolute animal, I am so happy how well it does considering I built it :grinpimp: the bypass valve on the supercharger is still being weird but I hooked it up so it wouldn't get so hot by always being in boost, plus tame it a bit. I call it "low boost mode", and even setup this way it's so powerful compared to what I'm used to. There were very few places I would actually floor it, and when I did it was only for a few seconds, it'd get up to speed plenty fast before something else or myself was the limiting factor. And to think the blower isn't making much boost, and the engine is built that it could handle 4-5x the current boost. Needless to say, power will never the limiting factor on this buggy :grinpimp: I don't know if the engine got over 195 the whole time. The trans was like 185 for a bit I think. Oil pressure fine. Even the dashes were fine and not randomly jumping around from getting wet and dirty which was a first! Not a single complaint about the powerplant whatsoever, not once was it a concern or doing anything I didn't like. The transmission still has 4th turned off since this is that fucked 250k trans, so on one straight I'd wind it out in 3rd to 4000rpm or so but we'd be going over 80mph and the steering just seemed so sketchy I didn't push it more.

The brakes I ended up having an issue early on, I think lap 2 the brakes became extremely squishy and I pulled into pit and turned out the front brake line going down the upper link got pinched by the header and was spraying. I forgot to grab my spare brake line so we vice gripped the front line and kept going. The braking wasn't great, had to usually double pump the brakes, but I could work with it and apparently my lap times improved even with that handicap. I also realized part way through why the brakes still seemed kind of fine, since I only had rear brakes but with 4wd coupling the axles it made the braking handling behave the same. That's why I don't run a proportioning valve, and never thought of that being a benefit with a brake line going out. With that said I do think I'll add either a proportioning valve or just individual shut offs right at the master to turn off the front or back in case this happens again. That was the only issue I had the whole race though!

The biggest complaint, or combination of issues, by far is the steering. I have a Howe full hydraulic setup, so I'm not sure if there's a way to make it better, but hydraulic steering just sucks ass. I don't know how the Ultra4 guys go so fast confidently, or they just say fuck it and send it. The road straight away we were in the mid 80s, and that bitch just feels like it keeps slowly drifting back and forth. And a small steering change at 80mph feels nearly impossible, it's like attempting a steering suggestion or seems like it'll way over react. And then the shit of going into a corner, hit the brakes, engine speed drops and so does assist so now you went from no effort to way more effort to rip the wheel over. I still have the 3 turn orbital and I do think the 2 turn would help...in some ways, but maybe it's not worth that twitchiness when it's already too twitchy going fast it seems like. Maybe people can tell me if something is wrong, but I think it's just the name of the game with full hydro? That's honestly the biggest thing I look forward to if/when I build a new vehicle, is either a rack and pinion or hell maybe even a 3 link. Like my can-am feels so solid and you could thread a needle, and the buggy is nowhere near that and I doubt it ever will. And that by extension mentally limits me, since I'm worried it'll roll over in a corner and I can't react with the slow steering or be confident to know the wheels are facing where I think they are to counter it. It's a pain in the ass and the biggest thing I struggle with.

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Anyway, overall the buggy did great. We finished the race, which I think is the first race I've ever been in (driver or codriver) and finished the whole thing, so major victory there :grinpimp: the buggy feels way more capable than I am, and still blown away how reliable it is. Tiny little race no one has heard of, but it's an awesome dual sport rig. I think it's so cool I can go do a race and go rock crawling with my buddies the next day.

Today I unloaded it, I have more pictures but I'm too lazy to split this into two posts (fuck irates stupid 10 photo limit). One photo I will post is the passenger front bump got nicely clearanced :lmao:

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When I aligned it I pushed the passenger side forward 3/8", and obviously it was tickling the link bracket to begin with! But the shaft is fine, so fuck it it'll work :flipoff2:

The aluminum knuckles look totally fine, actually everything else seems fine. Pulled the panels off and gave it a bath.

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Driving through rain for hours really did a number on the raw chassis though. I'm back to debating to paint it, I could have it torn down to a raw chassis in a day and then get it blasted.... Or maybe just go to sand hollow and let it self sand blast :grinpimp:


Next race is in June, we'll see if/what upgrades I decide to do before then, or just take it rock crawling in the mean time!
 
how many turns are your comp/rebound tubes open? whats your valve stack look like? how far are you from the bumpzone at ride height?
Rebound is all the way open front and rear. Compression, front bottom tube is 10 turns, top tube is 2 turns. Rear short tube is 6 turns and long tube is 3 turns.

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Rebound is 10s front and rear.

Compression front is a 20+10 pyramid with the face shim being only a 20, rear is a 20+15 pyramid with the face shim being only a 20.

I forget how long the bump zone is, but I'm at ~8" of shock up travel front and rear with a 14" up front and 18" out back.

After talking to Tyler at ADS he said I did the opposite of what he would do, he said the face shim should be really thick and open the ride height tube a lot and that will force fluid through the bypass tube, where as I did the opposite and did a small face shim to allow it to open easily which then kind of defeats the purpose of the tube.

My plan was to increase the compression stacks for both front and rear to 20+20 pyramids since I have the zone before the bump zone already mostly closed off and I'd like to be able to stiffen that zone a bit more and then open the ride height tubes more. Tyler says I should do 3x .020" face shims too and really open the ride height zone.

Also, my front coilover is just a carrier, no shims. The rear coilover is I think a 15 flutter and 8s on rebound? I do think the rear springs need to get quite a bit stiffer, they have I want to say like 3" of preload. The rear spring crossover is as high as possible, the front crossover is 1" above ride height.
 
Sweet stuff, cool to follow along with the evolution of this thing.

In regards to the steering, do you happen to know how big the orofice is in the pressure fitting on the pump? I'm not a full hydro guy, but It almost sounds like the fitting could be drilled too large. It dictates at what RPM the pump hits its flow cutoff, leveling off the pump flow beyond that point so your steering doesn't get hyper sensitive as the RPMs increase.
 
Sweet stuff, cool to follow along with the evolution of this thing.

In regards to the steering, do you happen to know how big the orofice is in the pressure fitting on the pump? I'm not a full hydro guy, but It almost sounds like the fitting could be drilled too large. It dictates at what RPM the pump hits its flow cutoff, leveling off the pump flow beyond that point so your steering doesn't get hyper sensitive as the RPMs increase.
I have no idea, the whole package came from Howe and I've never screwed with it. I was thinking of giving them and radial dynamics a call and see if there's ways to improve it.
 
i suspect you valving is too firm and your tubes are too open causing the shock to 'bump' into the bump zone causing the float that you are feeling.
That's what shock tuners told me too.
So I went lighter and the thing felt loose as a mofo and was slapping the bumps hard.
When I had a firmer tune, it "felt better" inside.
Maybe snivilous is in the same boat?
 
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