so today is going to be a super exciting day we're here at zone
off road and we are going to be pumping out the hilux with a fox setup
we're going with the fox 2.0s they are coming on board as
a partner with the ROAM 2.0 build and honestly
i couldn't be happier you can see that the vehicle is straining a little bit
under the weight of all of the accessories
just the ride quality on-road and off-road at the moment is
really not that great and it's sitting way too low you know we limited on the
size of tyres we can put on there's a lot of limitations to the
standard suspension and let's be honest this is not a standard vehicle anymore
that suspension was designed for this vehicle to be a certain way
and it is no longer that this is where we have to step in with an after-market
suspension kits let's get started we're going to pull
the vehicle into the bay we're going to start stripping it
we're going to have a look at what the old suspension looked like and we're
going to have a little run through on the new shocks and see
what's going on there what makes them a bit different and hopefully you guys can
learn a little bit something more about suspension today welcome to
another episode of rome over landing my name is adrian abrahams and last week
we went over to anka off road to install the bumpers and
rock sliders now we're going to be heading over to fox south africa to
upgrade the harlex's suspension to get it riding like a dream
now the fun was about to begin but first the ever important initial measurements
so we can see just how much of a lift the vehicle will get by the end of the
process now i have been wanting to sort the
suspension out on the vehicle since the day i drove it out of bushlore
and by now i'm so used to seeing my vehicle stripped a bit
that i was excited to get it up on the lift and get going
before we can pop the fox 2.0 in we need to pull out these
very well used factory shocks first after all
they have lived a life on rough corrugated roads
it's crazy to see how much more complicated independent front suspension
setups are than the solid axle on the rear so you
really need to know what you're doing when upgrading the suspension on these
vehicles for sure luckily the zone off-road
mechanics live and breathe this lifestyle
and know their way around these vehicles and in no time they had the vehicle
stripped and ready for the fox upgrade as well as
a new set of leaf packs for the rear two let's not waste any more time and get
those babies unboxed and have a closer look for
ourselves
so we've stripped off the old factory suspension off of the front of the hilux
and it is certainly seen better days and
i've got Corne with me here he is one of the owners of Fox South Africa
and he's going to kind of basically walk us through some of the differences
between the standard toyota suspension and the
fox 2.0 kit you're going to see it's uh quite a
substantial difference i think one of the first things is it's
a serviceable unit this one if it's seen the the in
of its life you throw it away you buy a new one this one
if it dies you put a new seal kits service it again and it's all fresh
again so second one is this one you can see
it's an adjustable unit so the more weight you add to it
you can adjust it a little bit up to get that exact exact
right height and of course these units come
this is a 550 coil rating so you get different ones as well you get a 600 or
700 depending on what accessories you have exactly
exactly so it's not just switching it but fitting the correct coil rating to
that as well the oil capacity on this is we've got a
2.0 says 2 inches of diameter of oil that goes into this
unit where this is a lot smaller all the components that they made you
can see it's all if this eyelet would break off you can
replace it and and so forth and each and every
component and this is replaceable you do get different types as well you get the
2.5 with a reservoir that will depend on where you drive the harder the
shock works you need an external reservoir
to keep that oil cool because heat kills it
yeah and that's the biggest problem that's why they're going with aluminum
as well this is a steel body aluminum dissipates
the heat a lot better versus a steel body once we start
loading up the vehicles and the type of trips that we do where we head out there
it's long roads of corrugations or it's
extreme articulation the shock absorbers are working
really really hard so you know your standard guys the problem with them is
that they overheat really quickly you get that
shock fade and then your suspension isn't working the way
it's supposed to shock absorber is not absorbing you know all of that energy
efficiently and you know that is going to just a
it's going to make it uncomfortable for you but your vehicle is going to
struggle at the end of the day so i mean this guy is
this is this is this is what they call gear porn
yeah on this one here you can see the the bush already started fading
yes it's actually moved and the vehicle pushed it down so it's not
eccentric in it it's sitting a little bit lower there will be a lot of
movement sitting right there and i must say the ride at the moment
or with those has not been good even on the highway where it should be smooth
i'm feeling this like bouncing up and down and that's to me is just like
telltale sex exactly and and the thing is you know what your vehicle comes to a
point where it is time to to swap you know it's time to upgrade
or it's time to replace your shock absorbers
and when you get to that point you want to look at some good options you know
obviously fox is a premium brand right there it's
a premium product i'm excited to try it out because from
what i've heard it's supposed to be quite impressive and
especially with the way i've got the vehicle kitted out with all of that
extra weight on there you need something that can
handle it but also perform safely and efficiently
when you are at speed we're going to probably have a look at changing this
this coil yeah we're going to change that out now to 700
due to the weight on the front and you can actually go upstairs and show them
how you do that as well awesome let's do it
and into the fox factory we go corner invited me here to watch the process of
swapping the coils on the shocks but i quickly learned that his knowledge
and passion runs deep and he talked me through how the shocks
