Long Travel BS Thread

I have the same mind my friend…

 

Those TR beadlocks are mouth-watering

@snowsk8air2 's the king of trial-and-error valving, I don't think he's trolling you. The problem is valving isn't cookie-cutter, you got different terrain, different trucks, different springs. I'd take the suggestions others have said with the flutter use that baseline. Probably won't be perfect. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to pull shocks all the time to re-valve, myself included. But that's the name of the game. I'm looking forward to that part when I get a garage and a daily. Gonna break some shit.

 

Speaking of tuning, and maybe @snowsk8air2 can comment on this too…ordering universal shocks from Accutune you have to give some pretty specific information about your truck before you can add the shocks to your cart, how well does accutune do in the tuning of shocks for your set up? Obviously the more information you give them the better they will be able to tune but have you guys any experience with their tunings at all?

P.S. I’m learning a whole new language when it comes to this stuff so I appreciate any good information I can absorb

 

The old school graphics came out perfect!!

 

Exactly. Wasn’t trying to troll or give misinformation or anything or hurt feelings by saying things like mall crawler or what not. But like @desertjunkie760 said, we are talking about a well built truck on 38’s. So, yeah, how much on road performance do you want?

I talk to the guys at ADS, Shock Talk, mcmasterfabber, and other guys that build and tune really good working race trucks a lot and use their input to decide what to do when it comes to valving my truck. And there’s a lot of different ways to accomplish the same results when it comes to valving. I’m still learning a lot as well.

The beautiful thing about valving is you can undo it and go back to the way it was relatively easy. Like @Supra4x4 said I’ve done a lot of trial and error. If you know how to rebuild shocks you can revalve your whole truck in a days worth of work pretty easily. Not like I’m suggesting changing geometry or cutting shit apart or anything.

Take it as a mere suggestion and do with it as you see fit.

 

The more info you give the better the results. No personal experience but I have 2 Jeep buddies that ordered their shocks from them. Obviously a totally different world being rock crawlers but they seem to work pretty well out of the box. Not gonna be as good as having a one on one professional tuning session but it will be a good starting point

 

Sounds good. I’ve seen kits for my truck going for quite a bit more than if I piece meal it together myself, and having the ability to fabricate some things helps as well. I’m also a glutton for knowledge so I feel like going this route gives me the opportunity to learn so much more than just buying a pre assembled kit and slapping it together. Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna do that for the front 100%, but the rear seems to be an area where I can pretty much do whatever I want. My only limitations is money and knowledge lmao. I have the shocks I want picked out, I just need to figure out the leaf springs, sua kit, and Accutune has a few other things on their form before I can order them like motion ratio, shock angle, rear weight, uptravel. These are the things I have no clue about lmao, idk how heavy the rear of my truck is gonna be after building my bedcage, is there wiggle room here? Is this where the compression adjusters come into play? Do I need to build my bedcage, do the sua, relocate the shock mounts and whatnot to figure out the shock angle? Or can I ballpark it? And how do I figure out uptravel? (how much shaft is showing at ride height as accutune explains)

Thanks for the help and insight in advance.

 

The other thing that makes valving a process is how comfortable you are behind the wheel. Ive revalved my truck 6 times this season because as the suspension starts to work better I get more confidence behind the wheel and drive faster. When you push the truck harder the valving demands change. In my case I keep adding compression and taking out rebound but it’s a process and takes time.

Obviously my suspension is a lot different but the same principles apply. If you want to go fast you need the suspension to drop into the holes and not pack up. All 8 of my shocks now have 8’s for the rebound and I put “pop offs” in the front bypass shocks too.

 

Just my 2 cents from experience - you are never going to “ valve out “ 38” E rated tires to create a comfortable daily driver. If you set up you truck super soft as a daily trying to compensate for your tires then when you do go off road the performance is going to be horrible

 

Another good point. I’m obviously pretty confident with my truck and making changes to it and thus thinking I have a fair opinion to make suggestions on similar trucks but the 4800 car that’s solid axle and linked front and rear…I told my buddy he needed to take that to someone that tunes those types of cars for that type of racing. At least for a starting point. I would have gotten there eventually but we had a timeline before koh. Fox dsc’s all around and he tuned them with the adjusters fully soft knowing that as he gained seat time we’d be cranking them in. I made one small adjustment before he left for koh and as we got more seat time we had the adjusters all the way in for the race. Now we have the rest of the season to open the shocks back up and change things.

 

I have E rated tires and I like to run them about 30psi around town for best ride and decent handling for around town. Long trips will crank to 40psi or so. But very noticeable harshness.
Can go to 25ish. But you can feel the sway in them at speed.
If available when time to replace Mickey T has C and D rated 35s.
otherwise 0 knowledge on valving. Still learning. It’s cool stuff though.

 

you have a price for some pop offs? I need 4x.

 

I have no idea, I just had a set sent to the shop

 

I’ve got a question about lower shock mounts in the rear. I’ve seen numerous videos on relocation kits and custom hoops and what not and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the location of the lower bracket as far as mounting on the rearward side or forward side of the axle tube. The only thing I seem to find on it is it’s gotta be at “x” angle and 1.5” from the leaf perch (maybe? Idr) but nothing about the overall shock angle, nothing about why it’s mounted on the forward or rearward side.

 

As far as mount angle, its just another point to be able to set up your bump travel when you relocate with a longer shock. All shock relocations put both shocks in front of the axle so the lower mounts have to be on the front as well. The distance from the spring mount on the axle, whether spring over or under, is based on the amount of room you have to place them. Ideally you want the lower mount directly in line with the upper mount, but that cant always be the case.

 

Shocks on the front of an axle help control the axle rolling back under acceleration / pinion lifting, shock on the back controls pinion dive under braking. A lot of trucks have come with one shock facing each way to help combat axle roll in both directions.

Overall shock angle - the more vertical the better because the leverage ratio changes making the shock weaker as you lay it over, that can be combated with stronger valving to an extent. On the flip side you never want to risk your shock going past vertical at full droop which unless you are linked is non issue.

A lot of resources will tell you to shoot for your shock being 90 degrees at full bump IE: draw a line from your front leaf perch - lower shock mount - up to your shocks upper mount. That line should form a 90 at full bump.

Is that what you're asking ?

This is one of those topics that people can go deep on so I just tried to stick to the very basics...

 

The shock angle makes sense, basic down and dirty.

Which mounting method would be better for high speed off road stuff? Forward or rearward? I will be doing sua, 16” kings, and a custom bedcage.

 

by angling them further forward you can get more than 16” of travel from a 16” shock due to the motion ratio not being 1:1. Hence why jd’s is angled as far forward as possible.

 

Have you seen a single SUA tacoma with shocks rearward???? That should answer your question quite easily.

 

Sorry bro, asking because I don’t know any better lmao