Rock Crawling vs. High Speed Off Road Suspension Setups?
 

In the case of a Jeep, what are the differences between a rock crawler setup and a Baja style high speed setup? Someday I'd like to put my Jeep on Roids, but I think I'd like to go more the Unlimited Truck direction for screaming down trails more than crawling over rocks, but maybe they're not so exclusive.

Rock crawling needs the suspension to articulate and be super smooth./ This means no sway bar and super soft spring and shock set ups.
Baja needs to have sway bars and a stiffer set up over all. Focus more on overall suspension travel and robustness( read very very abusive).
The short wheel base that makes Jeeps get for climbing over anything is going to add alot of instability. Might not be a big deal now, but e first time you jump it you'll realize it.

Solution: build the Jeep for rock crawling and buy a used sand rail. You can find them all over SD ranging anywhere from $1,800 to $100,000.

I've jumped my stock jeep . . . pretty good in fact. I (technically my Jeep) broke the tail bone of a HS girl who was riding in the back w/o a seat belt coming back to school from lunch. Kinda confirms my suspicion. There's probably a reasonable cross between street, rock, and high speed trail driving in there somewhere.

BTW, check out the vids from our Silverwood adventure.

Your Wrangler's wheelbase is too short to make it a good prerunner. You need something that is in the area of 110 to 115 to handle well. As you confirmed with your high school run. I'm assuming that the girl was sitting in the back because of the short wheelbase they tend to kick the rearend up in the air.

As Carlos said with a rock crawler you want softer suspension. However, with the softer suspension you are going to have to have a front swaybar to keep the truck stable when on the road. There are a lot of companies that make swaybar disconnect kits for your jeep. How they work is usually have a pin that you remove when you get to the trail that disconnects the swaybar. When you finished the trail you just re-install the pin to reconnect it. This was Ron's (Silver Jeep) issue on the run last week. He had to go slow on the freeway because his truck wobles all over the road.

You can also have a prerunner without swaybars like I did on my Ranger that I had. Because of the stiffer suspension there isn't a need to have one. However, if you build one with a lot of travel and use coilovers that have a progressive rate you will most likely need a rear swaybar to keep the truck from extreme body roll.

If you just want to raise your Jeep so that you can fit larger tires there are many companies that make lift springs for it. If you want to do it for really cheap and use your factory springs you can always do a spring over axle conversion. It would cost about $50 and would get you about 5-6 inches of lift.

My boy rob has a jeep that straight dominates trails. He uses the a Jeep Jambori 4.5" (I think) lift that has quick disconnects for the sway bars. There is a huge difference on hte street and on the trail when the swaybars are connected or not. The thing is so loose even with the sway bars that I would be scared to bomb it down a trail.

Also, the Baja boys really don't lift their trucks very high.

I see. . . . more of an Apples and Oranges thing. Indeed the butt breaking incident was the result of coming screaming over a hill, and she managed to slam her butt on the side roll bar coming down and bounce back into the jeep . . . thank god.

Also, for "high speed offroading" or trophy truck style suspensions, you'll want the truck the be as low as you dare for handling purposes. Obviously it will still be higher than stock, but not higher than it needs to be. You'll want the engine in the back (or in the front set back as far as possible) and an independent suspension/ diff up front.

I don't know much about rock crawling, but I do know that tires are the only thing that will give you diff clearance. So it would make sense that you should jack up the vehicle as much as you need to for some massive tires. Most rock crawlers that I've seen are solid axle front and back, but I have seen a few pro rock crawlers that are independent. Probably more a matter of budget and preference than function. And I don't know for sure, but it makes sense to me that an engine should be up front in a rock crawler, to prevent falling backwards. Juuust a thought.

As far as suspension, I remember trophy trucks having almost 30" of travel up front, almost 40" out back. The shocks usually have about a 16" stroke, maybe more. As far as the rock crawlers, I don't think that suspension would be totally different. Made to be fully and slowly compressed with rebound being less important. I know that they both use coilovers though, mainly. Also, both 4 linked.

I watch Extreme 4X4 on Spike and they've swapped out entire front ends to go from independant sppension to a solid front axle. for rock crawling/serious trail rig's. Thier claim is that you can get much greater articulation with solid axle???

I always heard that solid axles were much better for rock crawling, but I thought s was due to the durability.

It has more to do with expense than durability. You can get great articulation out of an independant suspension but it will cost you. If you look at the 4x4 trophy trucks they all have independant fronts and some have independant rears that can travel well over 30 inches.

However, rockcrawlers have experimented with independant suspensions but most use a solid axle. I my opinion having the solid axle helps in the rocks because as one tire goes up it forces the oposite tire down which provides more traction.

I did a solid axle swap on my Explorer. However, if I would have had the $5000 it would have cost to go the coilover route and keep the independant front I would have. Instead I did the solid axle swap myself and have about $1200 into it.