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Old 01-13-2018, 10:33 AM   #11
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Sometimes I wish I could just turn my engineering brain off for a while.

- Eric
don't I know it! Sometimes I think it's (mine) a curse

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Old 01-13-2018, 10:39 AM   #12
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Darn it David13, now you got me thinking about the Sulastic shackles again. Sometimes I wish I could just turn my engineering brain off for a while.

- Eric

I didn't even know about these... I broke a rear shackle and my local off road shop who works on my rig (Mike's off-road in Bozeman) put them on as a heavy duty solution...and they know me and what I like, so we have a mutual trust.... I had to ask what they did that made it ride so much better...

Had I known, I would have done it earlier...

Now I'm glad that old shackle broke...
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Old 01-13-2018, 06:33 PM   #13
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After reading these posts it looks like I may be installing a pair of these this summer. I hope I don't regret clicking on this thread but end up praising you guys for putting this bug in my head.
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Old 01-13-2018, 06:36 PM   #14
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After reading these posts it looks like I may be installing a pair of these this summer. I hope I don't regret clicking on this thread but end up praising you guys for putting this bug in my head.
Let me know how you like them... I can't really imagine it not making an improvement... And they are built like a tank...
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Old 01-14-2018, 10:15 AM   #15
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The Sulastic shackles are laterally constrained, so it doesn't add the vagueness of a traditional suspension bushing. I never felt the slights bit of unwanted movement when I put them in, but I can definitely feel things moving around now that the forward spring bushings on the leafs are shot.

As David mentions, they are really a small torsion spring, very similar to rubber torsion trailer axles. They don't make the suspension any squishier
That's what I was wondering, lateral stiffness vs torsional compliance

How does the design constrain things laterally?

It also looks as though they have a built in travel limiter, as to not-over twist and tear the rubber bush on a big bump, looks like a cross bar in the pics (sort of similar purpose of a 2-stage coil over spring, or leaf pack and overload leaf set ups).
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Old 02-23-2018, 04:44 PM   #16
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I'm going to try this to satisfy my curiosity. I haven't found much intel on using Sulastic shackles on the front, or on an SMB front. Hell, I didn't even know they made one model for the front until recently. So I'm going to try to build it, fly it, and see what happens.

To have breakthroughs, you must have confidence in nonsense, okay? That's why only weird guys tend to have the breakthroughs: a sensible person won't have a breakthrough 'cause he writes it off real quickly as nonsense and, therefore, he doesn't ever do that's nonsense. - Burt Rutan

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Old 03-03-2018, 02:52 PM   #17
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The short answer is Sulastics on the front are good, really good. At least for the short test drive I did on the famously rough Colorado Springs streets. As a member of the "using things not as they were intended" club these did take some retrofitting to work on a 2005 SMB front end. As well as changing the feel of the front suspension they cured some issues I had, caused some issues and then cured some more. I'll do a more in depth post on what I did to get these to fit and how they improved things beyond just being rubbery. But for now I'm very happy about how the Van is handling. The plan from here is to re torque Ubolts and lug nuts (don't forget to re-torque all lug nuts when a wheel has been off) and go drive more to try to find where the issues may be hiding.

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Old 03-03-2018, 03:16 PM   #18
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Very cool, Eric

I can't really tell from the pic, but how much wheel up-travel before the rubber torsion bushing reaches hard stop limit?
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Old 03-03-2018, 07:45 PM   #19
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TomsBeast, bolt center of the spring eye will travel 1" from stop to stop. The Sulastic information states the ideal would be for the vehicle to be resting in the center of this range. I was originally concerned with this as the shackle was designed for the weight of an F350 pickup. But seems to be real close on my van. At the moment the van, in it's non-camping weight but with a full 46 gallons of fuel, is just off of the sulastic bump stop. So I have mostly all of the available up travel available. One thing I noticed when I manipulated the Sulastic through the full range of motion with a jack is that the elastmer is progressive not linear. When driving I didn't feel any banging or thump of it hitting a bump stop.

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Old 03-03-2018, 09:17 PM   #20
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Can't wait to hear the full report! I've been looking at them the past month, just haven't pulled the trigger yet.
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