One of my friends who's had minis in the past said I can slam my 2wd to the ground by just cranking the torsion? I know you can lower by them just not over 2 inches. Will my ride quality be bad? Will I have a lot of body roll or way less since I'll have a lower center of gravity? I want to get drop spindles and BJ flip in the future but I'm willing to give torsions a go first.

 

you can lower it with torsions but the ride will suffer a lot. Body roll will be same/ maybe little less. you can turn the t bars some but I would make sure you have good shocks and due it for a temp setup. just my .02

 

Cut down the bumpstops on the lower control arm and you can get a couple inches drop out of it no problem. If your shocks up front aren't junk you won't really notice the drop much.

 

Do the BJ flip before you do torsions. Torsion-only drop of more than an inch or two is 100% bad and will give you a ride quality only acceptable to a 16 year-old kid.

 

I mean i am 16 but i still want to lower the right way, meaning spindles and BJ flip. Im planning on racing the truck in the future and want a stiff setup.

 

Lowering it via torsion bars isnt guna stiffen the ride up at all.

 

To start off simple and cheap way is just rear drop blocks, BJ flip, 16" wheels with low profile tires and like a 1" torsion bar drop max! That'll getcha nice and low!

What kind of racing are you trying to do?? Straight line or like on a track cause there's a lot more to making these old trucks stiffen then you might think!!

 

Dropping the torsions doesn't change anything but the available compression travel. Trimming the stock bumpstops or replacing them with low profile versions and running shocks that aren't blown out will get it low and still ride nice.

 

also check this out:
http://www.toyotaminis.com/forum/su...do-torsion-rekey-reindex-79-94-pickups-17935/
keep the preload and spring travel but at a lower ride height

 

Loosening the torsions softens the ride because youre taking the load off the bar.

Twist a rope and it firms up. Let off a turn and it softens up. Some will disagree but this makes sense(to me atleast)

 

i agree with jetas, in the rope analogy. there are those who say that a torsion bar hasa fixed amount of preload, regarless of the anchor angle, and others disagree. if you can imagine the same rope being held in your hand and extending forward, and you twisted the rope around twice, it would be taught. but if you twisted your wrist a quarter turn, wouldn't the rope slack off a bit? thats the theory with the rekey - it keeps it taught like stock but at a different anchor angle, to get you low.

and not to thread jack, but i just installed some sway-away 1636 bars, and the ride is much more bouncy and springy, for good reason, but i'm going to back them off a bit and let you guys know if there is a change in ride quality

 

There is zero preload on the torsion bars unless they are cranked up to the point of resting on the droop bumpstops. If there is still droop travel available then there is zero preload. All adjusting the bars does is change the ride height.


The rope analogy doesn't work in the real world since when you twist on me end the other end twists the same amount. The only time the one end doesn't move is when the droop bumpstops are in contact.

 

Potato tomato.

 

The thing wrong with your analogy: when you loosen a torsion bar, both ends of the bar turn. That is, suppose you loosen or tighten the bar 2 degrees. Then, on the suspension end, the LCA will sink or rise the same 2 degrees which lowers or raises the car. So in your twisted rope analogy, when you let off a turn on one end, you need to tighten up the other end and so you have the same firmness.

As for rekeying, when you loosen the adjustment bolt too much, the arm hangs too low and will catch on something and get ripped off. So you rekey it to raise the arm. None of this changes the stiffness of the bar or ride.

 

The bar(spring) doesn't change. Just the ride height (travel).

Torsion bars ARE like twisting rope, in that they are progressive rate springs, BUT you can't untwist a bar.

Cranking torsions is just like installing blocks...you decrease ride height by moving the spring(decreasing travel), but the spring remains the same.

The only way to preload a torsion bar, would be by cranking them UP! lol

 

lol, dinkleman beat me to it

 

so i installed my new sway-away 1636 torsion bars on sunday morning, and my commute on monday was rough. it was very bumpy. this morning i loosened (backed out) the torsion bar arms a bit (like an inch and a half) and the ride was much better. the ride height stayed the same, so it had to have taken some preload off by loosening the bars. run tell that!!

 

Some thoughts:

A torsion bar is not (and cannot physically be) a progressive spring. There has been much written on this by many men smarter than I, read up a bit if you're curious, spring dynamics are cool stuff, but the bottom line is this:

Dropping via torsions does not cause a truck to ride harder or softer on it's own. WhiteTrash, Dinkleman, ect. are 100% correct in that regard.

BJ flip, drop spindles, ect. maintain the travel that the torsions need to do their job. When you move the torsions you are altering the distance between the a-arms and the frame members. So instead of a long gentle compression followed by a bounce off of the bump stops you get a very short compression followed by the a-arm slamming into the frame and a chiropractors appointment, thus my joke about this modification only being appropriate when we were teenagers.

Over-shocking a chassis to make up for too little suspension travel (which is what most people on here, myself included, seem to be doing) can be done, but it has it's downsides. Your ride will be much harsher, you will burn through shocks very quickly, as you are forcing them to act as suspension aids instead of merely dampers to control oscillation.

Hope this thread hasn't become too much of an info dump for you, radchad.

 

Unless you had them cranked up to the droop bumpstops the first drive and backed them off so they were barely touching the droop stops it's all in your head. I run 1 ton torsion bars and 1 ton front sway bar (which the sway away and helwig parts are modeled after) with drop spindles and monomax shocks. It isn't a harsh ride by any means but it is firm and controlled.

 

Yup, yup, yup. Without any before and after pictures, specs, etc. there is no way to tell what Juicyy did to get the effects he is experiencing...