Here's a screenshot from a video a friend took in Pismo. For some reason he recorded everything in slow motion thinking he could speed it back up, which is a shame because he got some really good stuff but the sped up videos look like crap, so I've given up on trying to recover them.
Anyway, with the front end doing so awesome it's really brought to light how bad the back end is. With my shock setup I only have 3" of down travel, and the 9" of up travel I should have is hindered by my tires hitting my fenders, and that's with only 33s. I want to move up to 35s, which means doing a ton of sheet metal trimming, including the rear doors. To avoid trimming the doors some people move the axle back, which I could do but would rather not with my leaf springs because I've already relocated the shackle pivots once before, and it's just a lot of work to still have leaf springs. I really want to keep the shocks outside the frame rails and I'd also rather not stick some long shocks up into the cab and deal with having to seal everything back up around them. Keeping the back seat and a flat trunk floor is ideal, keeping the stock gas tank is imperative, and minimal modification to the frame rails is preferred.
Which leads me to the cantilever option. If i'm willing to go through all the work of building a cantilever setup with leaf springs, I may as well build it around coilovers and links, so that's what I'm seriously considering right now. I've studied every linked Explorer I can find and after looking at every viable way of doing it and all of the benefits and detriments and limitations, etc., this is what I've come up with so far. 3-link with a panhard, axle moved back 3", and a 12" cantilevered coilover. Last weekend I took a bunch of measurements of my frame, fender wells, trunk floor, and axle, and then I modeled it all in Solidworks. You can see that when flexed the wheel wells will be in the way. Also when flexed the shocks will be bottomed out before the axle hits the bump stops, so my next thing to add is a second bumpstop (rubber not hydraulic) hitting somewhere on the actual cantilever arm. This will also require a wider axle than the Bronco one I currently have, so I'll be on the lookout for an Econoline 9", which I still might need to add wheel spacers to to clear the shocks at full flex. I still need to finalize link lengths, but in Solidworks this can pull 19.5" travel with minimal trimming of the stock frame crossmembers, and has less than 1.5" lateral axle movement with the panhard bar.
The Leduc offroad swapmeet is coming up in a few weeks so I'm trying to figure out what I need before then.
If I were to do it again I probably would angle them back to the rear to give some more space fron the crown of the sidewall.
