Clearancing top hat to clear reservoir fitting

Chalk it up to being cheap again :/ I have some nice ADS top hats and figured I could re-use them on my new king shocks, but a test fit shows the hose 90 contacts the top hat at only half way into the travel. Glad I checked at least instead of bending or breaking the fittings on the first whoop.

Is clearancing these things something that is done on a rare basis? Some grinding would leave me with the lowest possible top hat and thats sorta desirable depending on how much meat has to come off.

 

The fitting shouldn't be moving during travel? The shock shaft is supposed to move

 

it dosnt rotate or move but as the suspension comes up, the shock swings out and the fitting hits. kinda hard to describe and probably a rare combo of parts to make contact like this.

Edit drew arrow on pic to show where it hits the top hat

 

The shock articulates with the suspension. It's not a ton, but does require proper clearance. To get proper clearance you'll need to notch and reinforce the coil bucket as well. That's a little hack to me. Looks like you have the wrong spec shock for your kit. It may be as simple and changing out the lower rod end and flipping the mounts the other way

 

wrong top hat for the shock. I figured all the low profile ones were the same, but the res fitting is higher on this shock then a ADS shock it appears. It dosnt hit the coil bucket so thats good. If I had to grind the actual coil bucket i'd be nervous, but grinding the top hat isnt the best thing ive ever thought of either haha.

 

Why don't you rotate the fitting down a tad more

 

it will gain a few mm if I put a wrench on it to turn the high spot down, but not enough to clear for the whole travel.

 

why not just get the right mount so you dont have to cut into the coil bucket? mine has plenty of clearance.. or if anything maybe take that mount off and trace it on some metal and make a spacer or something to give the extra room rather then cutting stuff up..

 

its a bad pic but it doesn't hit the coil bucket fortunately. Getting the proper King mount would fix it, but I will look at it some more and see if its reasonable to try and make the ADS ones fit. I cycled things again last night and the saving grace may be that I'm at half travel before it touches. I believe the geometry past half travel will stop that fitting from going any further and it may even retreat a bit at full stuff.

 

this is the end result. Its about at my limit of comfortable. I had hoped to come out less, but this should be ok. I took an extra mm off for wiggle room. At the upper limit of travel a mm is a lot of room at this pinch point.