are serviced and customized to get the perfect dry dynamics of application
and even now as we customize the coil rating to suit the load on the vehicle
he explains to me how it's difficult to get it right on the first go
and we'd probably be back up here to make some more tweaks as we go
but all we can do now is put them in the vehicle
and see how she sits one of the most important parts of your suspension setup
is actually a coil it's what carries the entire weight of the vehicle
and if you don't have it balanced right it's going to put too much strain on
your shock absorbers and they just won't be able to do their
job properly so getting that balance right requires serious effort
and having a fitment center that's dedicated to getting your setup perfect
is going to be invaluable but damn if these shock absorbers perform even
half as good as they look i'll be seriously seriously impressed
but now with the front done i think we can move on to the rear
so we've pretty much finished with the front there what we're going to be doing
now is we're going to be taking out these rear shock absorbers removing the
rear leaf packs and we've got these babies from efs
going in um these are going to add about 300 kilo
constant load to the rear end of the vehicle
that's going to accommodate for the canopy setup as well as the
whole roof top 10 setup on there we also have
greaseable shackles and you know upgraded u-bolts
and it's you know it's a pretty much a full upgrade on the rear here
plus we've got our fox 2.0 rear shock absorbers going in
once the vehicle can you know kind of come off the lift they can see
how is it sitting from that point they can adjust the front end on the
on the front shock absorbers to lift or drop the vehicle to get the perfect
kind of ride height and get the vehicle looking
balanced but what we've done here with this whole lift and everything as well
is going to allow us to put bigger tires on a higher taller profile on the tire
is also going to give us more comfort on the road and off-road
so i think the whole combination of what we're doing here today is going to have
a massive transformation on the vehicle
the rear suspension had definitely reached its expiration date
the rear shock absorbers were completely finished the leaf packs weren't capable
of supporting the current weight of the new accessories comfortably
and there are a few things more satisfying than pulling out
tired worn out things and replacing them with shiny new stuff
and with this 300 kilo additional constant load
it's going to easily support my rear setup on the vehicle
allowing the new shock absorbers to work efficiently
and not only make the vehicle safer on an off-road but improve the general
drivability of the vehicle now the efs leaf packs also come with
some extended and greasable shackles so this will help give a little bit of
extra wheel travel off-road as well as help keep the good rake angle
between the front and back of the vehicle
and once this thing is loaded up for trips i'm sure she's gonna just
eat up the open road
with the leaf packs finally set up they could get back to installing the fox 2.0
i love the look of the metal impacted aluminium bodies
and also how the fox shocks actually come with these little stone protectors
for the shafts even though they're made of hard chrome
plated heat treated alloy steel the stone protectors will just protect
them for the long run but now that the installation is all
wrapped up they can lower the vehicle and see how everything is sitting
so we've tested the 700 kilo coils up front
but they just seem to be rated a little bit too high and it's not enough
clearance around the upper control arms so what we're doing is we're pulling
those out we're putting in the 600 that's probably going to sit
probably perfectly but that's the whole thing with suspension you know it's a
bit of an art but if you were running upgraded
control arms and you know things like that you'd be
able to run the 700 coils but the nice thing about having all the
spares and stuff here at fox is that you know you can just change it
out so they just change out the 700 for a 600
they refit them and we're ready to go the team at zone
really put in some serious effort to get this whole setup just right
and it's important that the vehicle sits right and the setup is safe for normal
day-to-day driving as well as when loaded up for epic
overland adventures and with a couple goes at getting
everything perfect they finally hit the nail on the head
and it was ready for our next set of measurements
so it has been quite a day here getting the suspension
sorted out on the hilux but you know the thing is with suspension
it's a bit of an art form at the end of the day you need to get the vehicle
sitting right you need it looking right but at the same time it needs to perform
correctly and the thing is every vehicle is
different so the weight distribution of the
vehicle is different i've got a secondary battery under the bonnet i've
got the bumper on we've got a winch on we've got
a steel cable all of those things interact with how the vehicle is
going to sit and how you know the suspension is going
to react to the weight so on the rear we've actually managed to
across the vehicle get about a two inch lift over
the original height um but it's actually only sitting a little bit higher than
what a standard hilux would and that is the whole point for me with
the lift is to counteract the sag of the weight of all the accessories to be
honest we're gonna get more of our ground clearance when we put on bigger
tires and that's going to really protect the stuff like the diffs and everything
underneath the vehicle just doing the suspension lift for now
is giving us what we need in terms of the height
but what's yet to be tested what's yet to be seen
is how the actual drive of the vehicle is going to change how the performance
of the vehicle off-road on-road all of that is going to change
and that's something that's only can only take time it's been a long day
here at zone but i need to say a massive shout out to
the whole team here for all of their hard work today
and to fox south africa for you know partnering with the rome 2.0 build and
giving us this crazy fox 2.0 setup i cannot wait to get
out there and really play around with it thank you
for tuning in to this episode of remover landing
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anyways see you next week
you