Shock up-travel to droop ratio

[Thomas Fournier]

Hello all,

I’ve been looking around like crazy to find an answer for this question. I’ve been told the percentage of up travel to drop or sag should be 50% either way. I wanted to know if I had the option to get an inch or two more droop vs up travel should I?

I’m running leaf springs (56”), a shackle flip, and the 14.5 inch travel bilstein 5125’s inside some hoops mounted almost vertical outside the leaf springs. It’s a 1977 k20 and I want to do some crawling more than high speed stuff.

I was thinking setting it up as 5” up (hit bump at about 4”), keep the leave from doing a “W”, and the rest down travel (8”). Of course I will sacrifice an inch or two due to running the progressive polyurethane bumps from daystar.

Or on the opposite, have 6 inches down and the rest up? I have a lot of droop, but I can move the shock mount up or down a few inches as well.

let me know if I’m on the right path here,
-Daniel

I posted some pics of the rear suspension that I have now.

 

[HankScorpio]

My tires will hit if I don't limit up travel a bit with bumps. This leaves me with a ton more droop than up travel. I see no problem with it set up that way. It is very common to have lots of droop vs up travel.

 

[530BLAZER]

I'm probably closer to 80% droop. I'm happy with it when going slow, tend to regularly find the bump stops at any speed, but it's anything but a go fast rig.

Deceiving picture, but it was over 4.5 feet from driver front to passenger rear.

 

[Thomas Fournier]

Well it seems as if I want to be doing slow moving, more droop would be better. I definitely don’t want to be slamming the bumps if I’m going fast. I do like to do some hauling ass from time to time I think I’m going to shoot for the 60-70% droop area. For what I do that seems like it would be best.

I’ll update you guys with pics and details of the build when I continue to work on it next week.

thanks for the quick reply’s!
-Daniel

 

[Thomas Fournier]

I'm probably closer to 80% droop. I'm happy with it when going slow, tend to regularly find the bump stops at any speed, but it's anything but a go fast rig.

Deceiving picture, but it was over 4.5 feet from driver front to passenger rear.

View attachment 328221

View attachment 328222

That’s a badass pic though bro!

 

[JoshHefnerX]

Keep the shock from bottoming out just before the springs flatten. And use that as your stop point for the bump stop also.

 

[Thomas Fournier]

Keep the shock from bottoming out just before the springs flatten. And use that as your stop point for the bump stop also.

My springs are flat as it is.....