Hi All

I'm currently in the process of re-building my Ron Champion Locost.

In the book it states that shock absorbers should be a minimum of 14" in length (open), but the ones i have are 14" front and 12" rear! I did notice that when i bought the part finished car that there was very little travel on the rear, so my question is, are the rear shocks also meant to be 14" in length? What have others got fitted?

Many thanks in advance

Cheers
Leon

Hi Leon,

Mine was built to the book and uses 14" Open x 9.5" Closed all round. However, my fronts spend far too much time on the bump stops so am considering shorter units currently. Length on the front depends on how your shocks are mounted on the top chassis rail; under, on side or on elevated bracket.

To answer your question: My rears are perfect at 14" so I am tempted to ask if yours are the wrong way round?

Rich

It'll vary from car to car depending on the location of the brackets. Mine are:

Front 9.5"closed and 12" open
Rear 10" closed and 13" open

I located my brackets quite low relative to the axle at the rear, so I would think that 14" would probably be too long. Set your car at the intended ride height and measure centre to centre of the brackets. This will give you the mid point length between fully open and fully closed. So if this comes out at say 11.5" and your shock travel is 3" then a 10"-13" would do it. This assumes your axle won't hit anything within the range of travel.

This is how GAZ/Dampertech advised me how to do it.

David

All food for thought.

As you can see by the pics the fronts had little travel but the springs seemed to do the job nicely. Whereas the rears also had a little bit of travel but the rear end was rock hard, so it may be the springs aren't right or as already mentioned the shocks were the wrong way round!

Unfortunately the car is stripped back down to bare chassis so i can't have a test run until its all back together again!

Do other peeps shocks have more travel than mine?

cheers for the advice so far gents


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