For folks looking to choose damper lengths
Orig. Posting Date | User Name | Edit Date |
Feb 7, 2020 08:34AM | Tagus | |
Feb 7, 2020 05:57AM | oldminimover49 | |
Jan 30, 2020 09:33AM | Tagus | |
Jan 28, 2020 07:57AM | Dougman | |
Jan 27, 2020 10:46PM | 1963SV2 | |
Jan 27, 2020 07:58PM | Willie_B | |
Jan 27, 2020 07:01PM | Dougman | |
Jan 27, 2020 09:53AM | RedRiley | |
Jan 26, 2020 12:29PM | Dougman | Edited: Jan 27, 2020 07:01PM |
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Big AL
Niagara Ontario Canada
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The black “x” I measured on the car are the distances between mounting points on the shocks with the car sitting on its tires (not jacked up). You can measure this with the shocks on or off; shocks do not change the ride height.
Ian’s explanation is more comprehensive since he’s looking at the actual travel up and down, which I’ve just short-handed at 40% / 60%. But it makes sense that the critical issues on a lowered car are:
1) avoiding bottoming out the shock in the front (i.e. make sure it’s not too long when fully compressed).
2) making sure the rear suspension doesn’t come apart in full rebound (i.e. make sure the shock is not too long when fully extended).
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In front you need to ensure that the shock is NOT fully compressed when the upper arm has the bump stop fully compressed. Other wise you’ll stand a good chance of snapping the bottom shock mount off (BTDT
At the rear there doesn’t seem to be much chance of bottoming out the shock ...but when fully extended you don’t want the strut to come out of the cone so its the extension from “normal” that’s important.
If you’re not up for “suck it and see” then the only procedure I can come up with is to measure the (a?) shock at chosen ride height, remove the rubber cone, and measure the distance between shock mounting points with the upper arm as far up as it will go (+ a bit for bumpstop compression). Do the math. IME you can’t jack the hub up as far as it will go when you hit a bad bump (pot hole edge with the cone in place.
Dougman’s dimension diagram will help to see which shock might work.
The other solution (when lowering) is to use raised top shock mounts (available from the usual suspects) with standard shocks.
Cheers, Ian
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So what exactly did you measure? Distance between upper and lower mounts with no shock mounted or???
"How can anything bigger be mini?"
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The black “X” is where my car sits (unloaded) for damper lengths. So I can then easily see how much travel up and down I will get for any of the choices. If you assume it’s desirable to have about 40% of your travel up (jounce) and 60% in rebound, then the obvious choice for my car is Spax, the lowered versions. I originally bought the Gaz shocks and will now need to return them. Interestingly, the Gaz lowered models really don’t collapse to a much shorter length; most of their reduction is in rebound travel, which I guess is for people who will lose contact between trumpet and cone if the shock does not end up limiting travel.
I hope this is useful to some of you folks.