I was thinking of eventually making my suspension universal all around. Are springs or leafs better than the other?

 

Coils vs leafs??

 

i would have to say coils give better ride and flex, but leafs might be easier to convert to

 

Leaves would be easier.

Personally I have seen a couple of rear coil conversions and haven't been impressed. More people go the coil over route. But if you can do a decent coil conversion more power to you.

 

Which one would you guys prefer? I was thinking Leaves because, like you said it would be easier. But I wanted to get an all around feel from other Jeep enthusiasts

 

Leaves would be simple and strong, only downfall is you are going to sacrifice your ride quality.

 

I don't think the unibody would stand up to front leaf springs. I do think that rear coils have been done before but can't remember which forum I saw it on. They looked pretty easy to install with long arms toward the read and coil buckets welded into a reinforced unibody. Ride would be similar to a TJ, I would think.

 

Ive only seen it on ebay before, but it was ghetto fab to the max.

 

I think it was PBB but I ain't too popular over there. Every question I have ever asked has recieved about a page of flames following my questions.

 

Not a user friendly place to say the least.

 

More here: http://www.claytonoffroad.com/index.....tech.articles

IMO, I would most certainly go with the rear coil conversion based on the Clayton's rear setup. (Pictured) When I go out on the trail I have a most difficult time to actually get my rear leaves to flex any. Leaf sprung suspensions seem to need more unsprung weight to make the leafs twist, wrap to make articulation possible where as coils dont need the weight to articulate. My front end flexs like crazy and the rear doesn't do much at all comparison. In the end that makes for an uneasy ride on certain angles.






I can't come up with a reason to go with front leaves unless you just want the easy way out...

Edit: Tho, having leaves front and rear would allow them to articulate evenly, eliminating the uneasy ride that I mentioned earlier.

 

Check out the Cherokee Builders Guide. There is a guy that did a rear coilover conversion, very sanitary job!! The only down side is the holes that the top of the coilovers come trough. The braket is in the back of the XJ, I guess that is a downside as well!! I need all the space my XJ has to offer!! It is worth a look! Tell me what you guys think! This book has a lot of info in it! Good BR reading material!!!

 

I was unaware that Clayton has a kit. I had seen one cobbled together, but the kit is new to me. How expensive is it and what exatly does the front end of the arms attach to? Doesn't it require a second rear crossmember like long arms do for the front?


EDIT: I found the price $1400. Kinda be enough for a second XJ.

 

That'd be Eric's book. Great fella. Great book!

 

If you look closely in the second picture you can see that it uses one large complete belly skid.