Insanity? Or Genius?

A Rover-fan friend of mine sent me this pic with this text:

"This is a coil conversion some guy did in his driveway. Look closely. It used to be a leaf spring. And yes, he has driven this on the road. He's using the other end of the leaf spring as a trailing arm."

 

I call booty fab or enginbeering

 

Most genius is a bit insane, but to be honest, I find it to be pretty genius..

 

I call it unnecesarily complex

 

Don't think I"d like to drive it. I"d be afraid the spring would spring and be gone.

 

Anyone who is a fan of landrovers has zero engineering credibility. IMHO.

 

In your humble opinion?

 

Like it or not,it seems to work for him and for a long time. That amount of rust doesn't show up in a few weeks. If the droop is limited with straps or the length of the shocks, the springs should stay in place. They do this on pickup trucks a lot. Albeit 2wd.

 

My question is this: if you go throw the trouble of tanning and installing a panhard bar, why not use the leaf hangers as a mount for a link, and do it the right way?

 

Well not just mine, although I was perhaps being sardonic. (And I must admit it is true that the first Land-Rover prototypes were built on Jeep chassis' and axles. )

Here are some extracts from just one page of a Land-Rover engine specialist's website…


51 bhp wasn't really good enough even in the late Fifties…. engines had some weaknesses, prompting a redesign of many internal parts… tends to wear its crank bearings due to crank flex at high revs… Major bore wear is very common… Some people report carburettor icing…the three bearing crank was a major weak spot… it flexed at high revs and sometimes broke under load with expensive consequences… a skew gear which could wear, giving unstable pump timing… stretched timing chain is very common…keep below 45 mph to be sure you don't break anything…. a reputation for overheating and cracking cylinder heads… crank failures which had plagued its four cylinder engines for 22 years… camshafts wear out at around 90-100 thousand miles, head gaskets and camchains usually go around the same time… These engines can hide serious problems… the result was a warranty nightmare…. 2.5TDs can fail in any number of ways, but the most common seems to be internal cracks developing in the cylinder block….due to a defective design of crankcase breather, these engines also tend to dump large amounts of engine oil into the air filter housing, which turns the paper air filter into a soggy black lump. This in turn leads to oil being drawn into the air intake, causing the engine to 'run away' and self-destruct… there were reports of oil pump failures, cylinder head problems and other reliability issues…recurring reports of problems with the electronics, especially oil finding its way through the wiring harness and into the ECU…. Dual mass flywheel can fail with heavy use… Etcetera

 

^^Seems over or shoddily engineered considering what the go devil and Japanese engines of the day were doing

 

Sorry, the way you worded it, it sounded like a jab at my buddy who sent that pic to me... not the original vehicle designers. I try not to hold it against him too negatively that he's a Rover fan.

 

I have a friend who likes Land Rovers too. I was just kidding, maybe too harshly.
I'm just a lifelong Jeep person and I root for my team.

 

eh hem...
lifelong Jeeper here with a very soft spot and 2 garage spaces for Land Rovers...

not to digress, but LR and Jeeps are apples and oranges..
both fruit off a tree, but each designed for their own purposes..

the LR is a far superior vehicle in many respects and the Jeep outshines the LR in the same respects..
But neither Solihull or Toledo would have ever slapped that on a truck

 

This is how mine came farm fresh from VT. Do what you gotta do to make what you have work.

 

Adding a single coil as a semi-mid-ship helper is weird, but actually lopping of the rear section of springs and using the front half as a locating arm is just a whole 'nother level of crazy!

 

I would think the single center-mounted coil would cause terrible body roll...

 

No body = no problem