Inexpensive Extended Travel Shocks

I've searched and been surprised to not find inexpensive extended travel shocks on the market. To get that extra 0.5" (~1" of extra wheel travel) it looks like you have to go Icon, Fox, King, or equivalent extended travel shocks and the price point jumps 2x over a "normal" shock. It would be nice to get the extended travel that an aftermarket UCA allows without doubling the price of the shock.

In theory, 1" of extra wheel travel would allow one to push the lift above 2" with less risk of issues caused by the lack of down travel (e.g. ride quality). Please educate me if this is a bunk theory.

Can anyone explain why this is?

Does anyone know of an inexpensive extended travel shock?

Note that I realize that the Icon, Fox, King, etc. shocks have other advantages, but I don't want to get into that in this thread.

I also realize that lifts over 2" have the risk of other issues, e.g. CV angle, etc., but I don't want to get into that in this thread.

 

Thanks, I do appreciate the input, however it doesn't directly answer my questions. I asked them because I have been unable find the answers elsewhere.

 

Your asking for someone to post a lot of info here. Maybe you’ll get lucky and someone will post “why”.
The answer to your question is that if you want to play, you gotta pay.
Try searching on google. You’ll get more answers to your question and you're likely to get some results that link back to certain threads on TW.

 

I just typed “why are extended travel shocks more expensive” in Google and it gave me lots of results. Maybe you should try again?

 

The problem is the assumption that extended travel coilovers are more expensive than the non-extended version. The answer is they cost the same.

OP is comparing apples to oranges by comparing high performance coilovers to struts.

His questions have been answered, but they aren’t the answers he wants to hear.

 

Thanks for the input, but I suspect I didn’t communicate the question to you successfully. I’m not asking why Icon, Fox, King et al are expensive. I’m asking why there is not something in between those shocks and “normal” shocks like Bilistein 5100’s, that add an extra ~0.5” of travel.

 

Watch the whole thing.
https://youtu.be/-MsKf1lIYI0

 

Yep, that’s exactly what I’m noticing now......

 

That is an interesting sales video for King Shocks.

I'm not being a smart ass. I did find it interesting. But it is what it is.

I call BS on the part about shocks fading while driving down a dirt road. I grew up where dirt roads are plentiful and at no point in time did I ever detect my shocks fading. It's possible they did, but since I couldn't detect it makes it a non-issue for me.

 

I appreciate you trying to help me out, but you seem to be making the assumption that my questions are in the context of improving the dampening performance of my shocks and/or building a truck for desert racing.

I get a lot of weird questions from less experienced software developers at work and my general approach is, instead of immediately answering their question, to ask them the context of their question. What problem are you trying to solve? After knowing the context, I can often suggest an entirely different solution that makes their original question moot. I think you might be attempting something similar, but don't quite understand my context.

I'm not at this time interested in improving the dampening performance of my suspension. Maybe some day I will be, but for now I'm happy with the performance of the stock shocks. I'm primarily interested in increasing ground clearance of the truck by putting on larger tires and increasing the ride height of the stock suspension. My off-roading is mostly slow speed. I want to drive over shit and up and down hills. If I feel like going fast and catching some air, I'll ride a dirt bike, drive the Rzr, or go snowmobiling.

Besides that, I have simple academic interest in the answer to my questions, partly because no one seems to ask them or know the answer to them.

Also, understanding the effects of 1" of suspension is relatively simple to understand and theorize about. It's rarely a bad thing to have more travel rather than less travel. Yes? On the other hand, understanding the effects of dampening is complex and subjective. I have not yet spent the time to fully understand it. The shocks on my bicycles, dirt bikes, and trucks just work and I haven't dove into the details.

Cheers!

 

https://www.dobinsonsdirect.com/pro...rq=mk_toyota~md_4-runner-4th-gen~yr_2003-2009



Edit:

 

And this is why you are struggling, you arent even hammering the same board as the nail.

There is a lot of great info completely unrelated to king, in fact most of that video is just general information about shocks.

Also I have had shock fade on dirt roads, rampart road can easily cause shock fade. It happens a lot, many people have blown shocks on washboarded dirt roads.

damn dude, how thick can you get, like wow you are just dense.

I'm out. Good luck.

 

I hadn't heard of these before, but they are also in the same price range as Icon, Fox, and King.

 

I owe that to spending many hours in the gym and having a 15% body fat percentage. Ugh ugh!

 

They do. Valving is also key. Take a base level shock vs a premier shock around a dirt corner with breaking bumps and washboards.

You'll be able to negotiate them at a faster speed with more control because the tire will stay planted better. It keeps you from pushing wide.

The argument of "race shocks are only for the desert" is bs. Most of my wheeling is in ME and VT. In Maine I hold highway speeds on for about two hours straight in the back country. Before I could hold maybe 45 mph safely. My times to destination are significantly better since I put quality suspension on.

 

If I had to guess, it’s because there’s no market for them due to needing UCAs. Seems counterintuitive to run some $600 coilovers but then have to buy some $600 UCAs.

 

I'm not disputing that race shocks won't perform better than stock shocks during hard driving. I'm disputing whether you need to invest in race shocks to drive down a dirt road without the risk of a shock failure.

 

Starting to get off topic, but on the dirt road shock debate. I know it’s titled ridge line but there’s a tacoma in there. Spoiler alert, the tacoma blew a rear shock.

https://youtu.be/CWYqEinNGUM

 

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You are right on track with what led me to the question. It seems like a lot of people install aftermarket UCA's primarily for their adjustability during alignments. However, the UCA manufacturers also advertise that their product allows for more suspension travel by providing more clearance around the coil-over. If one spends $1000 on a pair of UCA's wouldn't it make sense to get the most out of them if there was a small cost to getting shocks with 0.5" more travel than the stock ones? But yes, there does not seem to be much demand. That part is obvious. If there was demand there would be supply.

 

I knew this thread was gonna be wild as soon as I read the title lmao