ADS Off-Road Racing Shocks - Information, Pictures, & BS Thread

It's all about the backspacing of your wheels and where you have the resis mounted.

 

These are stock 16" trd offroad wheels

 

Not my reservoir, but I do have a rub on the driver's side while backing at full lock...I just need to adjust the hose a little bit.

 

Well, I am finally joining the club of 1st Gen Tacos with a rear shock location running ADS 2.5 in. Shock - 10 in. Stroke. So excited and nervous at the same time (I like bolt on mods rather than cutting and welding). Shoutout to @Speedytech7 for his write up rear shock relocation and @turbodb on his write up both have helped me plan this--- and push me over the fence in going ahead and doing the mod.

We are adding an AT-Habitat topper so we wanted a larger shock than the Icons. Plus wanted a shock that had an adjustable damper to be able to control the side-to-side waddle better when loaded, but then soften up when the camper is off the truck. My wife uses our truck to compete in the Rebelle Rally. Right now, it is unclear if this modification is allowed --- Stock pivot locations must be maintained--- not sure if only the leaf spring attaching points are considered the pivot points, or if the shocks are as well. We are waiting to hear back from the rally tech director. For now, I am planning to play it safe and try to install the new mounts in a way I can still retain the stock mounts and switch back to the Icons if needed for the rally.

 

What rear springs are you running?

And a 2nd shout out to Dan @turbodb and Zane @Speedytech7 for making the mistakes they did and then learning from them and then passing that knowledge along.

 

Hey. who are you accusing of learning?

Headed back over to Zane's to do the rear leafs here pretty soon. Hopefully goes more smoothly than the shocks. Although, regardless, can't wait!

 

Deaver Springs. Testing droop with the Icons, and then droop with no shocks, I got over 3 inches of additional travel downward. For optimum up travel, these shocks are going to bottom out about an inch before the springs stop on their own. Will the ADS shocks be OK to act as the down travel stops, or am I going to need limit straps? Clearly the Icons have been do so for the last 300K miles. I know the bump stop needs to stop the up travel before the shock bottoms out, but I do not know about the down travel with the leaf springs.

 

The shocks are strong so technically you'd probably be fine without straps, but the "right" design is to have straps. How necessary they are is probably dependent on how often you'll be full droop, and how fast you're going when you do it. I'm expecting to exceed the droop of my 10" ADS in the rear when I go to 63s, but I won't be installing straps immediately, and I'm not worried b/c I don't expect to actually hit that full droop all that often.

 

Thanks for the reply. That was my gut instinct. Roughly how many miles do you have on your rear ADS shocks now?

 

153,142 miles. With one rebuild in there after 90,061 miles.

The rears have been essentially no maintenance. Fronts have been a bit of a PITA as far as spherical bearings go, but other than that, also great. (And once I figured out the secret for the spherical bearings, they've not been an issue, either.)

 

Good to hear. And I have been running the SS F1 fit in my UCAs ever since reading your article a while back and have noticed an improved life span. I just replace the sphericals in the front Icon coil overs last month for the first time with the SS F1, but have high hopes based on the UCA luck

 

Anyone have experience with Filthy Motorsports? I'll probably be placing an order for 2.5's up front and 2.5x12 in the rear.

 

lol this is going to be me. I won’t rebuild until I have the room and help to get them off.

 

One thing I didn't mention was that was in about 4 years of ownership, so not a long time. I put a lot of miles on the truck, and swapped out the spherical bearings in the front 8 times over the course ownership.

Rears (at least) are also ready for a rebuild at this point, which I'll likely get to in ~June or so.

Don't put off spherical bearing maintenance. And if you've got any oil leakage, you don't want to put off a rebuild, either. I had no oil leakage, but definitely kept on top of the sphericals after being caught off guard the first time.

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Thanks. So far no leaks, no rust and as far as I can tell the spherical bearings look ok. I only drive the truck on the weekends. I put the shocks on at around 20k miles and the (2016) truck has 67k. I just wish I had help to do it because it’s tough for me in my situation without it, plus my truck has to sit in my garage unmovable. Do you know how long it took ADS to rebuild and ship after you sent them? I still have one of the factory boxes.

I’ve also heard on TW you can put a different type of Teflon/synthetic style bearing in there that lasts longer. Is that true?

 

I did the rebuild myself. Took a day to do all four, but of course, there's some specialized tooling involved.

If you did/do have access to said tooling, I wrote up the entire process (with pics, necessary parts) here:

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Well now I know who to call. When I have to do mine. @turbodb.

 

<Looks around nervously.> Oh, you mean @TMFF? Yep, that's the dude you want to call. Definitely not me,

Seriously, Tim's a great guy and will get them done quickly for you at a fair price. Has rebuilt a lot of my buddies shocks before we got the tools and dove in way over our heads (though, it's fun, if you like that kind of thing).

 

ADS rebuilt my 2.5 coilovers in ~3 days. Cost was around $400 I think, but one of them needed a new shaft, which wasn’t cheap. I am local however, so didn’t need to mess with shipping…

 

yah…I’m not doing that and don’t care to. I don’t have time to devote to that. I’ll pay the $, just need to get them off and have my truck somewhere where it doesn’t block my garage for a week