up vs down travel?

[XJLI]

so i'll be welding on the shock mounts for my jeep after work today.. i'm not concerned with location theres plenty of info on that, and i have enough room to move the tabs up and down a few inches.

10" travel 9100s, should I be running 5" up and down? or more travel in a certain direction? i have prothanes for bumps, deaver coils.

 

[vetteboy]

It doesn't matter to the shock, they're not position-sensitive like a bypass or anything.

Run it so you don't bottom out the shock at full stuff.

 

[XJLI]

that makes the most sense. i should do that.

 

[zachhooters]

Im on my phone but i can send you a pic of my shock mount set up

 

[GrimmJeeper]

vetteboy has the right idea, from what i've read it seems that the worst thing you can do to a shock is bottom it out at speed. using it as a limit strap is also not ideal but not as damaging to the internals as completely bottoming it out on a hard hit. I would set it up so you are at least 1-2" from bottoming it out at full compression on your bumps (depending on how far they compress on a hard hit) and let the droop be what it will. On my rig I'm bumped at 6" up and downtravel is currently limited by my 1-ton otk setup at 6" of droop. before it goes in the dirt again i'll have limit straps on it to keep from trashing TREs because of that until I can come up with a better steering solution on the cheap.

to clarify I'm running 14" 9100 coilovers up front

 

[Goatman]

Do you have a positive stop on the Prothanes? Meaning a definite stopping place for up travel, so you can make sure your shock doesn't bottom out. I've done that with the Prothanes by putting a round rod of HMWPE inside the bump stop, you can get it in 1.25" which sits inside perfectly. Travel in both directions is important, neither really takes priority over the other. You can have a little less up travel than down travel for going fast since when going through whoops the car tends to ride slightly higher than normal ride height.

 

[XJWOLF]

Im currently at 7" up and 3" down, hitting hard bumps(no whoops yet) it uses maybe 3-4" of up travel. I had heard that for limited travel in the desert you wanted more up than down travel? Is droop that important for the whoops? I've got prothanes waiting to go in and limit straps later on.

Thanks for any advise.

 

[GrimmJeeper]

droop keeps the tires planted on the ground, uptravel with proper bumpstopping keeps the rig floating over the top of the rollers. it all depends on how big the whoops you're going to hit are, you want enough up travel to soak them up, and enough down travel to keep from launching off the tops and slamming into the face of the next one.

 

[Pharaoh XJ]

You should always try to have your wheels on the ground (although getting air looks cool),
with your wheels on the ground you have more control & power to go faster

 

[crazyjim]

You should always try to have your wheels on the ground (although getting air looks cool),
with your wheels on the ground you have more control & power to go faster

That's unfortunately not an option for our Jeeps in a go fast desert environment. More up travel is definitely the way to go. Most Jeepspeeds are set up this way, because this is what works. Don't get me wrong, I agree with your logic, but if it's a trade off, you don't want to be riding on bumps either.

 

[chris_amrein]

When I first built the Fabtech Jeepspeed we had about 5 up and 5 down and while the car was awesome on fast, twisty roads, we got beat most of the time in the whoops. So we switched to stiffer, taller coils and ran about 7.5 inches up and 2.5 down, and that's the only way to go if drive a limited travel car hard in the whoops.

My friend Mike (Mike's Race Photos) shoots at almost every desert race and told me Jeepspeeds are some of his favorite cars to shoot because the wheels are always off the ground.

 

[XJLI]

thanks for all the advice guys. i did some more reading during down time at work (and saw most JS guys are running waay more up than down, even though my rig is more multipurpose than for pure speed) and ended up setting the jeep up at 5.5" up and 4.5" down. anymore down and the coil would unseat, so that was useless flex anyway. and rich, no, not yet. i'm planning on sliding a piece of a hockey puck down there, since i have that sitting in the garage

shes still a work in progress, but i drove her today and did 50-55 through some grass/dirt with a lot of uneven dips and bumps and even without rear shocks i was very impressed. cant wait to get everything else all dialed in.