So you want to put King shocks on a Third Gen Montero...

[wolfdog]

Compression adjusters in my experience are a sort of set it once and forget it thing, they're more for feel than anything. The novelty wears off pretty quick I opted out this round and just had Accutune do my valving (Amazing BTW).
As for arms (and Kings for that matter) you really need to be honest with yourself, how are you going to use this thing? Race parts require more maintenance and attention than OEM parts, spherical bearings perform better but require more attention. These are things to consider with trying to save some coin but also stepping up to the next level. As always More Performance = More Maintenance.

Agreed, adjusters are never found on off road race cars. Once shocks are tuned correctly they are not needed.
95% of adjusters in the type of shocks we use are only compression adjustable so they do have a small usable effect with reasonably large changes in weight, other wise yes they are set and forget for the most part.
Interesting to hear if Chriscosta is adjusting his much?

Jim

 

[ChrisCosta416]

My Monty is also my daily driver, so weight does change when I go on trips - I tend to load another 3-400 lbs of gear and people in my truck. When I hit the trails I find I get a nicer ride stiffening up the shocks off-road especially if I decide to drive pretty fast over corrugated roads. Toasty is right for the most part, its all about feel and IMO control.

Do you NEED compression adjusters? - When buying these shocks if you get them tuned correctly? Probably not of course unless your weight changes a lot
Is it nice to have? Yes I think so but it all depends on how you drive and what you use it for.

The video I linked on my first post in this thread sums up the technology of compression adjusters very nicely.

In regards to the Total Chaos UCAs, Toasty is 100% right. Race parts require more maintenance compared to our OEM arms. Total Chaos does a good job of outlining the maintenance of their arms, I will link some videos below. Total Chaos would be knowledgeable is answered the question regarding the uniball in Colorado winters.

TC Poly Upper Control Arm Maintenance


TC Uniball Maintenance

I hope my thoughts help! Again this is only from my experience!

 

[offthepath]

My Monty is also my daily driver, so weight does change when I go on trips - I tend to load another 3-400 lbs of gear and people in my truck. When I hit the trails I find I get a nicer ride stiffening up the shocks off-road especially if I decide to drive pretty fast over corrugated roads. Toasty is right for the most part, its all about feel and IMO control.

Do you NEED compression adjusters? - When buying these shocks if you get them tuned correctly? Probably not of course unless your weight changes a lot
Is it nice to have? Yes I think so but it all depends on how you drive and what you use it for.

The video I linked on my first post in this thread sums up the technology of compression adjusters very nicely.

In regards to the Total Chaos UCAs, Toasty is 100% right. Race parts require more maintenance compared to our OEM arms. Total Chaos does a good job of outlining the maintenance of their arms, I will link some videos below. Total Chaos would be knowledgeable is answered the question regarding the uniball in Colorado winters.

TC Poly Upper Control Arm Maintenance


TC Uniball Maintenance

I hope my thoughts help! Again this is only from my experience!

Good stuff to think about, Thanks!

 

[ChrisCosta416]

New year, new update.

Truck was dropped off at King earlier in December to have the truck photographed and instructions created. Since then I have been taking the Montero off-road any time I can.

I just back from a small trip out in the Sierras and Death Valley, the suspension continues to eat everything up and handles well even with all the gear loaded up. One additional item that comes with these Upper Control arms is maintenance, but nothing too difficult.

 

[kalieracer]

I have adjusters on my Fox setup for the Gen2 trucks. They do come in handy if you unload gear from the truck and it's empty / do a ton of highway driving. Accutune also did my shocks and I love them. On a side not Accutune can upgrade the King canisters to the FOX DSC ones on 2.5 shocks.

Agreed, adjusters are never found on off road race cars. Once shocks are tuned correctly they are not needed.
95% of adjusters in the type of shocks we use are only compression adjustable so they do have a small usable effect with reasonably large changes in weight, other wise yes they are set and forget for the most part.
Interesting to hear if Chriscosta is adjusting his much?

Jim

 

[wolfdog]

I have adjusters on my Fox setup for the Gen2 trucks. They do come in handy if you unload gear from the truck and it's empty / do a ton of highway driving. Accutune also did my shocks and I love them. On a side not Accutune can upgrade the King canisters to the FOX DSC ones on 2.5 shocks.

Good point about being able to upgrade to DSC if you were going to go with adjusters I would definitely go DSC also.

wolfy

 

[wolfdog]

Your car continues to impress mate, it just looks right!

wolfy

 

[mahlerous]

One of my friends couldn't take no for an answer so I'm currently making a subframe drop and adjustable trailing arms for the Gen 3. The rear has plenty of travel on these to start and the limiting factor for the front is the CV's, above 34's you need to look into cryo treating and micropolishing. More travel means weaker CV's as they angle they also are not as strong. CV's need to be addressed BEFORE adding suspension travel, for realz. Ask yourself "am i actually wheeling this to it's limits that i need more travel?" (Probably not) or do we just want more lift for bigger tires to look cool (this is also a fine answer, let's just not lie to ourselves). These questions change our limits and how we build. Chances are if you haven't installed lockers or transfer case gears you're nowhere near needing long travel or more lift unless it's cool factor you're after.

