[robnolimit]

SHOCKSI'm seeing a lot of talk here lately about shocks, so how about we talk about them here. First we all need to understand what a shock is. A shock is a dampner, or a device used to control the suspesion movement, by regulating how fast the suspension can compress or rebound givin a certian amount of load. The shock works in two directions. Compresion and rebound, or closing and opening. On most cars and trucks, the compresion rate is different than the rebound rate to make the car/truck feel balanced. Some of the forces that come in to play are, the total weight of the vehicle, the corner weight per shock, the motion ratio of the suspesion/shock travel, shock angle, unsprung weight, weight transfer due to braking, acceleration and/or cornering, speed, and size and shape of the road surface, and or bumps.
Here's where we're all screwed - we own trucks. The shock world is focused on cars. Performance, ride quality, testing..., it's all about cars. Except for off road shocks, built for a certain type of truck, still, not for a performance oriented street truck. So, your screwed. - until you learn about shocks AND trucks.
Why is a truck so different? Take a look and remember all tha factors that go into a shock. Your truck is REALLY nose heavy. also, the rear is REALLY light. The truck is too heavy, and the center of gravity us too high. This means it has a lOT more weight transfer under braking, acceleration, cornering, than a car. Truck susension parts are heavy, and we run bigger, heavier wheel and tire combos, so unsprung weight is way up too. all of this is bad. Now remember this, ALL performance shocks are designed for cars.
So, its up to you to think about it, and figure out how to pick shocks that might help. When we started with Romic shocks, They were, and still are, really good about working with us to get what we wanted. Most companies sell "coil-overs", front or rear, whatever, same part. So we kept going back to them - Rear shocks must be softer, again. and front compression must be firmer, again, and again. We would test, they would dyno, build more, we test, ..... Here is what we came up with.
First of all, most springs, on most trucks, are WAY TOO STIFF. They are trucks afterall, and, the aftermarket seams to copy the stock spring, but shorter, and most times, even stiffer. - not helping. This makes the shock problem even harder. Weight is a big issue, so front shocks are way different than rear shocks. For basics, we need a front shock that has a firm compression, and even firmer rebound. On the rear, we need a really soft compression, and a medium/firm rebound.