Old man emu vs tough dog vs tjm golds

[Patrol94]

Hi all just looking for some feed back on these 3 suspensions for 3l patrol ute coils all round looking at the 2" lift. Just wondering your experiences with them and ups and downs bout each one and even other brands. Would be really appreciated and helpful as I'm looking at a lift in the next few weeks. Thanks

[threedogs]

DX and the other ute/pod guys will sort you out

[Patrol94]

That would good just not sure on what would be best

[MudRunnerTD]

Everyone else is still trying to catchup to the industry Bench Mark!!

OME every day of the week mate. Hands down Winner.

[Patrol94]

Yeah They would be my preferred choice right now as they have a ag quip special for $900 for front and rear shocks and springs but only got until Thursday hope they still have the stock in by then. Cheers for the advice

[Silver]

have you thought about what you want from the springs apart from a lift?

The main choice I can think of is load carrying - v - comfort and articulation (wheel travel up and droop down). If the springs are made stiff to resist being squished under load, then they will also do the same when out playing, unladen. Heavier springs will tend to hold the diff the same distance from the chassis more than softer springs.

With stiff heavy duty springs, if one rear wheel is on a hump, the body will rise more than with softer springs, meaning that the dangling wheel at the other end has further to droop down to get in contact with the ground and help push :-).

Since you have a ute, you may have leaves at the back, not coils, or even leaves all round? If so, the leaves will also not allow the axle to droop down as much with stiff load carrying springs than softer ones.

With coils, the dangling end of the axle's droop is controlled by the sway bar, if any, and the length of the shock. Nothing holds the the top of a coil to the chassis, nor the bottom to the diff. Not in the usual set up, anyway. The length of the shock is enough to keep the spring trapped between the mounting plates. There are other options for big flexi lifts to keep the coils under the vehicle, but I have only read about them.

So, how do we maintain some comfort, and hopefully some more articulation, while still having springs that will carry a heavier load, assuming that is required? Well, with coils, they make progressive coils that have a short squishy bit that is meant to work under light loads, and kinda fold out of the way under heavy loads, when the rest of the spring, being more heavily constructed, does its bit to hold the load.

Another solution is to fit airbags - Firestone or Polyair - blue -v-red - can be inflated when vehicle is loaded -v- cannot be inflated when vehicle is loaded. These usually go inside the coil, and can be pumped up to various pressures. I have firestones from the airbag man, and the instructions say minimum 5 psi even when unladen - so that reduces the up movement of the axle as well. For leaves they go between the top leaf and the chassis.

With leaves there are options like helper springs and springs stacked so that there are a couple of light bendy ones that work while the vehicle is unladen, that flatten out against a pack of heavier ones that resist a load.

Hope this makes sense and anyone with more info please feel free to add/correct.

Silver is an Mav wagon coils all round. standard height. Came with OME comfort springs and shocks. Well mannered on road. Comfortable. Being a supple spring, articulation is greater than a load carrying set, be it OME or someone else's. As I said I fitted airbags for when we load up a bit on a trip.

I have just bought some second hand TJM EXT golds or something like that, to get some lift. It turns out that the rears are extra heavy duty. I hope that I don't pay too much a price for this in terms of articulation - time will tell. If they are too heavy, someone into touring with rear drawers and a camper trailer will hopefully take them off my hands for the same small price I paid for them :-)

Rick

[happygu]

Hey Rick, there are lots of threads and posts on the web advising against polyairs if carrying heavy loads, unless you strengthen the rear spring towers. The polyairs act like a brick inside the spring and cause massive bump shock through to the tower mounts and they eventually fatigue and give way.

It makes it difficult as every different way that you go is a trade off and have there plusses and minuses.

For me I have always used Koni shocks and have always had a great run from them. Haven't used the others but normally hear good reports about OME, mixed from Tough Dogs ( some great, some not so great ), and not much about TJM.

Mic

[Patrol94]

Thanks Rick really made me have a think about what loads I will be carrying I am personally looking for more of a comfort ride as I do use it every day and it willw not often be highly loaded and the ute is coils all round so I did not expect much load carrying ability.

And like mic I have read some bad things about airbags but also some positives and if I ever choose to go that way I will look at reinforforcing my coil towers as I am a boily I'm sure thers someway of doing it as I know superior do a tower strengthener and thanks for the advice really appreciated.

Chris.

