79 with trx suspension, front stiff, rear loose. Normal?

[Hans]

Can push front fender 1/2" down until it dents in. Rear is like a waterbed. Like half a foot without problems when pushing down with 2 hands.
Is this normal spring and damper behavior?
Thanks.

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[wraithracing]

Hard to say if that is "Normal", but in general the front springs are around 400lbs springs and the rear are @175lbs, so yes I would say it is fairly normal for the rear to have more overall travel when pushing down on it.

If the rear bounces up and down have pushing it down, that is generally an indication that your rear shocks are bad. If it goes down and then returns and settles without much oscillation than your shocks should be fine.

[Hans]

Thanks Trey,
There's no oscillation. The rear doesn't keep bouncing. It's just very soft.
I actually always liked the comfortable ride of the rear because of the many speed bumps. Just looking into it because I had a ss exhaust made that has too little clearance over the axle. Car is not usable anymore. Every speed bump, some at walking pace, result in a big bang with 3 people in it.
Now I think of it, the front tires move in an arc when compressing the springs. That will not go smoothly at standstill.
The tires will not slide over the pavement: at full articulation the front inner tire always jump 2 times/ skid sideways with a lot of force, when turning 90 degrees to leave my front yard. Akkerman is way off.
Regards.

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[qtrracer]

If the rear is that soft and doesn't oscillate, I'm guessing the control arm bushings are done.

Ford's converging rear 4-link was designed to control the axle in three directions: the uppers perform roll control and lateral control, the lowers square the axle to the front track. In order to do this, the arms are designed to lengthen and twist through the rubber bushings. The bushings themselves are vulcanized to the collars which in turn are designed with serrated teeth that dig into the mounting flange to prevent rotation. As a result, each rubber bushing acts like a torsion spring when it articulates. But with any spring, only so much twist occurs before they bind (can't twist further). The reason the rear suspension has so little spring rate is because the rubber bushings add wheel rate to the spring and sta-bar which can be far greater that the spring rate itself.

If the rear moves that easily, look for destroyed rear bushings. By the way, the front bushings are designed the same way. If you lower the car, you must loosen all arm mounting points, allow the car's weight to settle, bounce the car a few times then torque the arm fasteners with weight on the wheels. This will remove any preload cause by the lowering which will have caused the bushings to twist to the lower ride height as if going through normal articulation.