Thinking of lifting your Landy? Read this first.

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Another thing to think about is Multi Storey car parks!!!

I know its GAY but my Disco will JUST fit at the moment and if I lifted it ar Dorris would crash into the roof of the car park.

Boring reply but worth thinking about.
 
I considered car park barriers etc when I lifted my Disco by 2” and also access to the local recycling centre as that had a 2m height barrier and I go there quite a lot.

So far I have had no troubles it fits under them all.

I have not tried a multi story car park yet though?

The kit has been on for 2 months and its MOT time next week so I will see if anything needs replacing.
 
Wow after reading all this I'm still not sure weather I should lift the suspension or not? really dont want to have loads of parts to replace every few months, but have ordered a set of 245 75 16 tyres so guessing I will clearance problems without any lift at all?

want to do my first p&p day @bordon slab in a few weeks and have to decide now if I should buy a steering guard or buy a set of springs.

Any help please?
 
Quick update

My wife did hit the roof on the Multi Storey and I did'nt even put a lift kit on!!!!

Most of it polished out though...
 
It is if my wife is using it.

It's not used massively off road to be honest but only because it needs more work before I would be happy taking it somewhere fruity.

I have used it a number of times to tow Gaylanders out of boggy ground at the flying school I go to! And a bit of rescue work in the snow.
Other than that I use it for work and camping trips with my kids.

I borrow my brothers 90 if I fancy doing anything more interesting (he lives near BALA)
 
Trewey said:
To be honest, my main motivation for wanting to lift me deepender was for the looks. Yes, there are some minor advantages to be gained when off-roading, but in many many years of landy driving, I'd never got stuck or failed to get to where I wanted to go for the lack of a lift.

Anyway, after much reading up on various forums, I was convinced that a 2" lift was simply a case of fitting the relevant springs and shocks, and no further modifications were necessary.

I was sooooo wrong.

Yes, my Landy is 16 years / 93,000 miles old and many of the components were old and tired. However, it can't be coincidence that so many parts failed / detriorated quickly after fitting the lift..

Rear trailing arm bushes and body mounts.
Radius arm bushes and body mounts.
Steering damper and bushes.
All 3 track rod ends.
Both diff input bearings and oil seals.
Swivel bearings.
Front hub bearings (rears had been replaced just before fitting the lift)
A frame ball joint.
A frame upper bushes.
Panhard rod bushes.

Most or all of the above failures were, I believe, caused directly or indirectly by the additional stresses put on these components by the unnatural angles imposed by lifting the suspension.

In addition, the handling went to pot after fitting the lift and severe transmission vibration was introduced.

In order to restore the handling and performance back to something like normal / acceptable and to prevent further premature failure (whilst maintaining the lift) I had to do the following...

Replace all of the components listed above.
Fit cranked rear training arms.
Fit castor corrected radius arms.
Fit an adjustable panhard rod.
Fit wide-yoke propshafts front and rear.

The cost of all this was about 3 times what the lift kit cost me.


So, the moral of my story is - If you must lift your landy, be prepared for a lot more expenditure than the cost of the springs and shocks, or be prepared to put up with pretty poor on-road handling and orrible transmission vibration!
Click to expand...
Lift or no lift, this sounds like a steaming pile of misinformation and badly diagnosed issues.
 
I've only ever lifted disco's and never had to change anything but the springs/dampers and brake lines. Had a few mates lift their 90s and they have never had to do more than that either. All 2" lifts with no adverse effects and to add none of them britpart/procomp ****e. As for insurance loads of companys will insure a lifted landy.
 
There are some advantages to lifts mind. Lifting the body will improve approach, breakover and departure angles. My lift helps me as I have underslung LPG tanks and is often the differences between the sound of the V8 burble and the usual rattles and squeaks and the sound of "cruuuuunch"

Need to fit bigger tyres though as people are right (obviously) you can lift as high as you like, but without those tyres you're diffs (or in this case mine) do take a hammering
 
I know I'm late to this thread, but the following may be useful.

The problem with a suspension lift is that it will take the transmission outside its design envelope and thus put strain on certain components, increasing NVH. In particular it will result in increased forces on the universal joints in the propshafts and thus lead to premature failure. Here's why.

Diagram: Animated gif.

The Hooke joint (universal joint) is a fairly primitive joint which can only operate successfully through a limited angle which is dependant on speed. If you watch the animation you'll see that the left hand (input side) turns smoothly, let's assume driven by the gearbox. However, if you look at the right hand side, which we must then assume is one end of the propshaft, you'll see that it turns somewhat erratically, speeding up and slowing down twice in each revolution. On drive shafts, two universal joints are typically used, one on each end, and phased at 90 degrees so that the variation in speed introduced into the centre component of the propshaft is cancelled out at the output shaft. This ensures that the pinion gear in the diff nose rotates at the same constant speed as the gearbox (and I've assumed the camber-corrected radius arms are used to ensure this).

Going back to the propshaft: the greater the angle through which the propshaft operates—an automatic result of a suspension lift—the greater the described variation in rotational speed becomes. Whereas at shallow angles this variation is not so noticeable, as the angles become more acute and speed increases, it will manifest itself as a noise vibration and harshness (NVH) in the transmission. This vibration will not be noticeable in most offroad use where a suspension lift can arguably be justified, but it will definitely increase transmission noise on the road where higher speeds will be used. It will also result in premature failure of the UJs, particularly if there's any wear present at the time the lift is carried out.

The only way to deal with this problem would be to replace the UJ's with constant velocity (CV) joints, which, because of their more sophisticated design, can operate through more acute angles and do not suffer the speed variations of UJs. I'm not sure if anyone has done this conversion but it will of course add quite a bit to the cost of a suspension lift.

A body lift does of course get round all of these problems (though it produces others!) and still provides increased clearance for larger tyres. This would be the way to go if you want to keep a lifted Land Rover usable long term on the road.
 
one thing i would like to know is does standard suspension allow for the articulation of the axles like wiltshire landyman's profile pic, obviously not to this extreme as there is not the length in the springs and shocks. I'm more thinking is the standard suspension able to keep the wheels on the floor sufficiently or is this another reason to go for a lift on the suspension other than the clearance for bigger wheels?
 
WoodyJon said:
On drive shafts, two universal joints are typically used, one on each end, and phased at 90 degrees so that the variation in speed introduced into the centre component of the propshaft is cancelled out at the output shaft. This ensures that the pinion gear in the diff nose rotates at the same constant speed as the gearbox (and I've assumed the camber-corrected radius arms are used to ensure this). .
Click to expand...

Reference the above. The diagram I've seen before showing propshaft phasing is very straightforward. Where would a phase of 90 degrees come in? As far as I know a 90 should have its props set in phase, but bringing a 2 inch lift into the mix will they then have to be set out of phase and by how much? Or is it different for each vehicle. Mine has a 2 inch lift but I've set my props in phase yet had no ill effects from it
 
I'm not 100% sure if mine was lifted by the previous owner as it seems higher than stock (it does have big off road tyres too but arch to tyre gap seems high.

Is there an easy way of telling?
 
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