Brians F/R Locked Long Travel Camping and Overland Build

mine doesn’t. I feel your pain. Lol

 

if yall that worried about overfilling or underfilling just fill it up and take to shop to check.

 

Well considering I have bent 3/16 plate doing slow rock crawling I mean it’s not Bullet proof. That said you won’t get any immediate impacts but I fear the longevity it’s just not much area in you are slamming on rocks. Personally I don’t like to bash on rocks, but in socal I had a chance to do the nastiest crawling yet and I was slamming everywhere to work the lines and thus was at .1 mph but the weight of your vehicle is always a concern when not under control. I know my applications require things to be overbuilt with a “factor of safety” in mind, but I personally would route the entire shock inside the plating so that you can have all the tower meat you want. I understand that space is limited, but hey bamf could do his design within tolerance so you could approach your design that way. I also would prefer some sort of internal bottom gusset to keep the plates from deformation in the event of hoop failure they don’t bend and get weird if the shock was left flopping without being fastened under weight. I say this under initial visual inspection. I’m sure the specifics of the design could prove more or less of what I’m saying. Just one engineer to another.

 

your talking about skids though right? that you bent?

 

I've bent 1/4" skids before, but those were taking the full weight of the truck, the shock tower isn't subject to anywhere near that level of force.

Here's my thinking: the shock hoop is only subject to forces from the shock, which are limited based on the valving of the shock, not subject to the full forces put on the axle. Any force applied to the bottom of the shock greater than what's needed to open all the valves just makes the shaft move faster, until the bump stop kicks in on the axle.

The axle end, on the other hand, is subject to being bashed on rocks, etc. So getting it as high as possible should make that less likely.

The BAMF kit is great, but there's a limit to how tall you can make a plate-steel tower before it begins to flex unacceptably, and I believe they did some R&D on that before building. There's another (taller) kit, that users report flex issues with. Obviously there's a limit to how tall you can make a tube structure too, before you need a bed cage to hold the tops together.

Implicit in this is also an upper limit to how much shock you can run with this kit. I wouldn't recommend using it for 3.5" King Kong trophy truck shocks, but for a 2" shock on a taco there's a lot of safety margin built in.

Can you sketch what you're thinking of for a fully enclosed shock? That's an interesting idea, and I'm always open to new ones.

 

I am, but I know that’s a different level of impact. My fear though is when your vehicle slips crossing a technical section and the shock is all of a sudden catching the fall of the truck. Sure the damping and valving will help to a degree, but let’s look at a few years down the road...then say the little hoop tab starts to fatigue, shock bolt shears hoop and then head of shock flies inside the gusset section and gets jammed due to the truck weight on it after a shear. I know this is a complete hypothetical, but I have found I for one atleast tend to be that dude who shears something that isn’t robust. We all know it sucks to have a failure on trail cause who knows what it takes to recover the vehicle after. I just know that I have had a few metal components fail to where I look at it after and think, yea I could see how that it might fail in the long run.

hey if this has been tested and not just “thrown on a customers truck for testing” then go for it. Just some criticisms is all as I like robust, but again I tend to be that guy. I can try to draft something up in a little while, but long story short is widen the gap of the plates to where the entire top of the shock is embedded inside the metal framework of the shock hoop instead of notched just for the tip of it.

This is an outside perspective so at the end of the day it’s just my observations.

 

Painted shock hoops installed extended brake lines!

 

Yeah, I'm tracking. The design issue we ran into is this: there's very little room between the shock bolt and the shock body.

We tested the hell out of these on my truck and several others before selling them, I'm confident enough in the design to drive it with my kid in the truck.

To the specific failure: there's enough of the shock eyelet 'above' the bolt that it should still be trapped as you describe. Additionally, since this is 100% bolt on you could always remove the hoop, shock and axle tabs on the trail and limp home without a shock on that side. Not fun, but I've driven without rear shocks and it's very doable, and better than having the shock flopping around back there and potentially getting damaged or breaking something else.

 

Good discussion, I appreciate the input.

 

Damn got more projects than i keep up with now on this dang truck. Trans cooler came in yesterday and tires showing up today, wheels next week.

 

one meat showed up. Guess the others were in a diffrent truck.

 

Installed @Arcticelf shock relocation kit. It’s pretty solid. Can’t wait to get out and test it further.

 

Love that rear bumper man!

 

Thanks bud, had it custom made by a local welder. He did a an awesome job!

 

Rest of the tires showed yesterday as well! Jasmine looks tiny next to them lol.

 

Installed trans cooler. Instantly solved my Trans temp problem. Temps where they should be now.

 

Wheels showed. Like them a lot. Quality seems good.

 

Digging this agh design shift knob!

 

Very happy with the wheel tire combo. Gonna have to pull the wheel spacers later. Tire sticks out too much with the -12 offset.

 

Mean looking