I have always enjoyed doing the Scottish Green (Off) Road runs in my Freelander 2 and it has always 'grated' me a bit missing out on the non Freelander or Evoque friendly runs!

About a year ago I fitted a Mantec Sump & Tank guard as well as a set of 245/70 X 17 General Grabber All Terrain tyres which gave my FL2 an increase in ground clearance of about 25mm. I would say this is an easy and great starting point which really improved my FL2 off road.

I always wanted to fit a set of the spacers fitted by Martas a number of years ago in this link;

http://www.freel2.com/forum/topic10278.html

I finally managed to get drawings of both the front & rear spacers that Martas fitted via Mihai B who was also considering getting a set at the time - It took me a few months but I managed to get a set of the front and rear spacers made by 'calling in a favour' from a friend at a local machine shop before he left. In the end I went for 20mm spacers in the front to protect the wishbone & drivetrain and 25mm spacers in the rear to keep the car fairly level but get the fuel tank as high as possible.

Fitting the spacers is a bit of a pain as it does involve removing and dismantling all of the struts in order swap the mounting bolts. In the front struts the top plates are actually slightly conical so ideally the spacers should also be conical rather than completely flat so I straightened the top plates slightly to suit the spacers, the top mounting bolts on the front strut are also not vertical so I drilled the holes in the spacers off line to suit the bolt angle. The original rear strut top mounting bolts are semi riveted in so when you remove them there is nothing there to screw a new bolt into and no access to hold a bolt or nut in the underside of the top plate for re-build so I tac welded the bolts to the underside of the rear top mount plates to hold them secure when I tightened the nuts at the top during re-build. After fitting I measured the ground clearance again and I now have over 50mm extra ground clearance between the tyres & spacers than my FL2 had when I got it.

Yesterday was my first chance to really try the car out off road in a non Freelander friendly event where I agreed with the organisers another member in a well equipped Defender 90 would go in front of me for the run to winch me out if I had any hassle. Fortunately for me I had no problems anywhere and I suspect I must have close to the ground clearance of a standard Defender or Discovery now which is a great result I reckon and I am really pleased with the improvement in the cars ability off road now in deep ruts or anywhere ground clearance is an issue.

I have also now driven more than 1,000 road miles since fitting with no issues although I definately need to step higher to get in....

Any chance of a copy of the drawings please 😃😃

Drawings
Drawings
Drawings
Drawings

The drawings of the spacers took me a bit of finding again but I hope this works ok uploaded as PDF files.

I am sure neither Martas or Mihai B will mind me posting these on the forum now but ALL credit for creating these drawings must go to Martas! (And Mihai B for keeping the drawings and forwarding them on to me after he sold his FL2......)

Here goes;

Front Spacer

https://www.freel2.com/gallery/albums/user...en%ED1.pdf

Rear Spacer

https://www.freel2.com/gallery/albums/user...en%ED1.pdf

One pic from Sunday's event that was a good one to do but I don't have any better pics of some of the places where I really needed the extra ground clearance on some of the steeper and rougher tracks but great to be out there and it was a scenic run too......

Thank you so much for sharing 😄😄😄

Here is some info I have found but all credit to jjj 👍👍
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5lvwm4i0djovjfk/...?dl=0https

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yoy3p095jed5xvi/...4.pdf?dl=0

These fitting guides are good cqr and very similar to the procedure I did.

A couple of points I would probably do differently having done the job myself are ;

1) On the front struts I did not find it necessary to remove the wipers and air intake grid - I managed to get enough access to the 3 mounting bolts on each strut by just lifting the air intake grid itself. JJJ's procedure has done 95% of the work to remove the front struts so I personally found it better to just remove the front struts and straighten out the top plates slightly to suit the flat spacers and position the mounting bolts on the underside of the top plates with the spacers already in place before installing the strut back on the car.

2) I did the first rear strut by the exact same procedure as JJJ. During the re-build though one of the 3 top mounting plate bolts started to turn slightly even though it had a tight lock nut - Fortunately for me it was the one bolt I could get a spanner on to on the underside to hold to tighten up but my strong recommendation here on the rear struts would be to do what I did on the 2nd strut which was to tac weld the bolt head to the underside of the strut top plate so there is no risk of the mounting nut not being able to be tightened properly during the rebuild i.e. The mounting bolt on the top plate cannot spin during tightening stopping you tightening it to the right torque.


Good find and step by step fitting guide though!

When I was looking into maximum safe spacer widths without too much risk of damaging other components in the suspension, drivetrain etc JJJ's research into ideal spacer widths was some of the key info I found when I decided to make my front spacers 20mm wide and rears 25mm.

Thank you!

Great help there to many members, well done Uncleron, I have added this thread to the modifications sticky list

Anyone know the original dimensions of the bolts in order to start the mod. with all the stuff available?

Sorry no idea
I was thinking of printing out the diagram life size
And using as a template

they have to be at least Grade 10.9 or higher. Standard Grade 8.8 bolts are not rated for the prescribed torque values (15 Nm + 90°) and may stretch. It is compulsory to use a washer unless flange bolts are used.
From jjj 's instructions 😄

Sorry I cannot be sure of the exact size of bolts I used when fitting the suspension spacers to my Freelander 2 as my friend in the machine shop at the time gave me a selection of highly specced bolts & nuts with the suspension spacers and just told me to use what I needed and give him back the rest I did not use.

I know on the front spacers I used 8mm threaded allen headed bolts which I screwed through the retaining nut in the underside of the strut top plate and I secured the strut in place in my FL2 with large thick washers under 13mm headed nyloc nuts in the engine compartment. I think the bolts in the front struts I used were approx 40mm in length.

On fitting the spacers to the back struts I used 13mm headed 8mm threaded bolts. Again I screwed the bolt through from the underside of the strut top plate - The 13mm head on the bolt gives a better surface to tac weld on to the rear strut top plate for extra security when tightening from the inside. On the rear struts I think the bolts I used were approx 50mm in length - They need to be a bit longer as there is an additional 'vibration/noise' reducing weight that the bolts also go through inside the boot compartment before the nuts go back on.

Nice thread  Tony....... tt's little tiger http://www.freel2.com/forum/topic20905.html

Uncleron wrote:

Front Spacer

https://www.freel2.com/gallery/albums/user...en%ED1.pdf
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