Smart.
But 95/175 is still a heavy rate for a samurai. Even if it has a cage.
It's not so much that I feel that those springs were the appropriate ones to choose, rather than it came about as a grossly inaccurate guesstimation of what the sprung weight was going to be when I started this build. I read a bunch of posts on various forums of people running 175lb single coils, or something like a 150/175 dual rate coilover, and when I initially did the chassis weight check using the bathroom scale method, I was coming up with roughly 400lbs/corner. I figured by the time the rest of the steel was in, I'd be around 500-600lbs/corner, and the 175lb lower seemed to be in the ballpart.
Then build out enough to drop the chassis on the springs, measure sag to determine true corner weight, and choose the upper based on that...which is how I ended up with the 95lb upper after seeing my then corner weights coming in WAY lower than I expected. Even as it was, the 95/175 ended up with a ride height 2" higher than I wanted, even without having the coilovers charged.
Not to siderail the OP's thread on his steering issue, but I have run used coil overs, air shocks, and ORIs. The only ones that changed my ride height when charged or not was the air shocks and ORIs. I have never run a light weight rig like a samurai so maybe they react differently to the amount of weight in them, IDK.
Siderails are just fine in my book...it appears that this is all related in one way or another anyways. I wouldn't have expected this much of a change from charging them, but then the only point of reference I have other wise is something like common gas charged shocks. They're definitely harder to compress to install, but I've never had them noticeably change ride height. But then, that's also a heck of a lot less volume compared to these coilovers too.
If my last round of math was correct, and I really AM hovering around 250lbs corner weight, I can see where adding another 120lbs of "spring" can make a heck of a difference (I say "spring" in quotes as I realize that it's not really the same as the coils, or an air shock..I just can't think of a better word at the moment, lol). Though the other side of this is that the spring calculators are telling me I going to need something like a 65/95 combo, and the lowest rate coils I've seen so far is 80lb, though an 80 over 80 would get pretty close. That's the other part of why I'm waiting until I finish the build to get springs, considering my last couple rounds of guesstimating future weight have been way off...
