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Long travel front shock towers
I think i've seen some kits advertised for this purpose but, hey, i can just fabricte something from scratch myself.
why long travel? it depends on what shocks you have and how long they are and how happy you are with them. i am not happy with "stock" shock absorbers. they don't damp as well and they have really wierd limiters built into them.
in my quest for a a truck shock that is roughly the same lenght as a stock shock i have come up with nothing. ford ranger front shocks are about 2" too short. i think corvette shocks are pretty close, try those.
my reason for long travel shock towers is the fact that i have a pair of KYB's that are about two feet long. when i have them installed with my unmodified shock towers, they stop compressing
before my suspension wants to. so i have less suspension travel, not good! so to use these shocks (and i do want to use them) i must make my upper shock mounts higher that the original position, thus, long travel.
Ok, there's no way in hell i can describe what i've been doing.
all i can say is that my upper front shock mounts are now 6 inches higher than they used to be. i'll try to take a pic sometime soon here.
ummmmm, well i used a bunch of 1/8" steel plate to raise the vertical, form the horizontal shock mount and to "box-in" the whole thing. i basically cut the original horizontal (where the shock bolts to) on either side so i could "fold" it upright and build up off of that. 1/8" might not seem that strong, but i used a couple of layers of it in key places, i.e. everywhere. the thinness made it easy to work with because i had to form it to fit the ultra curvy shock towers.
keep in mind, my seams are welded and the gussets that tie the shock towers to my top torsion tube are 7" high. so my shock towers started off being pretty stout before i tore into them.
with everything all boxed in the assembly is still quite stout. it has to be, those shocks need solid mountings. the shocks have about 11" of travel before they bottom out. i think that's probably more than my suspension has. the "stock" shocks i was running only had about 5" of travel. those "stock" shocks have crappy limiters built into them (they are there to protect the ball joints from going to far one way or the other).
if you don't have any reason to do this then don't. i just did it to make my ultra long shocks work. of course, i do have some more bragging rights....
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