Chevy & GMC Vans

Bump Steer, Ya I guess thats what I got too. Reason (I figure) is because there is simply no down travel left in the maxed out suspension, so when you hit a bump, and then it tries to react, it runs out of travle on the return, hits the stop. Then the van swerves to the side due to the inertial force that can not get absorbed by the suspension when there is no more down travel left in it.
if your never touching bottom in your van when off road, You cant be going very far off road.
I only wheel very lightly, and I have many hits underneath.

I can't see shafts breaking due to angle. It's not structural component, it just drives the wheel.

JUST drives the wheel? That is a pretty naive statement. There is a lot of torque there when you are trying to climb over something. I have snapped more than one halfshaft that way along with my driveshaft and rear leaf spring mounts. I guess I should point out that I have a V8 in mine though. Albeit a wimpy 305. It sounds like you are just looking for the someone to say it is alright to crank 'em up. Just do it then. I did. It was cool for awhile. See how it works for you. If you have never hit anything under your van at this point I would assume you don't ride yours as hard as Dean and I did. Maybe it will work for you. I thought we have been given concrete answers of why not though. Too much angle on an already inferior setup. I was also always scared I would snap the torsion bars because they were wound up so tight.

As for 33" tires. Ain't happening without around 10" lift. I have 5" welded in frame spacers with 31X10.5 tires. That is the max size I can go. The Pickle bus has 33's. The wheel openings just make it hard to put bigger tires on.

ROFLMAO!!!
I love it! "The Pickle Bus" Ha Ha Ha.
So, what kinda transfer case and tranny does the pickle have?

No, I'm not looking for someone to say do it. I'm looking for 1st hand experience. I do understand that the greater the angle of a CV joint, the more resistance it puts up, but as you say, there's a V8 in yours so that wouldn't be a good comparison. I suspect that if shafts broke simply while braking when the suspension is at 75% travel, then they would be breaking all the time on these vans. I have had the pedal to the floor with the van stuck in place and not broken any shafts, and that's the maximum torque I can put out.

I didn't say I never hit anything, although I try my darndest not to because I know that oil pan hangs really low. The amount of damage on someone's vehicle tells me more about their driving ability, or how much they value their possessions, than it does about how "hard they ride".

Driving ability. Touche! It's more like "Going where no van has gone before!". Never mind the halfshafts. It's the rest of the suspension I'm really speaking of. The tie rods, idlers arms, ball joints, etc. they wear out very quickly. The idler arms REAL quick. Last time I did work on the 93, I spent around $800 I think it was with all new Moog parts. Three months later the idler arms were shot and within a year everything else was getting pretty loose. Do you have oversize tires at this point? They also contribute a lot to worn suspension parts. I believe OverlandVans sell a ball joint relocation kit to help in that area.

I do notice the steering getting a bit loose, but nowhere near as bad as you say, and I was going through idler arms even before the lift. I do have 30" tires (by the way those Coopers look nice. I think I will buy a set), and I did relocate my ball joints, which have been fine so far as well.

If the keys were easy to install I would just try it for a while and see how things go. But judging by how everything under the vehicle gets seized up from rust, removing the torsion bars would probably be a monumental task. That's why I'm trying to collect as much public opinion as I can.

2nd to last photo: I don't think I would try that... unless there was some really amazing camping on the other side

The tires on the red van in those pics were Dunlops. I did not like them at all on the street and they wore out fast. I actually like ProComps. Cheaper than most, 50K warranty and the van steers and rides on regular roads really nice. The ones on the green van may be Coopers. I'm not sure. It wasn't my van when the pic was taken.

Here is a pic of the ProComps.

doyoulikeithere wrote:ROFLMAO!!!
I love it! "The Pickle Bus" Ha Ha Ha.
So, what kinda transfer case and tranny does the pickle have?

The SPB (Sweet Pickle Bus) has the stock 4L60E tranny and a NP231 transfer case.

timelessbeing wrote:by the way those Coopers look nice. I think I will buy a set

They were Cooper Discoverer S/T's. They were an AWESOME wheeling tire. The sidewalls took some amazing abuse and I am still using them.

timelessbeing wrote:I didn't say I never hit anything, although I try my darndest not to because I know that oil pan hangs really low. The amount of damage on someone's vehicle tells me more about their driving ability, or how much they value their possessions, than it does about how "hard they ride".

and

timelessbeing wrote:2nd to last photo: I don't think I would try that... unless there was some really amazing camping on the other side

That's what Bill is talking about that you don't have damage under neath because you simply haven't wheeled very hard yet. Those rocks in that second to last pic were monthly rides we did when we wheeled a lot. When you simply go where no Astro or Safari has gone before, you will find rocks bigger than you can make it over without damage. Depends on how big your cahonies are.

LiftedAWDAstro wrote:They were Cooper Discoverer S/T's. They were an AWESOME wheeling tire. The sidewalls took some amazing abuse and I am still using them.

That's all I need to hear. I'm sold.

LiftedAWDAstro wrote:Depends on how big your cahonies are.

Well, if wanting my beloved Astro to last means I have smaller cahonies, then so be it. It's my only vehicle after all.

timelessbeing wrote: Well, if wanting my beloved Astro to last means I have smaller cahonies, then so be it. It's my only vehicle after all.

I hear ya on that. Even though I built my 93 specifically to do nasty things in the woods I hate every time it gets hurt. Sometimes wish I didn't. It was a pretty mint grandmas van when I got it.

timelessbeing wrote:Well, if wanting my beloved Astro to last means I have smaller cahonies, then so be it. It's my only vehicle after all.

I can understand your point 100%. For me and I think Bill, it was like an addiction. Every time we wheeled, people would be amazed at where we were taking our vans. That just pushed us onto harder and harder trails. It was a LOT of fun though while it lasted. I don't regret any part of it. Great family time spent together.

I know what you're saying too. I pushed my first two vehicles way beyond what they were meant for, and they probably died an early death because of that. Then I got my Astro, and I was very impressed. It's as close to my ideal vehicle as I can get (without spending hoards of money of course). I push it hard sometimes too, but I still wish it could last forever, because I know there's no replacement.

The Astro remained unchanged for a long time, meaning it was built like the old vehicles: reliably. They couldn't turn it into a modern, cheaply built, POS car with huge profit margin, so they dropped it. It didn't fit in with the new market philosophy of rapid financial gain, made possible by cheap and fast production, and aggressive marketing. The public, motivated by low prices, is now flooded with virtually limitless supply of product, and is taught by media to be an obedient consumer of disposable goods from a young age. Their whole business is centered around selling volume, so when the market slows down, they choke and go bankrupt.

Sorry, for the segway, but if GM had focused on sustainability, we might have had Astros still being sold!

Nice Diamond plate Sailor...

At the risk of , I want to bring up this topic again. Most of us heard lockdoc and others say "don't use reindexed torsion keys!", and I'm not about to dismiss their advice. This is more just for my piece of mind.

The other day I was helping my friend work on his buggy and I noticed how much of an angle there was in the CV joints. Certainly more than in my van, so I decided to take photos of my front axle (OE keys cranked up almost all the way).




The CV angles look almost straight (to me). So either the tolerances are very small, or my torsion bars are getting tired.

How much deflection is considered extreme?

I should post pics of the CVs on my wife's Liberty. They are about as far as they can get.