Shock travel?
- Thread starter RonL
- Start date
michaels
Explorer
fixed.
if you want to alter the travel, but retain the same shocks and lift you have now, then altering your shock mounts will get whatever compression and extension you want. you even could have 1" up travel and 9" down travel if you wanted just by altering the mounts. although that ride would suck.
SeaRubi
Explorer
It's really subjective. Most people want lots of flex to look cool for wheeling photos. That's about the most benefit from big articulation.
I ran 10" 7100's on my RRC and thought it was too much articulation. My next truck is keeping the rear swaybar and getting front sway disconnects and I'm calling it good. These trucks flex plenty fine with a straight OME setup or stock I think. Your time and money is better spent locking the front and rear differentials, in my opinion. Anything more than about 9", which is what the OME's are, begins to compromise other elements of the vehicles stability, most notably it's performance on side hills.
my .02
I ran 10" 7100's on my RRC and thought it was too much articulation. My next truck is keeping the rear swaybar and getting front sway disconnects and I'm calling it good. These trucks flex plenty fine with a straight OME setup or stock I think. Your time and money is better spent locking the front and rear differentials, in my opinion. Anything more than about 9", which is what the OME's are, begins to compromise other elements of the vehicles stability, most notably it's performance on side hills.
my .02
michaels
Explorer
it's a beaten horse, but retainers will help immensely with the side-hill stability. cones are just scary to me.
R_Lefebvre
Expedition Leader
I get your point about the lockers, but I find more articulation makes the truck more stable during cross-axle teeter-totters. It's not just about traction.
SeaRubi
Explorer
Engineering a solution with no requirements is a waste of money. The big questions are - best for what? How do you use the truck? What kind of load do you normally have? Do you have corner weights loaded and unloaded? Is it a trail truck? Or do you need to have a need to go faster in rougher terrain? 4" of up travel might work fine at one valving but not another, depending on the weight of the rig and how fast you drive. Or if the terrain has a lot of rock shelfs that bottom out the suspension. There are too many factors to consider before just picking something out of thin air to decide what works "best".
Once you have an answer to some of those questions, the next step requires access to a car lift, a forklift (or both), or at the very least a ramp of some kind. What you want to do is to remove the shocks and then cycle the suspension at each each corner independently, taking measurements under full articulation. Once you have that as a baseline, then figure out what you want the shocks to do for you and go from there, adjusting check straps, mount points, shock length, shock valving, and last but not least, bump-stops and bump-stop type all to suit.
If you don't want to go through all that ... I think it's better to fit OME's and not worry about it
They have engineered a solution that works well at a wide range of conditions. Trying to re-engineer that solution on your own is not a trivial effort. Arriving with a final setup that has the same performance, durability, and low ongoing maintenance costs is not cost competitive in my opinion. If you need to deviate from an OME or factory spec shock to specialize the suspension for some purpose, we'd need to know what that purpose is. cheers,
-ike
SeaRubi
Explorer
the important thing to know here is that 3 wheels on the ground are better than two :sombrero:
SeaRubi
Explorer
cones suck. the also guarantee that the front-end will never use more than about 2" of shock travel.
R_Lefebvre
Expedition Leader
I hate that feeling as the truck teeters into a hole, but you don't know how far it will go until the wheel finds the bottom of the hole! :Wow1:
Roverhound
Adventurer
Very true. My truck decided it didn't need the rear sway bar on Devils ditch. It literally broke the links. After that the rest went to the scrap pile.