Sidekick lift

[grasshoppers]

hey mr. suzican are trackers aloud to participate at suzican .

[Mud Lite]

Yup.

[grasshoppers]

cool may be picking up a tracker for firefly .

[Fullload]

Whats your plans for it? 35's and solid axle toys? or the 6" Calmini lift and 31" boggers?

[Depot]

OMG - STAY AWAY FROM THE CALMINI LIFT KIT!!! It is megga crap!

Lucy and i spent weeks modifying it to work on her kick and wound up using stock components and ditching the calmini ones to make it work on the front. The rear kit is good though.

Solid Axel front is the way to go specially with ur driving style

my 2 cents


gl

D

[grasshoppers]

calmini combo kit 3 " body and 3 " suspension with 31 trxus. will my sami rear locker work on the tracker rear gears . this rigg is going to be an every day as well as off road. :yike

[Depot]

yah, thats the kitt, ur gonna have problems with the front big time. The coils are way too stiff for starters.. the kitt is designed for a fully built rig with a winch and cage and lotsa weight. Calmini suggests u break the coils in first, then trim em to get ur front tires aligned.

Aslo, the front diff mounts are weak. U'll need to modify the mount that goes around the front third member flange... replace it with a full circle design. MLC has pics of how he did his. If u dont modify it, the aluminum mount on the thrid shears off, which in turn takes out the mount on the housing (also aluminum). A real pain in the ass.

After all said and done, all U'll have in the front is 6" of travel in total. With the way the kitt comes, it will all be uptravel. Those coils being sooo stiff, it forces ur lower control arm down till the strut bottoms out.. hence the break in and trimming procedures.

For all that money and all that work and all the troubles, I really dont think the calmini lift is worth it. Lucy's idea which makes more sense to me is to take all the stock front suspension components and lower them on the truck. Add ur body lift in and U'll get the exact same articulation as what calmini promises.

Either that or just do a toy solid axel conversion. I think u'll be happier with the toy conversion personally.,

GL

D

[MLC]

ya what he said

[grasshoppers]

the plan would be to pick up the calmini anvil front axle housing to eliminate thse front end problems. any feed back on the housing.

[Depot]

IMHO, the anvil is pretty expensive. U can take a sammy rear end to a machinist and proly have him fab u up one for much cheaper if u brought him a kick front husing too as a template but keep in mind the housing is ur second weak point. The mount on ur third member is ur primary weak point. When that mount shears ur pinion will pop up and take out ur bell housing. Once u reinforce that pinion mount, then u can look into reinforcing the housing mount. I took Lucys housing to CG Alloys on finch/400 area, they reinforced the aluminum mount with oodles of weld and trusses for $50. So far that seems to work well. Much cheapers than Calminis $589 US for the anvil.

Dont get me wrong here, u can lift a kick and nicely too. Just dont expect to buy a bunch of crap from calmini, bolt it all in and wheel away. Even Calmini suggests u use the steel housing for the third member which means u'll have to create ur own mounting tabs on it.

Do more research and talk to other kick drivers b4 u spends thousands of dollars on what in my opinion is mostly crap from calmini.

gl

D

[grasshoppers]

there is nobody that sells a steel housing with the mount. and when you went to the machinest he could not copy the aluminum mount and make one for steel housing, or is it because you cannot weld on the sami housing. cast ? do you know if my rear sami locker will work with rear 5.13 "s in a side kick. hey thanks for the feed back. want to build a solid machine. worried about the boggers breaking shit a set of trx's would be much sweeter 33 "s preferable.

[grasshoppers]

hey depot reply in the side kick section.

[szabotage]

I like the idea of a hybrid front using a kick rear but I see alot of machine work involved, plus wouldn't there be some clearance issues?

toy SFA axles would prolly be the easiest answer here

[MuddMachine]

So whats building a kick got to do with Suzican ? Dumb fawks !

[Twinkie]

Jay, this came in from the topica Suzuki list, may be just what you need...

Bought this a while back used, now I have decided I won't keep IFS on any of
my vehicles, so I will not need this. What it is is the complete 3 inch IFS
Suzuki Sidekick Suspension system from Calmini. This has the newer coils, new
struts, and all skid plates, and stabalizer. Some bolts may be missing. $500
plus shipping. I don't have any pictures, and the kit is in really good shape. It
also comes with 2 rear upper link bars, as there was a proto type and a final
version.
I can accept credit cards, visa and MC as well as paypal and cash.
Sky.
Sky-manufacturing.com

[Fullload]

Well at least you know the guy is a vendor and he will sell you good stuff and he is true to his word.
Myself and depot have delt with him and he has great customer service and came through on a tight deadline for us both.


But on the other hand don't buy it. Buy a 4 door with a 16 valve already and SAS the thing. We'll do it over the winter. If you say that it will see street as well as trail stay on 35" Trixus tires and have a blast in both worlds.

When will you start listening to me? :bang: :bang: :bang:

You know i love ya!!!! :beer:

[Depot]

Hey grasshoper... if ur really stuck on lifting a kick using the calmini pos, Lucy is the person to talk to, she has the kitt, installed it and modified it to death. I am extremely bias - I hate the set-up.

IMHO that IFS sucks for offroad and lifting it puts serious stress and angles on the cv's and for what? 6 inches of total travel? U can get more than that outta a stock sammy with S-wrapped leafs.

Not to mention, the kinda cash ur looking to lay out on lift kitt, anvil, and then still beef it up and modify it to hell to make it wheelable, u can goy toys all round on both ur rigs with coils with DOM and aircraft rod ends for ur links and still have $$ left over to buy me beer!!! :beer:

If u wanna keep it simple and tire sizes small, then just do a SAS on the front using a sammy front with wheel spacers and leave it open. Theres plenty written up on that already.

gl

D

[Fullload]

If u wanna keep it simple and tire sizes small, then just do a SAS on the front using a sammy front with wheel spacers and leave it open. Theres plenty written up on that already.




I agree.

if you wanna stay 31's or open diff in the front with 33's, a sammy diff will do you just fine with a set of spacers.
Coil space the rear and a little longer links and off you go!!

[grasshoppers]

this kick is going to be a every day runner down hwy. 50 1 hour , and 1 hour back to beeton . yes it will be wheeled but more importantly it needs to be road friendly can we do that with the toys. not to familiar with caster settings.

[Depot]

Andrew in NS put toys on his kick. With the longer wheelbase he was able to put the front diff in level - not turning the pinion up - so that caster was not affected. If by some chance u have to rotate ur pinion up, u can always cut and turn ur knuckles back to compensate. Bothe Littlebeast and Fulload have done that already. Its not difficult, u just have to take measurements of where the cater is stock, then rotate them back to that position after u spin ur pinion.

if ur gonna use the kick tranny without modifactions, then u can leave the front diff flat.. the front ouput shaft is much lower than sammy's making it much easier to maintain caster.

D

[grasshoppers]

when you say longer wheel base are we talking the four door with a 16 valve in it already. or did he chop and make the kick longer.

[MLC]

Andrew's is a 2 door with a 8v i was talking to him last night ...he moved the front wheels a foward about 5 to 6 in and the rear 2 in back .....and it works nice (just my .o2) :)

[Depot]

yeah and he put YJ leafs in the front and coiled the rear.. works very nice too :D

D

[MLC]

I did the ifs lift worked well ...did the sami sas worked better now i am doing a toy swap starting this week should of did this in the first place