Another green laner build

A bit of finishing off. First a wooden floor for the back:

   

Next Putting all of the ECUs back in place. Here's the ECU stack. Gearbox, engine and suspension. The black wire is a temporary USB connection for configuration and firmware updates.

 

It took some gymnastics to get it crammed back in the footwell.

 

I obviously have a bit of a reputation with my MOT tester.  When I went there for my test the conversation went something like this:
"What have you brought me this time?"
"A jimny"
"Hmm. OK, what have you changed?"
"Well, it's pretty standard - from the outside"

It sailed through the MOT. The headlight aim was a bit out on one side (no surprise considering how much welding I did in that area) but he adjusted it for me. Now I can try it out on some lanes and get the suspension properly set up. On the road to and from the test it felt noticeably more stable than before. At road ride height the suspension is a little firmer than stock, which is nice. With the firmer suspension I may get away with removing the anti roll bar. I'll have to do some experiments and see how it feels.
 

I went for a bit of a test run and it's much nicer on the road. In the lanes however the shock damping is wrong, making it harsh over rough surfaces even with the adjusters set to minimum. It's not nearly as bad as the original suspension but it's still not what I'd hoped for.

They'd probably work great on a heavier vehicle such as a Discovery. I'm a bit disappointed really. I should have accepted the long lead time for GAZ shocks. As it turns out the delay would not have made much difference. I have GAZ on my other off-roaders and I can adjust them to be very smooth and controlled over rough surfaces.

I'll have a chat with AVO on Monday and see if they have any suggestions.

Looking forward to see it all finished!

wrote:

Looking forward to see it all finished!

Thanks. It's pretty close now, well it's probably going to forever be a work in progress but it's close to the end of this round of mods. I took it out for a decent run today and it mostly worked very well. I experimented a bit with the suspension settings and found that it works better on the rough stuff at 50% lift - i.e. static ride height exactly half of full travel. My original guess was that 60% would be best. Sometimes less is more.

It climbed up this in 4wd almost as easily as it drove down. The rest of the lane wasn't quite as rough and it did the rest in 2WD. As usual photos never show how rough and steep the lane really is. I was tempted to back down this section and try it in 2wd but the chunks of someone's side window glass embedded in the bank showed me what could happen if I messed up.



A couple of times it felt like the the steering was jamming on right hand lock with lots of articulation but every time I looked under it I couldn't see anything wrong.  Eventually I spotted this:



The drag link is catching on the anti roll bar.  When I was building the suspension I spent many hours checking for fouling or interference at full articulation but I couldn't do that with the anti roll bar connected. It never occurred to me that the ARB would be an issue.

On very rough surfaces the suspension feels a little unbalanced with the rear doing more work than the front due to the anti roll bar. I now have two reasons to do away with the ARB. I'll disconnect one end tomorrow and try it out. Hopefully removing the ARB won't mess up the road handling too much.

At extreme articulation one rear wheel hits the cover over the ride height sensor. I'll have to modify the cover to get a bit more clearance. That should be an easy job. Overall for the first test drive I'm pretty pleased with how it all went.

A while back I sent the shocks back to AVO to be re valved and finally got them back last week. It's quite a bit smoother on rough surfaces now. It's not as good as my other cars but they are independent suspension. With all of that unsprung weight on the Jimny it's never going to be as smooth. They also fixed the leaky adjuster knob. Hopefully it stays fixed.

I took it out for a test drive today. Lots of lying on the ground, tweaking adjusters then driving a bit and repeating. One of my favourite local lanes follows the path of a stream and it's getting dangerously washed out. Every time I go down the lane it gets narrower and narrower.
This is one of the washouts. As you can see the lane is starting to collapse into the stream.
 

I have been having trouble with my battery chainsaw. It was fitted with a very narrow fine pitch chain which gave good battery life but because of the narrow kerf it got trapped easily. I found a standard pitch sprocket online that had the correct hole size to fit my chainsaw's output shaft and with a bit of work managed to fit it on the saw. It now has a new standard bar and chain. As expected battery life has taken a hit but I only use it for green laning and pruning trees so that doesn't really matter. The important bit is that it now doesn't keep getting stuck in the cut.
This log had a branch sticking out blocking access so the saw got a bit of a test. Even with the branch cut off it was tight to get past. I had considered trying to winch it out of the way, hence the ropes, but there was nowhere for it to go. The vertical cuts are from someone else trying to cut it up before.
 