[nissannewby]

Hey mate I would also go OME my experience with TD and OME they are both good bits of gear but the OME far out lasts the TD

[Silver]

thanks fellas for the follow up on the heavy loads, airbags and spring towers - I have read it as well. But nothing specific in relation to air bags, and after I fitted mine. More along the lines of heavy duty suspension and big loads combined with corrugations Thanks for the info.

In my case it has been about not having to adjust head lights and spots for night runs on the bitumen to visit rellos down South. Usually just the min air pressure, or a couple of psi more are enough to keep things sweet with Silver and other drivers :-), so hopefully not doing too much damage, and the light air pressure allows at least some movement in the bag

Mr,Mrs/Ms Nissan designed it all as a package, and once parts are upgraded stresses are sent elsewhere. The bottom line is to take less stuff, I guess, if anywhere near the limits.

Upgrade the springs and shocks, then the towers, then the chassis works a bit harder.....there is presumably scope for clever people to increase the overall load carrying capacity without adding an axle.

Thanks again for the info

[Cuppa]

In my non 4wd experience Koni adjustables take a lot of beating......But when I was looking for our Patrol I found that all the ex Telstra Patrols had OME fitted. Or at least all those I looked at. These have a 2" lift, carried heavy loads regularly over remote rough roads & I would expect that Telstra would fit the brand of shocks that they got best service out of.

Cuppa. ♨

[stets]

Mate I use tough dog coils and shocks. Can fault them.
2" heavy duty springs give me a real feeling of the road. And flex very well considering my over all setup.
Tough dog foam cell shocks(the old ones) have seen some hard roads, tough conditions and have been flogged from full compression shock drop so many times I can count. After a bit more than 100,000 k's and my articulation torture I'm looking to replace them before they fail.
It's a toss up between td's big bore adjustables or go the whole hog and get some amada extreme remote resie shocks.
Basically trying to choose between something I can adjust every trip or a custom tuned comp spec shock.... Hard call but that's how good tough dog have proven to be


Tap,tap,tapping in your head

[Patrol94]

Thanks for the help everyone it was a tough decision but hearing all the good things bout ome I decided to order a 2" nitro charger sport shocks with mediu
m rate coils.. thanks for all the input. Can't wait to fit the lift followed with some 33" bfg muds big gu gonna be looking tough then I reckon :)

[TrueBlue]

I have a 2012 patrol wagon and 6 weeks after I drove from the show room floor - it has already started to sag at the rear aprox 60 mm. I hope Nissan will address this saging issue at the first 10 k service

[nipagu7]

I have 2011 model that I bought new in april . I think I'll go out and measure the ride hight and keep an eye on it after reading that !

[happygu]

TrueBlue, Take the 600kgs out of the back and measure again......60mm is a long way for the standard springs to sag - both sides in just 6 weeks, and you haven't even done 10K on them?
Are you sure that you measured correctly when you wheeled out of the showroom floor. The rear flares themselves hang a little deeper then the front, so if you are measuring front against rear, it may seem like it has sagged.
19403

You need to make sure that the car is on flat ground, measure from the bottom lip (where you can hook your measuring tape onto ) of the alloy wheel, up to the under edge of the flare, as shown in the pic. Do this on yours, and do this on one at a dealer, and you will soon know if it has sagged 60 mm.

Mic

[taslucas]

instead of measuring from the lip of the mag, measure from the centre of the wheel (axle centre). That will give you an accurate measurement regardless of the wheel/rim size

[Patrol94]

i have a 2011 model ute (coils all round) with heavy duty steel tray and have deffinitely noticed its sagged probably around 15mm in the rear front not a noticable change and it has 30 000km on it. would have liked to of thought about measuring it when i brought it but wasnt something i thought of at the time :/

[happygu]

Yeah Taslucas. I should have mentioned that you can only measure it my way is with identical rims. If you have identical rims then doing it the way I have mentioned is the most accurate, as you can hold the tape measure directly against the lowest part of the lower lip of the rim and the flare itself, reducing any parrallex errors in viewing.

If you are measuring with different size rims, then you will need to measure to the middle of the hub, but also remember that with the wheel in the way you can't measure directly against the hub, so you are getting a close measurement but it can be skewed by the angle you are viewing at. IE If you stand four inches higher on one wheel compared to another, then looking at the tape against the hub then you will see the measurement slightly different to when you are looking at it directly parrallel to the ground.

Mic