Hello, all.



After a cold weather air compressor failure dropped my 2012 LR4 onto its 285 60 18's on the interstate and left me stranded, I bought an off-road SYA Kit from Lucky8.

With the SYA kit installed, I thought I noticed a harshness when driving over certain bumps on pavement that hadn't been there before. Instead of a muted bump it was a bang. I recalibrated the suspension using the GAP tool, but the harshness was still there. I reached out to Lucky8 but they ignored me. I tried living with the ride quality for a few months, thinking maybe it was in my head. A couple weeks ago I needed a brake job and took the opportunity to remove the SYA Kit. The harshness is gone. That certain quality that the LR4 suspension has that makes it a joy to drive is back. The love has returned.

Anyone else have this issue with the SYA Kit? (Just a subtle but annoying change in the suspension's ability to absorb harshness.)

 

The absorption of bumps should be handled by the air spring…. and if the risers are suitably tightened, there shouldn’t be any knocking.
I wonder, were you bottoming out? Or raised to high as to hyper extend the spring?
Just weighing in. I have no need for the kit.

 

SYA kit itself does not change any height or geometry, but most use them when the put lift on. So did you change your ride height? After removing the kit, did you go back to stock height if you did?

 

How does placing spacers on top of the air struts, not affect geometry?
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/21...f?v=1643221119

But I do concur, a recalibration would be necessary.

 

All the kit does is, in essence, "compress" the struts downward. Installing the kit will not change the vehicle height. Now by proxy, it does allow the struts to "drop" lower, hence the limit straps but that only really comes into play when off-road, playing on rocks and such when you can fully drop a wheel. The straps are useless when driving normally because cruise the roads and mall one will never hang a wheel in mid air. So unless height rods or GAP ride hight was adjusted, the vehicle will sit at the exact same height whether they were installed or not. That is why I asked if there was also some sorta height adjustment made during removal of the kit. Now ideally, one does make a height adjustment equal to the spacer size. This way the struts air pressure and overall length is not impacted and the strut, at home, will have the same road feel. But when making permanent standard road height adjustments to the degree needed, one must loosen ALL control arm bolts, not just those for alignment. Otherwise the bushings are always being twisted which results in a harsher ride.

Also a recalibration would not be needed, unless height rods were removed/added. Changing a strut, or in this case removing spacers, has zero impact on the existing calibration. The height calibration is only relative to upper arm to body for setting ride heights, the strut is irrelevant.

 

No knocking or bottoming out. Wasn't overextending. Just the loss of that nice softness when driving over bumps on pavement.

1.5" lift rods before and after the SYA Kit.
With SYA kit installed, harshness was there before and after the recalibration. Also, I don't remember the exact changes when recalibrating, but it wasn't very much. Maybe a half inch on a couple of the corners?

The theory that makes the most sense above is the not loosening all the control arm bolts theory. (Although I don't see that mentioned in the instructions.) It was also a little darty on the highway during the SYA phase. Alignment after removal fixed the dartiness.

 

You wont see it mentioned because the kit is just spacers and straps, the kit itself does not change the height at all. If you ever removed suspension parts, in particular the typically higher upper control arms, you know they like to sorta hang there in a sweet spot. Once you loosen the bolts for them, they fall. That is because the bushings are "at home" at that position when everything was torqued down. It is also why any time suspension work is done, final torque to all the bolts is done at ride height. So if you dramatically change and LR3 ride height, you should loosed everything up. If you do a half inch, nah... 1 inch... good idea but probably not a big deal. But anything more than 1.5", really should. So going back to that upper control arm scenario, if you do not that arm is basically always tying to lift up a bit because if you increase height, it is being pulled down. While one arm is not a huge deal, spread that all over and you can see you are fighting lots of bushings. The flip side is they are now always twisted so they will wear faster. And this is not unique to the LR3 of course, this has been a known thing on any vehicle that has fixed bushings (rubber is bonded to the metal). If you have poly, no worry as they are not fixed. But specific to the LR3/4, poly bushings are a horrific idea anyway.

But going back to my original question, if you did not remove the lift rods along with the spacers, then you have not changed height. So the harness issue is probably more to do with the struts themselves, specifically the shock absorber portion. Some shocks have a sweet spot, especially as they age. Anything that changes that can have an impact. And since the spacers effectively makes the struts shorter at your standard height, you are pushing out of that sweet spot and into a more compressed position.

 

Thanks, Dakota. Makes pretty good sense.