Feeling smug I carried on, only to meet this just around a corner. I'm sure I heard a whimper from the back where the saw is kept. Okay then, time to back up a steep narrow lane for quarter of a mile or so. Even if I had a saw big enough there's no way I'd tackle a widowmaker like that on my own.

 


 

I went out for a run last weekend, visiting some of my old stamping grounds in North Devon. This is one of my favorite lanes, Stony Lane. It has some great rock steps. It is also pretty narrow with rock walls so you need to be careful if you don't want to leave paint behind.


 

A few lanes later I took it down another narrow lane with some severe cross axle action. When I got past the bad bit I realized something was wrong. The rear right was sat on it's bump stop. I couldn't really do much there so limped on to the main road and to a nearby layby. Looking underneath I found the joint where the ride height sensor mounts to the rear hockey stick was broken, making the computer think that wheel was at maximum extension.

I managed to trick the computer into pressurizing that air bag then unplugged it.When I got home I found I'd made the link bar slightly too long, making it run out of travel at extreme compression. It was an easy fix - I shortened the link bar a bit and fitted a new joint.

This weekend it was back to North Devon to try breaking it again. The lanes around Snapper woods are getting really washed out and are turning into real axle twisters. This is a good example - the washout is about to swap from one side of the road to the other. 


 

As usual photos don't show how rough it is but this is one of those obstacles where you get to the top and think how the heck did I just get up that?

 

Next on to the infamous High Bray. It is a steep rocky climb with a severe adverse camber. There were some bikers waiting to come down so I didn't have time to take any photos. Why is it the only lane where I have witnesses is the one that I really struggle to get up?

This hill is a strange one. The Jimny always struggles to climb it even in 4WD with the axles locked. My 2WD trials car on road tyres on the other hand nearly always goes straight up - as long as I have a passenger. If I don't have a passenger it really struggles.The villagers at the top of High Bray don't like green laners so I turned around near the top and went back down and on to the nearby Walscott.

This one has some big steps with a stream running down it. The last time I saw some Land Rovers try to get up it they gave up after breaking an axle on one and smashing a wing on another. I wish I could have seen their faces when I drove past them and ambled up in the trials car. 


 

It's interesting comparing how differently the Jimny and my trials car handle these lanes. The Jimny relies on articulation - the trials car however just waves a front wheel in the air on the twisty bits.

Good lanes are unfortunately few and far between. I keep looking at some of the great lanes in Wales and wishing I was closer. I'm thinking of spending a couple of weeks up there some time in the summer.
Looking at the maps it looks like there may be some interesting lanes up on the Dales, though the council seems to be very keen on slapping TROs on everything.

For information on legal lanes there is no better source than "The Green Lane Association". If you join you will have access to info. on driveable lanes and very often details of the lanes giving advise as to conditions, which way to drive it and anything else that is relevant. Also you will have access to the individual county reps. who will have up to date info on any closures and reasons for same. Your membership costs go to support the fight against the councils who strive to close the lanes as we strive to keep them open.
Either we fight or we loose them.

Roger

For some reason I'm not getting notifications when someone posts on this thread. I get notifications for other threads but not this one.

I definitely recommend joining GLASS or the Trail Rider's Federation. Both provide maps of legal lanes and do a lot of work to fight lane closures.

As far as my Jimny is concerned I think rock sliders are the next on the list. As I don't have wide wheels if I slide sideways into a rut the body is the first thing to hit.

I recently tried the Devil's Steps near Ivybridge. This is well known as a car breaker.

 

I messed it up a bit and slid up against the rock wall. I was on my own, which is a bad idea. A spotter would have really helped here. At that point I decided it was better to winch it out rather than try driving out and totally destroying the side of the Jimny. That little 3500 lb Milemarker might be slow but it always gets the job done. I still ended up with some battle scars but all things considered I think I got away fairly lightly. The bits of broken glass and other bike and car parts scattered around hint that some others did a lot worse.

 

It doesn't look too bad from the first picture, then your Jimny puts it into perspective.