@Piotr Its not the understeer that bothers me, its the sudden oversteer shortly afterwards...
I let a friend of mine drive tonight, and you could see he had a great deal of difficulty dealing with the steering...
Is this a weight/ suspension problem? as my HZJ is normally unladen.... and no winch or bull bar on the front... (and I am running medium OME on the front and HEAVY (with one leafe removed) on the back.... - Could this cause this problem? Is there anyone around Munich who can give me a second opinion that this is ok...?
Thanks
Andrew
The early bird catches the worm ... but the second mouse gets the cheese!
Andrew, a certain tendency of oversteering can be expected from a factory-spec 78, as it is part of it's pickup-like concept. But because of it's long wheelbase it should be easy to cope with, if you're not too lazy on the steering-wheel, or you're steering is massively overdampened. If your rig has changed for the worse, you'll have to decide by a face to face comparison with an oem-equipped 78, of course. The initial "understeering" understood as bad steering response might make for the greatest part of "trickyness" because of the following change-over. But bad turn-in is not typically expected, and should make you check toe-in of the front axle first. Then there is still the BFG AllTerrain tread, which is sometimes said to be hardly any better than the MT tread on the street, which is quite a lousy behaviour if true... In general medium springs in front and heavy ones in the rear, on a car without payload, would lead to oversteering, which might be corrected by dropping one leaf for medium payload. But with a light rearend this could still be too much. If your car is "empty" all the time, and not intended to carry equipment, you might consider soft lifting-springs all-around, even softer than oem. Load-carrying-capacity mustn't be mixed-up with pure lift.
Grüße vom Möchtegern-Sowjet
sbJ40[url=http://www.sbj40.gmxhome.de/Jemand_noch_einen_kleinen_sbJ40,_vielleicht.htm]*[/url]:
sooner or later a little ZiL, but still
powered by klassenfeind
@Andrew, My apologies for not reading your initial post carefully.................... As described my 78 did allow to sort of play with it's oversteer. I could well imagine that the road behaviour your car is showing can be attributed to the OME setup you chose.
My old LJ73 is equipped with brandnew coil springs and shocks, so I realize the characterisic tendency to over/understeer, but in fact this is nothing that brings me in heavy trouble.
I went the other way, following the advice from a good friend with a lot of experience: on the front axle, the springs are OME heavy, and on the rear axle, they are OME middle. This is because we expected that the car would be driven unloaded in 99 percent. And if there is some transportation problem that expires the magic 1000 pounds-border: sure it gets a little bit weak, but no problem at all.
Just flew over the thread, but what's your tyre pressure, Andrew? I just lowered mine from 3.0 bar to 2.0 (as you're in Germany, I won't convert to PSI) to cure my sore butt. It sure worked, but handling suffered. With high tyre sidewalls such as ours you'll have the rig dive deep into the outer front tyre thus causing understeer. No matter how hard your supension is - mine is "++" and still I get the diving when I try too hard. If you're low on air pressure, which I assume, check out 3.0 all round. If you don't like it, change back, air's even cheaper than bushings or wheel alignment... Cheers,
@Nungu I have tried 2 and 3 bar... The problem was definitey the toe-in... My HZJ is now PERFECT! at 0 degrees, the thing is just a nightmare... doesnt turn in, and then breaks out like a VERY BAD rash way too quickly... Its now a much calmer vehicle, and drives a lot friendlier, and straighter on Autobahns...
Cheers
Andrew
The early bird catches the worm ... but the second mouse gets the cheese!