@Toasty I recently caught up on this not-so-crazy idea of you and your friend.
I don't want to hijack Jamie's thread here but since it is related, I think this community would benefit from more info when it becomes available.

Thanks to you both for endeavoring, whatever motivations. We all mostly appreciate it ;P

 

[Toasty]

So, I'm not against the subframe lift. I think it's an awesome way to run bigger tires without increased CV angle. These trucks are super underrated, you can do almost ANY trail with just gearing, locker(s) and appropriate armor. It's actually sort of mind blowing how good they are offroad even with 32" tires. Most will never even hit it's limits at that point.

 

[Toasty]

The cool thing Jamie and i discussed while he was here was the potential to do a subframe lift then essentially lower the suspension AND run a slightly longer shock. This would gain the a small amount of travel but more importantly allow you to utilize the full suspension arc vs a suspension lift since you're now riding center of the arc. Also less wear on CV's.

 

[ChrisCosta416]

My final thoughts
Well everyone, I have finished the testing on the Total Chaos Upper Control Arms. Zero failures as expected. The King Shock kit is now ready to be sold (from what I have been told). This has been a great experience as I was able to learn so much on shock technology and what goes into making a shock work. Not to mention the great people and customer service at Total Chaos, Accutune and King Shocks. Without their willingness to design these components a bolt on kit would not have been possible. I am happy that their is now a great aftermarket suspension solution for the Montero/Pajero platform.

The ride
I will admit that when I first bought these shocks I was thinking "why would anyone spend thousands of $$$ on shocks?". Once I had them tuned and installed, I was blown away by the on-road and off-road ride quality. The Kings really do eat everything up. I am able to do 45-50 on rough terrain with ease and adjust the shocks for low or high-speed driving. If/when I decide to buy another vehicle again, King Shocks will be the first upgrade I will be doing. They completely change how the vehicle handles and drives. Paired with the Total Chaos Upper Controls you will get an extra inch of travel and peace of mind knowing your control arm will NEVER break.


Maintenance
With race-car parts comes maintenance. Luckily maintaining the Total Chaos Control arms is pretty easy. A few weeks ago I decided to re-lube the Control arms due to the squeak of the Polyurethane bushings. Super easy to do, around 15-30min per side. Remember to unbolt the arms a bit when lubing. You can find a more detailed write-up earlier in this thread.

I used what Total Chaos recommends - Superlube and Dry PTFE Lube

Marked everything and done!



Now the King Shocks are 100% rebuildable which means that they can be serviced forever. You can find multiple videos on how to rebuild Kings via youtube.

So you want to buy King Shocks and/or Total Chaos Control arms now?
(NOTE: In order to get the full use of King Shocks you MUST either A) Purchase Total Chaos Upper Control Arms B) Cut and clearance your OEM arms)
Congrats! You will not regret it! As of right now (1/23/20) the CORRECT King Shock kit CAN ONLY be ordered directly from King Shocks.

• To purchase the King Shock kit, please reach out to King and ask for either Mike Eads or Brian Groves - (714) 530-8701 - Tell them you want the re-designed Gen3 Montero kit

• To purchase the Total Chaos Upper Controls arms, please email info@totalchaos.com

Thanks for reading and safe travels - before you go @SONICMASD and I decided to film a video comparing King coil-overs vs other shocks (Bilsteins in particular) Give it a watch!


Enjoy!

 

[offthepath]

Great video, thanks.

 

[SONICMASD]

I'm in total agreement - for my next build, coilover suspension will be at the top of the mods list. Even though I spent 25% as much on my coil + monotube shock suspension, now after driving your truck, I kind of see my purchase as a 100% waste of money.

 

[offthepath]

I do wonder how a set of shocks with appropriate valving for the heavy springs would have compared. Bilsteins are valved for stock spring rates. From the video, you can see the heavy duty springs up front are blowing out the rebound on the shocks, which is what you'd expect.

If you don't want to spend a ton of money, I'm sure you'd see an improvement just moving to an ome shock that is valved for more rebound damping.

I'd love to see the same video vs an OME truck. Any takers! ?

I'm on the fence, it's a lot of money but does look sweet.

 

[ChrisCosta416]

I do wonder how a set of shocks with appropriate valving for the heavy springs would have compared. Bilsteins are valved for stock spring rates. From the video, you can see the heavy duty springs up front are blowing out the rebound on the shocks, which is what you'd expect.

If you don't want to spend a ton of money, I'm sure you'd see an improvement just moving to an ome shock that is valved for more rebound damping.

I'd love to see the same video vs an OME truck. Any takers! ?

I'm on the fence, it's a lot of money but does look sweet.

OME shocks are just re-branded Monroe shocks. I believe that both Biltstein and OME shocks are valved predominantly with high-way driving in mind. It is not very often that folks will intentionally drive +35mph over corrugated terrain.

@SONICMASD has what most people have considered to be the "perfect" combo.

I believe a great middle of the road shock that will perform a lot better than the Bilsteins in this scenario would be KONI RAID90s.