Ok this might not work or maybe it will! What I am thinking of is taking two 9012's and build a bracket that would tie both shock bodys together and leave both shaft ends to mount on axel/frame. What this would give would be two 13" travel shocks now as a 26" travel (just for example). So has this been done? What do you think? I know they have long shocks out their but I can't fit that long with out cutting every thing out and that is not an option. Thought this might work being the body would be short but give long travel.
:smokin: :beer: :confused:

Abba has a similar setup on the rear of his Scout. But he has two shocks coming up from the rear axle to a bracket. Then from the middle of the bracket he has a shorter shock than the other two going up to his shock mount. It really does increase travel and works very well. You would need the two shocks on one end or the other to keep them from twisting and binding.

This is a real bad, but fast pic of my thought. as far as the twist I would have two set side by side and tie the two to each some how??

I dunno. It looks like there would be some wierd stress put on the shocks that way. Some more tech guys could confirm this or chop me off at the knees though.

why not just angle the shocks? get more suspension travel that way with a shorter shock.

Roger Brown runs an intresting setup with three shocks per front wheel. Two short shocks go up and meet a longer shock that goes back down to the axle. The effect is the same as the above drawing. You get the travel of both shocks added together.

Originally posted by Chris Geiger
Roger Brown runs an intresting setup with three shocks per front wheel. Two short shocks go up and meet a longer shock that goes back down to the axle. The effect is the same as the above drawing. You get the travel of both shocks added together.

Here's the link for that: http://4crawler.cruiserpages.com/4x4/4R_suspension-III.shtml#LongTravelShocks

correct me if I'm wrong but if you ran it like drawn wouldn't you mess up one shock by running it upside down?

Up side down? Nope. Rancho say to put the valve on bottom only because they can not get all the air out of the shock and if it is on top the first pusk on the shock would not be "a valved opperation" untill the air is gone (not even a full push). On my last EB I ran the front four 9012's top valve and the rear valve down and they all worked fine (just not enough travel). Thanks for the above toy post that is just the Idea I was going for but modified a bit. This is why this site rules!!! I could have spent some major time in the shop trying this or do what I did and post it, revise it , get some sleep and get more info! Thanks guys and if any one has more please post and pics are great!
:) :)

I did exactly what your pic depicts. I welded two shocks side by side a few years back. I don't think it is all that good for the oil and rubber pieces inside but it did work. I ended up ditching it because it was a little funky. Practice before trying it on 9012's, you'll probably blow thru the tube. It did work but was UGLY and I can't recommend it!

Run a setup like Roger Brown has:

http://4crawler.cruiserpages.com/4x4/CheapTricks/Images/Phase-III/Fshocks1.jpg

This is a great idea. I think you could use a mix of what rokcrln says and what is shown in the pics to create a pretty sturdy assembly. I like this idea personally because I think when I flip the springs on my cruiser I won't have to make new upper mounts because mounting the shocks this way incorporates a nice offset.

I might be wrong on this part but it seems like one advantage to this method is getting a shorter compressed length then you would get with a shock that has the same extended length.

Thanks,

Arne Anderson

This just seems like an expensive alternative to long shocks mounted at a slight angle. Hell in the front I feel that any common rig can fit a shock to give more then enough wheel travel, with very little angle.

Isn't there an issue to bottoming/maxing out the travel on a shock in it's cylinder bore? I was under the impression that you didn't want to do that. Maybe you could still use this idea by welding on a spacer on the shafts.

Or is this issue been resolved internally by the manufactors already. No I'm not :smokin:

Originally posted by DRM
Run a setup like Roger Brown has:

http://4crawler.cruiserpages.com/4x4/CheapTricks/Images/Phase-III/Fshocks1.jpg

Yep, Abba's setup is like this but turned around with two long shocks. It works perfectly

I think Roger's would be more stable. Seems there would be less stress on the single shock. But I'm not a structual engineer.

The set up on the toy is perfict. I have drawn up a sketch this morning that will work great on my EB and it even has a drop out for the coil spring as well.
Yes the first set up i drew would work dut not any were as well as this three shock set up. Also I never was going to weld shock bodiey together, very bad idea and I am glad to see you still have fingers left to type and tell us about it.
I will post as soon as I get home and see what you all think.

The best setup I have ever seen of this type was here on POR in the Toyota section about 4 months ago. You might try a search in the Toy Trcuk section. There was pics.

J. J.

Rogers setup works fairly decent..

