Old topic but I just navigated here several years later... What became of this spring under venture?
I regret now not picking up a rust free 2wd frame for $500 and instead planning to just patch up the rusted out rear half of my IFS frame... Nice score on the 2wd pickup. I've got the same bed (sadly minus the hooks), '84 2wd Japanese built bed), for my '88 IFS pickup.
I was looking at my '84 Toyota axle'd Samurai that's spring over with full high steer kit, and thinking "wow, there really isn't much room to lower this 7.5" lift (over stock SPUA), and a lower center of gravity sure would be nice!" The high steer parts will hit the frame with minimal up-travel if I were to lower it much more unfortunately...
The bigger issue is VW TDI swapping the Toyota axle'd Samurai or the '88, as the more common newer TDI engines will have the oil pan sitting on the high steer SPOA tie rod if you don't go to extremes to shuffle things around. With the wheelwell position of the Toyotas, it's too much to shove the axle pretty far forward / engine back into firewall without completely moving the wheel arch or butchering up the fenders...
This is when I had the same realization that started this thread. If I had Front Range Off Road's flat keyed billet steering arms instead of typical high steer arms with 1.5" or so of rise in them, and I had taller arched springs in a spring under configuration, I'd have all kinds of room. Flat crossover steering arms with spring over axle would put the tie rod and drag link in the same real estate that the springs are in, so that won't work at all, and otherwise that'd be the only way to gain more uptravel clearance.
Now on the Samurai especially, I'm thinking I'll get a Toyota IFS solid axle swap front spring hanger, extend the front of the Samurai frame a few inches and weld this front leaf hanger across the frame, and do some sort of frenched shackles in the back of the front leafs, or else even some leaf spring slider boxes like what Liquid Iron Industries sells, in case the frame width being narrower than the axle leaf perch width causes too many headaches trying to figure out how to pierce the shackle through the frame when they're not directly on top of one another, the leaf vs frame (leaf outboarded halfway and only under the outer edge of the Samurai frame rail).
To make this sweeter, a Trail Gear Rock Assault front housing has the axle tubes offset up so the axle shafts are off centered and riding near the bottom of the housing, AND instead of most people's mod of adding IFS hubs to the 81-85 solid front axles to widen them to IFS (and increasing the scrub radius etc), the Trail Gear Rock Assault front housings add 3" to the passenger side, so you can run the 81-85 style hubs and have proper scrub radius, but still have the IFS width stance. They include the passenger side longer than stock axle shaft with the housing, FYI.
The other HUGE perk to that Rock Assault housing, is that by offsetting the axle housing tubes up to gain more ground clearance, it also allows us more lift if doing an unconventional Spring Under Axle, as the leaf will mount higher up off the ground with the bottom of the tubes up higher off the ground... AND... additionally, if the leaf perch is no longer sitting at the edge of the differential housing where the perch has to be lower with more stacked drop height off the axle tube, since the passenger axle tube is 3" longer and the leaf mounts on the tube clear of the diff 3rd member housing, you get the leaf mounted higher again.... I was going to do '88 Toyota Old Man Emu 2" lifted rears up front and '89 Toyota Old Man Emu 2" lifted rears out back with a long wheelbase OEM Samurai body panel assembly for about 25" longer cargo bed in the Samurai, + frame stretch... I can do sheetmetal work to make the wheel arches larger diameter and higher up, and move the LWB rear wheel arch a few inches back as well, and that'll allow 33" 255/85R16 Interco TrXus M/T Radials to stuff nicely under flex with 16x7 wheels...
