I was looking at my Dmax today and got to thinking about the ride height, it looked and felt pretty low, and further was that I hit a lot of stuff underneath when off-roading in the Glasshouse mountains. I can still remember when the vehicle was stock and how well it performed off-road, including ground clearance. Now, it sucks for ground clearance.
I haven’t lifted it or put bigger tyres on yet. That was coming soon. So, I was looking at the car and thought I would measure it, now that all the weight is added to the vehicle. Tyres and suspension won’t change the body weight.
When I drove the car home, one of the first things I did was measure each wheel arch height, centre of the rim to arch and ground to arch, just to be sure as I didn’t know when I would change the tyre size. And recorded it on my phone notes. As some extra weight is on the passenger side (long range tank and fridge), that is 5mm lower than the driver side. That equals out if I loaded the car to go away.
Back to the point though. The front is 25mm lower than stock and the rear is 50mm lower than stock. That explains why I was hitting so much crap and my ramp-over sucks. When I lift the vehicle with suspension and tyres, that means the front will rise 100mm (4″) and the rear 125mm (5″). That will be interesting when I get to that, as off-roading should become much easier.
I wanted the weight added first, which I decided some time during the process, as I didn’t want to lift the vehicle 2″ and then weigh it down and lose that lift due to how it would need to be setup at such time to be driveable.
Oh, the one thing I haven’t yet added is the winch. So that is another 25kg to the front, but the battery will be changed to lithium, so minus 10kg, so about 15kg total weight still to be added. I fear that may be another 5mm, maybe, from stock.
What I learnt from doing it this way, is that I need a front coil-over spring rate set to 120kg and the rear spring rate to approximately 300kg (normal load). Now I know my package to buy: Superior Engineering Remote Res 2.0 Kit.
Updated with pictures now, to show the difference between weighted stock and weighted 2″ lift installed. Massive difference for my offroad clearance.
