109 Designa Coil chassis?

I've read thru some older threads on the topic, but wanted to get an update from the forum crowd.

My '73 Station Wagon has developed some overt cancer in the left rear spring perch, and I am preparing for the worst as I take a screwdriver to the frame to explore the extent of it. The perch pushed right up into the frame rail.

Exploring the following: weld in a fix, swap to a galvie leaf chassis (RN), or swap to a coil chassis (Designa). I am running Disco axles, p38 power steering, a 4BD1T Isuzu diesel with a NV4500 tranny behind it. She is a year round daily driver, and I log 5-6k miles a year. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

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Here is their website for those interested.
http://www.designa-chassis.co.uk/109coil.html

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Originally Posted by toga Rover

I've read thru some older threads on the topic, but wanted to get an update from the forum crowd.

My '73 Station Wagon has developed some overt cancer in the left rear spring perch, and I am preparing for the worst as I take a screwdriver to the frame to explore the extent of it. The perch pushed right up into the frame rail.

Exploring the following: weld in a fix, swap to a galvie leaf chassis (RN), or swap to a coil chassis (Designa). I am running Disco axles, p38 power steering, a 4BD1T Isuzu diesel with a NV4500 tranny behind it. She is a year round daily driver, and I log 5-6k miles a year. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

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I have no experience with Designa, or coil springing a Series, but I have both leaf and coil Rovers. I noticed that you are not running parabolic leaf springs. In my experience, the parabolics will get the 109" very close to the level of coil spring comfort, but not quite. If you're currently satisfied with the ride on the leaf springs, staying with that type frame is going to be your easiest bet.

If you're not, well then go for it, but you'll likely need a few more bits and pieces to make it all work (arms, brackets, springs, etc..). Designa can supply it looks like, but that depends on your wallet I suppose $$$.

The last thing to ask yourself, is how long can you afford for the Rover to be down during the frame replacement. Because you can get a 109" leaf frame pretty quick as several companies keep stock stateside. I don't know of anyone stocking a Designa chassis stateside.

Hi JP,

Thanks for your message. I spoke to RN at length about moving to parabolics for my Station Wagon, but they actually advised against it. As the owner of BritishStarters.com, I travel extensively to shows with all my vendor gear both in, and on top of the truck (product, tables, 10x20 canopy, etc), as well as in my customized Sankey trailer. They told me based on the loaded weight, that the parabolics would not be able to keep up - performance-wise.

I welcome input from others with a 109 and parabolics and the # of leafs they chose. My truck has 1-ton leafs now. She rides like a buckboard when empty, but is quite nice when loaded down.

It is from these conversations that I started looking at the Designa chassis - the same chassis used by ECR when they worked on Series trucks. As my truck has Disco1 axles under her, I understand the added bits needed to move to a coil setup.

As for using a galvie leaf-spring chassis, AB is 20 minutes from my house, and RN is 2.5hrs - an easy grab either way.

Cheers,

Dave

You might consider doing the galvanized chassis as it will out live you. Also Land Cruiser axles from a 1980-87 FJ60 are a little wider than the stock rover axle but very robust and have front disc brakes and quite good drum rear brakes with a reliable cable pull parking brake. Both axles are passenger offset like the rover and I believe they are spaced such that you could weld on spring perches to match the rover and still be centered. Furthermore the FJ62 which was 88-90 in the USA had the same axles but came with 4:11 gearing vs the 3:67 gearing in the 60's.