40.5" long travel shock question

[seattle73k5]

Got new long travel shocks and I am curious what the shocks should be compressed to when the truck is settled with the weight of the truck on it.

should they be compressed around 3-4 inches?

total length extended is 40.5" compressed is 24.0"

I am looking to mount these in the next week so any help would be great also I just purchased a new set of f-250 shock towers will these end up being long enough for my application.

k5 blazer 83' 12 inch lift.

thanks for the inputs

 

[moturbopar]

I dont know about your truck but I run 14" travel shocks on the back of mine with a 4" lift. I split the difference and set it for 7 up 7 down, I have used 5" up and 6" down so far.

 

[Greg72]

The best way is to setup the shock for the amount of uptravel your springs will allow. If your springs are totally flat when compressed 4", then setup the shock to have 4" of piston showing (maybe just a fraction more to be safe). There is no benefit of providing extra shock travel if the spring has finished moving upwards. (BTW -> You should make sure that you have bumpstops or limiters at this point also)

The rest of the available travel goes to the "droop" side of the equation....typically droop travel is a lot larger number than bump travel anyway. If you set up a 14" shock for 4" of uptravel, you effectively bought yourself 10" of droop travel, which would be pretty sweet.

Setting up the shock for 50% up and 50% down (a simpler way to setup the shock) , means that you would have wasted 3" of uptravel potential and cost yourself 3 extra inches of droop travel.

 

[4X4HIGH]

The correct way to setup a shock position is to have it centered in the range of travel. Now on our rigs what Greg said would be best for our application though. Some of us have trail only rigs in which it doesn't matter since they are trail only anyway. Even if they are not setup centered as long as you don't run out of shock in either direction you will be fine.