new Dirt King suspension offering

There is a lot more to a great performing shock than just the valving. I don't want to bore you with some of the technical aspects of it, but we went through 12+ different main piston designs (linear), and who knows how many adjuster piston designs for Ride Shocks before landing on the one that flowed the most oil. The valving part is easy in our opinion. I would say piston design is one of the largest factors we take into consideration when tuning a shock. This is at least something we can swap out in Fox or King, depending on the application. Things we are forced (pun intended) to deal with, are things like -6 reservoir fittings. There is only so much oil that can flow through a small fitting like that, so no matter how good you are at stacking shims, you will always be limited by the shock design. Too light of valving, you can break shims. Compression adjusters also can affect oil flow into the reservoir. We've gone to extreme levels to provide pre-tuned shocks that are application specific and weight range dependent. So far, the results have been phenomenal. Its been a ton of work, and its very obvious to me why no one else is doing it. Its very hard to support the masses with such a wide variety of truck builds. If you havn't already seen our tech article breakdown of Fox/Ride/King, its worth checking out.

 

I'm sure there are a few people that would enjoy those boring technical explanations. I always learn something new when I come across your posts in various threads, love the knowledge you are willing to share!

 

Thank you! I think the majority of the stuff that people can understand is in that article. Unfortunately we just don't have this kind of detail on every shock out there. I would love to take a deep dive into Elka, Dirt King, Bilstein etc. For a lot of these big brand shocks, they spent (?) amount of time to develop the shock and then mass produce it. Its very hard to make changes to existing shocks, when new applications need to be designed and sold. For us, its a double edge sword. We are constantly learning and improving. This ensures our customers get the best of the best. Unfortunately, this leads us to a slower production for new applications. However, we would rather make 1 application a slam dunk, than have 5 others that are just ok. I can't wait to get behind the wheel of our 24 Tacoma or 23 Tundra with Ride Shocks on it. Those are both sitting in back being worked on weekly

We will likely create a new tech article that discusses piston design, just not sure how in depth we will go, without revealing our secrets.

 

You cannot bore me with technical talk. I work in engineering, I love that shit lol. I would actually pay money to watch a video of Accutune comparing off-the-shelf shocks to a properly tuned version of the same shocks and explaining the differences. Or even just an example of how certain changes to the valve stack can solve certain ride issues.

I got a taste of what dialed in tuning feels like on my truck now and I don't think people realize what they are missing out on. And I don't think most realize the value in buying properly designed and tuned shocks like Ride and Dirt King compared to popular yet more generic options like Fox or King. Without just having a company like Accutune install their already designed and tested valve stack, it costs thousands and thousands of dollars paying for shock rebuilds just to trial and error your way to get anywhere near that level. Most people aren't going to bother with that and will remain disappointed when their top of the suspension doesn't live up to their expectations. That's why I really like these new "pre-tuned" offerings coming out. Especially for people like me who have to drive 6 hours each way just to find a shop that can do any re-valving at all lol.

 

Being an engineer, you would have a field day here with our team. Send over that credit card info and I will personally make this video for you . I think we tend to try and dumb things down at times, maybe we should balance that out to have some super tech stuff (like our bypass article) and some more generic stuff. I'll add that to the list of ideas for our next tech article. I appreciate all the positivity! Good stuff

 

Fox makes a great universal shock, their application specific tuning has always been really rough. Speaking with dirt king they thought we tested the performance elites (though we tested the performance series) because they felt the same as us, they didn't even want to complete the whole test course with them. I genuinely have no idea what is going on with the tuning at fox and my friends who work there complain about it quite a bit. That being said if the tariffs take hold and Kings significantly increase in price we'll see how that shifts the industry.

There's a ton of gain to be had if you have 2 shocks per corner, your coilover has full valving... the way i exlpain it is the coilover thinks it has to control 100% of the damping for the corner, it doesn't know there is a bypass there as well. That's the problem with selling universal long travel kit part numbers is that sometimes adding a bypass can actually be a downgrade if your coilover is not tuned for it. Of all the long travel kits on the market i have taken apart they for the most part use the same part number shock and have the same valving from kit to kit. Some of JD's kits use a different part number coilover with different travel specs, the last JD kit i put together had a standard part number coilover and could only get under 10" total travel out of a +4 kit with the coilover and bypass both limiting travel so your mileage will vary lol. That coilover from JD i took apart was standard long travel valving... shameless plug but i have a list of valve stacks on my webiste with tacoma ones on top, it's only about 1/4 of the stacks i need to add right now but im also busy creating another website purely for tech data https://www.wheeleveryweekend.com/blogs/tech/suspension-encyclopedia-oem-valving-specs