Is there more load on front????
 

With regards to fronts wearing out and breaking most, its all to do with suspended and unsuspended mass. most 4x4 have heavier front axles with an engine siting above so when you hit hard terrain, one big mass going in one direction (axle) and bigger mass going in the opposite with the spring in-between doing all the work, plus under braking the load moves to the front springs. glad im not a front spring :-)

Tic
 

Chris,
Don't know if you're talking about our 60... (it's a small world afterall)

We have them under our car and are very pleased with them, but I should say I only have experience with this car and when we bought our 60 it really needed an upgrade. The old springs where totally worn, probaly the originals, and with a full tank of gas it rode almost on it's bumpstops.

The (our) story about those TIC's:
We stombled in the Netherlands on a workshop which, at that time, did the distribution. They just had new springs deliverd from a factory in Portugal, the buildquality wasn't as specified by the designer/engineer so they returned them. The next truckload was OK. I think this were the third or fourth generation (you had the first ?) especially designed for Toyota's.
We took the HeavyDuty version (raised the empty car by almost 17cm!!, I said it needed an upgrade, didn't I) and they advised us to use the new shocks Koni just released at that time (HeavyTracks).
After our 6months trip we learned that they've had more issues with the buildquality, the manufacturer and also the designer/engineer and stopped the distribution.
The designer/engineer told them he would do the distribution personally.
Don't know if you stil can get parabolics for Toyota 'cause the oficial website still only talks about series Landrover and Santana's.

Anyway we did a 6months trip into norht/west africa (±28.000km's), and 2 more trips into Mauri. They perform perfect, a very smooth ride (also admited by people with lots of experience with deserttravel and springleaved cars), good ground clearance and good articulation. Because of the space between the leaves and the poly spacers, the leaves don't squeez!

I will try to explain the only 'trouble' the springs gave:
The packets of springs on the rear had a tendancy to shift or twist a little, therefor after a while the small U-shaped pieces of iron (suppossed to keep the leaves in place) started toughing the leaves and at the end they were almost cut through (OK, that squeezed just a little). I reseated the package of leaves and the rear axle but after 10.000k of desert and corrugations they were twisted a little again. Back home I went back to the workshop and we made new thicker and heavier U-shaped things and welded them next to the originals.
That will be sufficient for a while, but I've never seen this kind of wearing anywhere else.

About snapping frontsprings:
I've also heard some stories about snapping them in dunefields in Libya.
I think they are just not designed for jumping around !!
(Chris, you had a photo of a 60 getting airborn on your site, or was it in your book, didn't you).
But seriously, I think the quality of shocks are very imported.
The shocks we use were especially advised by the designer/engineer to work along with his parabolic springleaves.

BTW lots of trucks, lorries and van's are still equipped with parabolic shaped springs.

the type of lateral twist described above is inherant in the design of parabolic springs, and one of the reasons I believe land rover didn't fit them as standard. one way around that is a wider spring, which is how the 101 landy gets away with it (and big trucks and suck like). Normal leaf springs don't flex like this because they are braced by the other springs contacting them.

andy
TLC H60
land101 ambie/camper/ wip
1968 morris minor traveller!

Hi all,

we used RM parabollocs (2+6) with ES 9000 in our LR SWB Series 2 petrol with a load of more than 800 kilos in heavy conditions (rocks, sand and bourbon). After many thousand kilometers stills works great. When heavy loaded it was like a defender.

good luck !