F body rear shocks
 

C.E., 50-50,s? Single adj? Need bank loan for double adjustable

Re: F body rear shocks
 

Depends what you have for power, trans and what your goals are with the car. Every shock and brand has it's place and cars that they will work well with. As you want to go faster to 60' or want to improve consistency overall - that's when higher quality/tolerance shocks with more adjustments will help.

What are you working with and what are you trying to achieve with this car?

Mike

Re: F body rear shocks
 

96 Camaro LT1 metric 200 9"X30" Radial B/SA C/SA SS/JA
For some reason the car is blowing the tires off not at the initial hit...but 2-3 feet out with the front wheels still up.
After looking everything over pretty good, the only suspect we found was a very old pair of shocks.the compression adjustment is working fine, but they're really soft on the extension.

Re: F body rear shocks
 

I went with Strange single adjustable
We'll see how it does

Re: F body rear shocks
 

Sounds to me like compression may be too soft, allowing the tires to unload. Before I had Dewayne Custer work his magic, I had Stock rear suspension & 9" tires. Had to go to very firm compression rear shocks to cure that. Soft extension, firm compression. Much like those old "90-10" front shocks we used to use.

Re: F body rear shocks
 

My initial thought is that maybe the shocks were too soft, and the car was unloading when the shocks topped out at full extension.

On a good track I always run my single-adjustables at full stiff with leaf springs and Cal-Tracs. Not sure if the stiff extension or compression is providing the most benefit.

Re: F body rear shocks
 

You've got a combination that definitely doesn't need anything too fancy. If you found the budget, I would go with an off-the-shelf AFCO double adjustable. But I understand if that's not the case.

I'm guessing you've got a pretty traditional 2.74 low gear and a 4.88 rear gear, which in that car and probably 51%+ weight on the back - should be able to stand up and leave nicely. A few things I would suggest you peek at would be ride heights and front springs. With you in the car, if you measure from the ground to the rear fender lip and you're down around 28" it's going to try and put the car into a compression action leaving the starting line. If you run the back a little higher at ride height (29.5"+), the natural tendency may be to go more into extension at the hit. These different setups of course are asking the shocks to do different things, so it's pretty impactful.

Also, check your pinion angle. I would suggest 1-1/5* down will be a good baseline for an automatic car. If you don't have an adjustable torque arm, you'll probably have to play with ride height to help this a little bit.

As for front springs (which are very affordable), I would suggest around a 275lb/in spring up there. You want something with enough stored energy to help really push the front end up at the hit. The lighter rate you can run, the more stored energy you'll have - but you shouldn't need anything too far different than this. If you have a 300-350lb spring up there, it's tough to pitch rotate the car.

Next time you're out, have someone video it even with a cell phone and you'll be able to see which direction the back of the car is going at the hit and it'll give you an idea of where to look with the shocks. If it is separating a lot, the rebound may be too soft to keep the tire planted. If it drops the back of the car down hard, the compression may be too soft.

Purely my opinions and input, so feel free to take it or leave it!
Mike

Re: F body rear shocks
 

First of all I really appreciate everybody who takes the time to help us with this and all the other questions I've posted up here.
So I watched a couple of videos of the car leaving very well The back end will jump up about 2 inches when it goes on the 2-step. And it really doesn't squat down,or separate the tire from the body when it leaves. It just sort of looks like a pivot with the front coming up level and the wheelie bars lightly touching, very little drama going on or things jerking up or down.
We did notice the old single adjustable shocks(afco) were REALLY easy to extend regardless of the setting. The new ones we put on ( strange) are single adjustable and stiffen up both ways with the adjuster will check a couple other things and probably drop the tire pressure a couple pounds.

Re: F body rear shocks
 

Sounds like you are on track with some good parts and suggestions, but I question the air pressure change on the tires.
I'm a one thing at a time type.
When you soften up the air pressure you are in effect using the sidewall as a shock.
You could open up another bag of worms as to how the change makes the tire react which in turn likes another shock setting.
I would leave it the way you have it and fine tune the ride height and shock settings first.
Ride height is more important than a lot of people think.
Most guys go off of weight bias, but that isn't the same thing.
You might find it works better with out the wheelie bars, too. JMHO

Re: F body rear shocks
 

Well it wasn't shocks or air pressure.
Went up for Q1 at Noble with new rear shocks and high hopes.....blew em off at the hit. Got back to the trailer and got it up on stands and rear wheels off my son noticed a pretty good crack opening up on the rear torque arm bracket when we took the bolts out, it came out in 4 pieces.