It's
@NightKrawler
So a short update. During our trip to Sand Hollow we had the great experience of wheeling for 4 days with Rich Klein, founder of WEROCK and a rock crawling legend along with some of his close wheeling friends who are also about the best I have ever witnessed. During a couple challenging spots they made a couple comments to me regarding my rear axle having "under steer" and also that my shocks had too much rebound. The under steer is a result of single triangulation vs double triangulation. After looking at it, I can move the frame end of my lower links inward a little bit without too much problem. To do a true double triangulation will require a totally new cross member, which I haven't decided if I want to do yet. I'm most likely going to move them in a little and see if it makes a difference.
RE the rebound issue, I've never tuned my shocks other than playing with oil pressures to set ride ht. Back when we first set it up,
@95geo and I added oil to get what seemed like an appropriate compression/rebound but only in a static condition. It's never been tuned based on real world performance. It has worked well all around at the dunes and in the rocks but up until now it's never had an expert comment on performance. So when I came home I decided it was time to get more shock savvy. I started reading up and really couldn't find good info on air shocks. They were big back in 2008 when I did the build but air shocks are sort of out dated by coil overs. I did a bunch of reading on Pirate and contacted some of the old experts there without much luck. Most people just kept adding oil till they were happy but I couldn't get any good info on valving. On an interesting side note, over the previous few months, I had noticed my rear axle bottoming out on hard HP climbs.
Rich Klein suggested I contact Phil Licardi who has tuned many of you guys race rigs. I had great dialog with Phil but it boiled down to him being a go fast guy who couldn't give me much advice on my type of wheeling. (you know, the super slow stuff that bores
@Kyle M.,
@Mr. Beefy and
@CheapThrillB2. :sonicjay: Stock Fox shocks came with 5 wt oil. One of the guys at Sand Hollow suggested 10 wt. So I bought new seal kits and ordered some 10 wt oil.
When I pulled the shocks apart, I was surprised to find that my oil level was WAY below the Fox recommended oil level. Especially since I knew that Bryce and I had added extra oil. I've never had a leak but I'm guessing that over the last 11 years of bleeding pressure for various reasons that I have just slowly lost oil without noticing it. I also suspect this is why I was having bottom out issues.
After doing a bunch of reading, it seems that everyone with air shocks adds more than the base amount of oil. My shocks can take up to an extra 50cc's of oil so I figured I would add 30cc's. Why? Cuz it seemed like a decent starting point. As soon as I charged the shocks, the body roll was almost non existent. (note I don't have a sway bar) Driving the Jeep was way more stable on the road but definitely too stiff. So I went back to Phil Lacardi and his response was that 10 wt is stupid stiff and recommended 7 wt. So I bought 7 wt, installed it with the same amount of oil and charged the shocks again. Better but still too stiff.
So now I'm diving into valving. I just ordered the next softer compression and rebound valves and am going to see what happens. I'm gonna figure this shit out. :teehee: