4WD EXPEDITIONS · Comp Truck Craft

COMP TRUCK BUILD: TRAVEL, LOCKERS, STEERING AND PROTECTION

13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production

The point

After this lesson you understand the engineering behind every extreme 4WD modification, what each one costs you, and which ones make sense on a vehicle that still has to drive home on a highway.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. Start with the fundamental tension of the whole discipline: articulation against stability. Suspension travel lets a wheel move a long way relative to the body, which keeps all four tyres loaded on uneven ground and directly reduces the cross-axle problem. More travel is genuinely more capability. But travel is bought with softer springs, longer shocks, taller ride height and often a raised roll centre, and every one of those makes the vehicle less stable at speed and more prone to roll. A comp truck accepts this trade because it never travels far or fast and it has a cage. A touring vehicle carrying weight up high on corrugated roads at eighty kilometres per hour cannot accept it, which is why the correct touring answer is usually modest lift, correctly matched springs, and good dampers rather than maximum travel.
  2. Coil and leaf are different engineering philosophies rather than a good and a bad option. A leaf spring is a spring and a locating device in one part: it carries load, it locates the axle fore and aft and laterally, and it resists axle wrap. That integration makes it simple, cheap, immensely strong in load carrying and easy to repair in the field, which is exactly why load-carrying vehicles have used it for a century. It costs you articulation, because the pack's own stiffness limits axle movement, and it costs you ride quality because interleaf friction is a crude damper. A coil spring only carries load, so it needs separate links to locate the axle, and that separation is the advantage: you can design the links to give a lot of travel and to control axle movement precisely.
Still under the glass
  • The engineering behind travel, lockers, steering and protection, and what each costs on the highway
  • 7 more technique steps
  • The 5 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

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