OK Gaz are a 'budget' gas damper, and err...... no not that brilliant, in fact I have a thought that the new 'Britpart' gas shocks are the same ones with different stickers......
Pro-Comps......... one of my least favourit brands, again, well marketed, over priced 'budget' brand.
They do work though, and they do come in a decent range of lengths and fittings, but they aren't the best made, and the eyes on the end have a habbit of snapping at the welds if used 'enthusiastically.... though I suspect a number of failures reported are probably helped by the vogue for them being fitted with them ruddy polyethalene spacers rather than proper bushes, cos they are just as well marketed by the same people, to the same people....
Damping wise they are OK, but they aren't particualrly well refined or have the response curves well 'matched' to individual applications, they have a range of a few 'basic' ons size fits all damping rates, which as said, 'do the job', which for the money is OK I suppose.
In the budget arena, Monroe 'Adventurer' dampers KEEP getting rated very highly; they aren't particularly hyped up by the marketing people, but coming from one of the reputed shock manufacturers and a supplier to the OEM's, the company has a wealth of experience and the resources to better tailor the shocks more closely to individual applications.
Fit and finish on them is 'good', not as neat and tidy as something like a Koni or De-Carbon, but good enough, and fixings are certainly better attached than other budget shox. I had a set on my 109, and was pleasantly surprised by them.
Had De-Carbons on my Rangies before now...... and they are good...... shame I cant afford another set!
Couple of 'Worrying' comments:
the person I got the disco off said it has a 2" lift.
but I would have thought they would be ok...
looks like whoever put the stuff on, did it properly as I have loads of receipts for all the extra parts, so it wasnt a ebay second hand job..
the disco has been polybushed, has the suspension lift, dislocation cones and a few other things..
When it comes to doing a lift, there's doing it 'properly' and there's doing it PROPERLY!
Now, I have to say, I dont LIKE lifts much, to begin with, as unless they ARE done PROPERLY they often make more problems that they solve.... but anyway.
Running through the list of usual suspects.
First of all, lifting the chassis 2" further from the axles, you increase the prop angles, which at 2" is 'just' enough NOT to HAVE to fit wide angle props to avoid binding in 'normal' use.
Next; 2" is again 'just' small enough to 'get away' without castor corrected radius arms or swivils, to compensate for the fact that by lifting the suspension you have rotated the front axle forwards reducing the amounmt of rake and trail in the front steering, making it more 'nervouse'.
The 'Cheap' fix here, is to fit 'castor correction', excentric centre bushes to the front hockey sticks. NOT a nice cure, and normally made in that horrible washing up bowl plastic, so yes, you get some correction for the steering geometry, but you also loose the complience that the bushes should have, which means accelerated wear, and loads shifted squarely to the other end of the radius arm, which I'll deal with in more detail in a mo......
Moving on, we get into the effect of the higher Centre of Gravity, which is already higher than most Land-Rovers on a Disco, due to that steel 'shell' sat on top, with its lifted roof-line.
Now; as the higher C-of-G causes more body roll, on cheaper (and some of the more expensive ones too) suspension lift kits, (and it seems that is what you got) tendancy is for the over length springs to also be a bit harder.
This means that they offer a bit more resistance to roll so the car isn't AS wobbly on the road as it could be, but it ALSO means that the effective 'lift' is from a spring which is simply not compressing as much at normal ride height, so you dont have as much extra travel as a spring with a better, softer rate spring.
Old rule, go up, go out; Add a 2" lift, you ought also to add wider wheels or spacers, with as much extra offset as you've added height, so that you have a wider track width, and the triangle formed from the C-of-G to the wheels contact points still has the same angles, rather than becoming narrower, in order to preserve some stability.
Lastly, Dis-loc-cones.... THESE I suspect are your real 'problem'
Basically, fitting a disloc cone instead of having the spring clamped to its top-mount, means you can get extra articulation from lettin the axle effectively 'fall off'.....
And the bush failures you've grumbled off are on the low side of the damper, and EXACTLY what I'd expect to see when the only thing holding the axle to the car is the damper.......
Back to the matter of wide angle props, 2" on retained springs, axle shouldn't drop that far, so wide angles may be something you can live without; but add dis-locs and suddenly letting the axle fall off, you are seriosely exceeding the anticipated range of travel.
