Ranger Mods

After 2.5 years I have found the perfect rear leaf setup for perfect comfort and ride quality.

This suits my Supercab with ARB canopy, 140lts of fuel, drawers, battery, air compressor, air tank and whatever you can fill the drawers with.

Some will know the dramas I have had in the past and I have been quite happy for the last 12 months although the back was still a little spongy with a full tank and it leaned a bit through the corners.

From start to finish.
1. ARB OME 300kg constant load rear leafs. This left the rear so high that you could see the whole chassis rail plus some room to spare.
2. Remove one leaf from the pack which dropped the ride ride back to more acceptable height.
3. Brand new leaf pack ( no charge ) from ARB which are classed as standard weight with a 2 inch lift. I have lived with this for about 1.5 years and i has been pretty good. Rear height was spot on and the ride comfortable.

So the other day I decided to put the spare leafs I had from the original pack into what I had. I was informed that they would probably work out to be about a 200kg leaf pack. I was also going to put the shims between each pack and do the full rebuild before reinstalling as per previous post viewtopic.php?f=24&t=327. Result of that was they gave me all the wrong parts again!! Like WTF, I have unlimited time to waste with ARB. I already had them pulled to stripped them down and replaced the plastic spacers, re greased the pack properly and reinstalled.

End result was a further lift of only 1/2 an inch and the best ride I could ever imagine. The quality of the ride is amazing, supple like a sedan but strong enough to remove the body roll and my back is ecstatic about it. I have owned other 4wds with coils and the ride quality of this setup beats any of them hands down.

I have a design that cannot be bought from the factory and it is a winner.

You've had an interesting experience, I have the ARB BP-51 suspension system with uprated 600kg leafs at the rear, this was installed when ARB upgraded the GVM from 3200 kg to 3500 kg prior to initial NSW registration.
After 12 years of driving a 100" wheel base LR Discovery with coils front and rear I think the set up I've got is near to being perfect, that said I carry the ARB 140 litre Frontier fuel tank, a S/S water tank built into the rear of the tub (125 litres) and a full drawer built-in unit with a 66 litre fridge/freezer and a roof top ARB "Simpson 3" tent so fully laden my weight on the weigh bridge is 3260kg with 1520 on the front axle and 1740 kg on the rear axle, according to ARB the "theoretical maximum" weight of the front should be 1480 but the adjustable coil over BP-51's handle the additional 40 kg with ease and it is as as close to being a 50/50 split as you could ever expect to get in a 4WD ute. It handles and rides beautifully.

I did go over a weighbridge the other day. Unfortunately I do not have front and rear weights separate but weights were;

3140 kg - Vehicle
780 kg - Trailer

Total - 3920

This was with about 40 litres of fuel. I put another 100 kg's on that further down the road. Overall the ride for the 2k trip was perfect at best and worked really well on the dirt roads.

All in all after the suspension mod the rear only dropped 1 inch in total and no more. I might go for a drive tomorrow and get my standing weights with full fuel and vehicle empty to compare to my weights when I had the vehicle new.

Some weights on my Supercab.

Dec 2015
Standard vehicle, standard tyres etc.
ARB Canopy
ARB Summit Rear Bar
80 litres diesel
Vehicle empty of everthing

Front - 1.36 t
Rear - 1.04 t
Total - 2.4 t


April 2018 My standard day to day weights.
ARB Summit bull bar
ARB Summit side steps
Warn xeon winch
ARB Summit rear bar
OME suspension front and rear
ARB Canopy
Waeco 40 litre fridge
Custom fridge mount in cab
120 amp AGM, second battery
Custom drawer system
Air tank
ARB compressor
Projector 35amp battery charger
140 litres of diesel
265/70 Mickey Thompson ATZ tyres
Probably another 50kgs of misc items front and rear

Tyres are a difficult one with weight as yes they are being turned but I would not class them as axle weight. Current tyres are so much heavier than the original items.

Front - 1.58 t
Rear - 1.32 t
Total - 2.9 t

Honestly I'm suprised the OME nitrochargers are coping with this weight but there have been no issues.

Interesting read, how many leaf in your pack now? Any pics.
Have been thinking of doing a hybrid setup with a couple of sets of std springs.

Been a long time and nearly everything has changed.

Back to around 200kg springs for comfort and Fox 2.5 with DCS all round now.