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Spacer lift vs. Spring lift

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Right. As with a longer spring
You cant add droop with a spring. In order to add droop you have either have to make the shock body longer (IE adding a spacer to the top is effectively doing this), or add a longer shaft to the strut. The spring is contained within the strut, and is limited in travel by the strut. This makes it physically impossible to add droop to the system.

FYI droop is the fully extended length of the shock/strut, usually measure from the bottom of the wheel to the bottom of the fender. You may be confusing droop with ride height.
 

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Yes I agree.

But droop is t always limited by the strut.

You cant add droop with a spring. In order to add droop you have either have to make the shock body longer (IE adding a spacer to the top is effectively doing this), or add a longer shaft to the strut. The spring is contained within the strut, and is limited in travel by the strut. This makes it physically impossible to add droop to the system.

FYI droop is the fully extended length of the shock/strut, usually measure from the bottom of the wheel to the bottom of the fender. You may be confusing droop with ride height.
 
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The rear springs are pretty small, it would be quite the job to get an airbag inside of the spring!

You could mount it inboard of the spring, while also making a bunch of custom bracketry to make it happen lol.
 

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The factory limitations will allow a moderate, affordable lift kit but will be limited to a couple of inches.
Spring or spacer is moot, what’s quicker to install will win market share.
Either way time will tell on where the line in the sand is on wear and detrimental handling so anyone going this route please provide which kit you installed, driving impressions and any issues that crop up down the road.

One way to get around the factory limitations with a bigger lift wouldn’t be cheap but a long arm, wide body kit would provide higher lift, increased articulation and improved geometry over stock control arm lifts of equal height.
Makes a guy wonder how wide to get 4”-6”…
I wonder who will offer one of these, and when?
 

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There is always some misconceptions about spring vs. spacer lifts.

Figured I would throw this out there to get some information in the forum.

Spacer Lifts-
Pros - cheap, first to market, doesn't change static position of shock
Cons - You just added the spacer thickness of droop, and are now added more angle into the CV's then was designed for. This can be said for bushings, sway bar end links, tie rods, etc. (true for struts, multilink rear may or may not have these problems depending on what is actually done)

Spring Lifts-
Pros - Does not change suspension travel/droop. Rate can be increased/decreased for load/ ride comfort.
Cons - Increases static ride height and position of shock, limits droop. Too much rate increase and overwhelm OE valving.

Do people combine these two? Yes, should they? Absolutely not, but that hasn't stopped crosstrek owners lol.

At the end of the day lifting an SUV, or in our case "truck" that is based off of a car platform will have limitations. 1.5"-2" of lift is about all you will get out of it with longevity and ride quality in mind.
The rear is already an inch or two higher
If you just add a 1 inch lift to the front-decreasing tire rub with extreme turning &you could probably go 31” &barely impact wearing other components… would you agree?
 

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Anyone inspect the underbody and see how beefy it is?

If I were going to do any serious off-roading on a unibody, I would be looking at sub frame connectors and trying to make the body as stiff as possible.
 
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The factory limitations will allow a moderate, affordable lift kit but will be limited to a couple of inches.
Spring or spacer is moot, what’s quicker to install will win market share.
Either way time will tell on where the line in the sand is on wear and detrimental handling so anyone going this route please provide which kit you installed, driving impressions and any issues that crop up down the road.

One way to get around the factory limitations with a bigger lift wouldn’t be cheap but a long arm, wide body kit would provide higher lift, increased articulation and improved geometry over stock control arm lifts of equal height.
Makes a guy wonder how wide to get 4”-6”…
I wonder who will offer one of these, and when?
You would essentially have to create a whole new chassis on the front end to widen the trackwidth via the suspension. At that point would be ditching all of the FWD drivetrain and swapping something RWD in. Then you mine was well just start with a ranger lol.

Can it be done? sure. Is anyone going to pay a fab shop $50k+ to build this, not likely haha.
 
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The rear is already an inch or two higher
If you just add a 1 inch lift to the front-decreasing tire rub with extreme turning &you could probably go 31” &barely impact wearing other components… would you agree?
With a spring lift, since you are not changing the travel, will see rub. It will just be likely to rub less at the raised static height, do the the extra bump travel (as compared from OE static to bump).

A spacer lift may prevent rubbing further as the full compression point is now lowered by the thickness of the spacer.

Seems like 30.5"-31" is about the max you can go without trimming/hacking things out of the way.
 
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Anyone inspect the underbody and see how beefy it is?

If I were going to do any serious off-roading on a unibody, I would be looking at sub frame connectors and trying to make the body as stiff as possible.
The torsional rigity of most modern unibody cars is pretty good. No one will be doing hardcore off roading in a Maverick lol. The limiting factor is going to be #1 drive train, #2 ground clearance.

Even if somehow you could get a locker for the rear of the AWD, its still FWD biased. This will be very traction limited and will not do well on bigger off camber situations.

With that being said Ive been underneath of the Maveric, Bronco Sport, and Escape. Being the Maverick has a relatively large payload capactity, i would imagine the chassis should be a little stiffer in comparison to the Bronco sport/esapce.
 
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You would essentially have to create a whole new chassis on the front end to widen the trackwidth via the suspension. At that point would be ditching all of the FWD drivetrain and swapping something RWD in. Then you mine was well just start with a ranger lol.

Can it be done? sure. Is anyone going to pay a fab shop $50k+ to build this, not likely haha.
There is no reason a whole new chassis is required or the change to a longitudinal drivetrain.
You are really looking at what, 4 longer CV shafts, 4 coil overs, a bunch of control arms and a few brackets/tie rods/Etc.
For a custom one-off you are probably light at 50k…
And I would agree that starting with a different platform is advantageous.
But, and it is too early in the products lifecycle to absolutely rule this out, would the market support a “mass produced” kit (2 kits really; 1 suspension and 1 body).
Some of these kits for other rigs are going for big bucks, but would this niche market support it?
Pull it off for 10k in parts and it might.
Might not too.
 
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There is no reason a whole new chassis is required or the change to a longitudinal drivetrain.
You are really looking at what, 4 longer CV shafts, 4 coil overs, a bunch of control arms and a few brackets/tie rods/Etc.
For a custom one-off you are probably light at 50k…
And I would agree that starting with a different platform is advantageous.
But, and it is too early in the products lifecycle to absolutely rule this out, would the market support a “mass produced” kit (2 kits really; 1 suspension and 1 body).
Some of these kits for other rigs are going for big bucks, but would this niche market support it?
Pull it off for 10k in parts and it might.
Might not too.
You cant extend the front control arms with out cutting and moving the strut towers out and equal distance that you would extend the lower control arms by. 90%+ (probably more) of FWD or FWD based AWD cars will have a Macpherson strut.

Im not aware of anyone ever doing this, but if you know of someone who has I would love to see it!
 
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How about a longer lower control arm and a fabricated spindle? Keeps the strut in the same spot but can be built to increase track width and add lift at the same time.
This would work, but you are creating an even bigger moment about the sealhead/shaft of the strut. Since the lower arm is longer, now the strut is going to move further (angle) to the top mount. Could cause some failure at the threads there, plus you're going to wear out the strut pretty quick.
If someone wants to do it I'm all for it, just wouldn't drive around it it lol.

This would be alot of work for minimal gain. It would be cheaper to buy a Can-am X3 or RZR and tow it to the desert with your maverick haha.
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