And its NOT just at the props; you are doing the same thing at the radius hangers, which are a known weak-spot too, and have a tendancy to fatigue fracture.
But, add a 'lift' and worse, poly-bushes, you have twisted the raidus arm in the bracket and are asking them to take more load, at a new seating angle, and the bushes are bearing in a new portion of the 'cup' worn by the old ones at the original angle, so the stresses now applied are all at perverse angles and not, as originally intended evenly spread over the plate.
Situation is excaserbated by a lift pushing the new load to the bottom of the plate, too, where it has more 'leverage' over where the hanger is welded to the chassis.
'Top' lift kits consequently use cranked radius arms, that compensate for the lift by having a bend in them, so that the bit of the radius arm that goes through the hanger mount is the same angle as an original arm, and they also often have new 'cups' that screw to the hanger bracket for the bushes to bear on, so that the loads are better and more evenly spread into it, and the new bushes aren't trtying to seat in an old wear 'cup'.
Even with such precaution, though, doing it 'properly', I'd NOT use poly-bushes, and I SEVERELY censure people I see with them in this particular location........ but proper rubber bushes, as you said, they aint exactly expensive!
Personally, I'd grind off the old spring hanger and weld on a new one, with some additional gusseting to spread loads from it better into the chassis. Again, some of the better Lift kits actually come with re-inforced radius hangers.
Now, even with all that, from a 'top' lift kit, and we are talking the ones priced in thousands, not hundreds, you can still start stressing stuff, and working on Girties, top brand kitted 90 last week, one of the reasons we chucked the Power Steering Drop arm ball joint was that the standard ball's in the steering arrangement, like the yokes on the prop-shafts DONT have enough flex to accomodate the angles of an axle falling off on dislocation cones, and theer were some VERY worrying 'witness' marks on her ball-joint shaft when we pulled it out.....
SO!
Cutting to the chase...... loads and loads of good reasons for NOT fitting a lift in the first case.
If you DO, then lots more reasons for doing it 'right' and chucking the money at it for ALL the best bits, if you want to avoid the sort of failures you are just beginning to see.
Looking at where you are, and what you got; I suspect the advice to ditch the lift springs and poly-bushes would be rapidly argued against...... but dont dismiss it TOO quick.
Re-think what you actually gain from the lift, becouse with the 'cheap' kit it would seem you have, most of what you are gaining is not coming from those springs, but from the dislocation cones, and its THEM that are actually causing most of your problems.
Going back to 'normal' springs, you'd probably have as much, if not more articulation from them, and the only thing you'd likely loose, apart from the hassles and pottential failures associated with a lift, is a little break-over clerance.... for which sill protectors are a great panacea!
Keep the springs you have, if you must, but get rid of those ruddy poly-bushes, and take a long hard look at the radius arm hangers.
If you have castor correcting poly-bushes in the hokeys..... not much you can do abouyt them, except get a set of castor corrected hokeys instead, or a set of castor correcting swivil housings. Choice is yours.
But the Dis-loc cones should GO!
They're used becouse the stiffer lift springs dont have as much 'droop' to let the axle drop as far as softer lift springs would, and once fitted, amount of droop you can get is quite astounding.
But without a spring putting any load on the fallen off axle, you aren't ACTUALLY getting much useful traction from the dislocated wheel, it only has a part of the weight of the axle on it keeping it in contact with the surface, so the benefit is negligable.
(A diff-locker, or twiddle brake, or simply a strop wrapped around to 'lock', a 'hung' wheel would actually do more to give you drive at the loaded end of the axle!)
If you dont want to loose the discloc's, then cheap 'fix' is to add an axle check strap or retaining cable;
bit of doubled over bowden cable, attached to an eye at the chassis end spring mount, and another at the axle end spring mount, with the cable length set so that the spring wont dislocate further then the end of the cone, preferably 1/4" of an inch before the end of the cone, so you know it WILL always re-seat on the cone, and you aren't going to be hanging the axle off the damper rod..... check cable will do that.
THAT is all what we call 'preventative' action to stop you seeing more failures; problem you have at the moment is you need to do something to fix the problem you have, which is that the dampers seem to be cream-crackered, and you need new, PROPPER bushes for them........
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