Topic: Decent Shocks

[jrock]

Recently I've been trying to go faster and faster in offroad. Probably do to the lack of rocks where I am . So my question is what can I do to really absorb the bounces an whoops while getting good use in the rocks? I have the normal Bilstiens in the front and crappy Ranchos in the rear.

I was thinking Bilstien or Fox with res on the front. I have some Fox res that will work for the rear. I don't want to spent a ton just for a small improvement. I'd like a noticeable ride improvement. 

[Rocksurfer]

The best shocks won't make much of a difference with crappy or stiff springs but you are headed the right direction with the res shocks.

[joey0712]

I had Marlin front springs with Bilstiens.... The shocks would get soooo hot soooo fast. then they would fade and turn into pogo sticks. Try and find a set of fox smooth body 2.0s. Pretty much anything with a resi...

[H8PVMNT]

I had a buddy with a set of the old fox racing shocks on a defender 90.  He ran them for a while and they were really stiff but then sent them back somewhere to get revalved and then they were awesome.  I like the idea of something you can tune yourself.

I've also thought of looking into some rebuildable revalvable circle track shocks.  I was looking in a speedway motors catolog and the QA1 stuff and other dedicated race brand shocks look promising if you could get the length we need.  Kind of unconventional for an off road rig but the parts to revalve are super available.

[jrock [OP]]

I bought some 10 inch fox res 2.0s off a friend a while back that I haven't quite decided to throw on the rear yet. I thought they would be overkill. What I could use are 12 inch fox res 2.0s for the front. Then tune them for my setup

So what I have now is 6 leaf RUFs in the front with 3 inches up travel and a whole lot of droop. The rears are 3 leaf F150 rears with the overload. They have 6inches of uptravel but have never hit.

At first I thought about getting air bumps but then thought, air bumps are not a fix for poor shocks.

What I'd like to find out is, will putting $200+ shocks on the four corners real change my problems? Or should I look at moderatly good shocks and something else for the hard hits?

[TacoRunner]

If you really want the best performance with your current spring set up, do your self a favor and buy some rebuildable shocks. Then start playing with the valving. Even a stiff leaf spring can be pretty good with the right shock. A starting point for you or anyone is, if you have stiff spring then you want little compression valving and high rebound valving. If you have soft springs, you want the oposite.

[jrock [OP]]

I'm not quite sure if my springs would be considered stiff. They are softer than Marlin fronts. They sit almost flat, maybe 3/4 inch of arch.

[TacoRunner]

Unless you think you can get the valving correct the first time you order them, it wont matter. You can order shocks anyway you want. Start with some thing in the middle. Both Fox and Radflo use the same valing specs for the most part. So if you call them up and order then with a 50/50 and just start there, then order a couple of shim stacks. Take if for a drive and tell us if you think the compression was to stiff as in I felt every little thing on the road and big hits sucked to, then you know you have to much compression.  If the return on the landing is stiff then you have to much rebound. If the front end floats like a old Caddy then you dont have enough rebound.

[TacoRunner]

As for Resivoir or Emulsion. Unless you think you're gonna drive 60 across the whoops for hours on end, dont waste your money on the Res.

[MC387]

F-O-A.com  has some exelent prices.  I dont know how they stack up to Fox or King, but they are rebuildable and revalveable.  I ordered some, but have not recieved them yet so I will keep you posted.

[Rockin4Runner]

Probably the main reason you ride rides bad offroad is because you only have 3" of up travel. If you want to go fast you need at least 6" of up and a standard 5100 bilstien will get the job done. So you may want to consider adding a leaf are re-arching your springs so they don't sit so flat at ride hight and remounting your shocks so they have more up travel. In addition, post a picture up of your shackle angle at ride hight. We can tell ya if it's at the correct angle or not.

FOA shocks are great shocks for the money. I'm sure they'll hold up more than good enough for what you're going to be doing.

[H8PVMNT]

Thats true about the uptravel my '94 rides awesome with just rancho 9000 and it has like 6" of uptravel and some of those really big squishy poly bump stops.  You can hit big whoops and soccerball sized stuff at speed and it just soaks it up.  The trend to build low is nice for center of gravity but taller suspension has it's advantages if it's tuned right.

[TacoRunner]

You'd be surprised what you can do by just adding compression dampening.

[jrock [OP]]

I'm not able to do much in the way of photos right now. Im working off my fancy phone for the time being.

My front shackles sit about 40*. I totally get the uptravel deal but how is it Marlins old F toy could run fast and not have a ton of uptravel? If I had 6 inches uptravel I'd have a 7 inch lift 8o .

Taco, your talking about valving, correct?

[81yotalove]

what tacorunner is saying adding compression valving up front. so when you hit those big bumps you wont bottom to the stops right away and make the whole truck move upward. from my understanding when crawling/driving slow the valving doesn't play a big part because of the bypasses in the shock piston as it does with going fast and hitting whoops. so crawling performance shouldn't suffer. maybe tacorunner could chime in on this.

also i checked and i did post a picture of my shocks in your thread. i still need to get around at mounting my front ones. that was as vertical as i could get it without going through the bed. the 10's do limit my droop by an inch but I'm not to worried about it because if i went to 12's they would have to be touching in the middle of the top mount and would actually use less travel then the 10's because of the angle. plus body roll would increase and more valving would be needed to get the same amount of damping because they would be less efficient at that angle so i stayed with 10's.

[TacoRunner]

Correct "O" moondo 

The more compression valving you have the bigger the impacts can be before you start bottoming out your suspension. Yes more uptravel is great, but thats really hard to do with leaf springs. Typically that just adds for lift. However what most guys dont understand is that valving is really for high speed and the slow speed stuff is controlled by the piston. The only thing you need to be careful of when adding compression dampening is that if you add to much, then small high speed bumps can start feeling stiff. At that point you start getting into flutter stacks to fix things. And thats a lot of off and on with the shocks.

Think of shocks like this, they are speed sensitive with the valving. The harder and faster you push them the more they resist. More compression valving make the shock harder to compress at speed. While rebound controls how fast the spring will return to ride height, the less you have the quicker it returns. This is why if you dont have enough rebound your truck will float like an old Caddy. High speed desert needs high compression and low rebound. Just dont go so low with the rebound that if floats and then you know you're in the sweet spot.

Large poly bump stop bushings are nice, but the best is still the air bump. So if you want to keep your low stance and beable to plow over stuff at a decent speed, (IMO) you need air bumps. If you do both you'll be amazed. By the way Marlins KOH rig typically replaces their leaf springs after each race. By doing this they can also run the spring a bit past max compression to aid in dampening. They dont need it to last longer than one race.

[joey0712]

:

. By the way Marlins KOH rig typically replaces their leaf springs after each race. By doing this they can also run the spring a bit past max compression to aid in dampening. They dont need it to last longer than one race.

Marlins KOH rig isnt leaf sprung...

[TacoRunner]

Not this year, but in years past it has been.