I have wheeled with him a couple of times and trust me wheel travel is not an issue with him

Originally posted by twaldher
why not just angle the shocks? get more suspension travel that way with a shorter shock.


Exactly, why go through the hassle of expense, engineering and fabricating. Just angle the shock. I get 24” of wheel travel out of my 9012

Yes if I were to angle a single I would get more travel (but I don't have the room with out cutting) but the shock has that much less affect on dampening.

So this is again a rough draft of the design for my EB the shock #'s (9112) will change once I start to build!
Thanks for the input and keep it comming.

maybe i missed something.... shouldn't your centre shock be the other way around?.....:D

WHY??
When your axel drops the center shock will have full travel down and then on compression the two smaller ones will extend up. The drawing is set at about ride height +-.

well i'm no expert on shocks, but would tend to think that you would have a cement mixer ride with triple shocks on each wheel in that configuration... with the centre shock the other way around, there would only be the rebound/damping of one shock (until it bottomed out) or if you were VERY precise with the positioning relative to each other, and the upper two began their "duties" just prior to the lower one bottoming.:confused:
like i say though i dunno...hats off to ya for being experimental, though!:beer:

what do you mean by the other way around? Just flipped over and the valve on top? I thought these shocks worked about the same both wasy! But if you ment fliped it is no prob to do and as far as the valving I read on one of the early post to this one to run the top on 1 or so and with the center on 4-5 that should start the top to move sooner!
By the way sweet pic of the bike!!

just thought if the other posted shock pic of Mr. Brown's set up had the centre shock the opposite of your drawing, there might be a change in how the characteristics would apply to the idea "itself", if configured that way. :)

Not sure you want to tie the upper shocks to the frame at the tops of 'em. I think you'll need the ability to change angle relationships to get the results you are looking for. Single mount on the bottom of each, tied to the single shock with a rod should do it.

now..i know im kinda stupid....but isn't bottoming out the shock like that bad for it?

When I drew this pic I thought the center was the same as Mr. Browns, But I still wonder if it would make a diff, not like it would be hard to change.


Screwzer, Yes the second mount point is very inportant, with out it the shock assembley would flop all over the place (like into your tire). The two short bodys are fixed to the frame and just the rods travel and the center is the one that will adjust to the swing of your suspention.

Also just for info I will be mounting this set up in line with the arc of my radius arm travel. (just wanted to mention before it came up)

As far as bottoning them out it is not great but I have been using 9012's as my bump and extention stops for years with out one failure but I will be adding some small rubber donuts to each shock just for this reason????

Well, if you didn't want to use three shocks you could just use two mounted to a rocker arm that was mounted somewhere on your frame. Tie one shock from your frame to the rocker arm and another from the rocker arm to your axle. You could even play with the mounting locations to change travel and leverage ratios on the shocks. Anyhow it does seem like a lot of work. Espicially seeing that it requires at least two shocks. Last I heard 9012s were going for 60-65 bucks, so thats 120-130. Why not just buy some longtravel race type shocks such as race runners? Anyhow thats my .02.

Kevo

ok :D :D

As far as just buying some long travel shocks like race runners I don't have the room to mount EVEN at an angle (this was in the previous posts) so I need a short design with long travel. As far as the price I have 10 of the 9012's on the bronco now and * more on the shelfe and two 9005's. So that is not a concern, getting it done right is the only concern!

wow 10 shocks....that's pretty cool:skull:

Yah real coool, that is how I got it but now that I have re done the susption it maxs them so I want to do it right and get the travel working no the looks!

One Word!!!!

COILOVERS


:zzz:

If you take the money and time it will take to build something like that, you could have bought a set of coilovers and been done. Sometime over thinking a project can ruin a good idea, I only speek from own fab projects.;)

Not a bad idea, I think it would work. You might also want to weld two v8 block's together and get a v16. Tons of HP.......:D

It seems that a few can't read "he does not have the room for a single long shock".

XJJACK YOU WIN THE PRIZE. tHAT IS THE ONLY PROBLEM IS I CAN NOT FIT LONG COIL OVERS. IT IS NOT THE MONEY IT IS THE SPACE!!!!! I RUN COILOVERS ON ALL OUR DUNE BUGGYS WERE THEY CAN FIT. MY EB IS VERY NICE AND VERY FULL IN THE ENGINE COMPARTMENT AND IT IS NOT AN OPTION.

SO FOR THE PEOPLE WITH HELPFULL IDEAS AND INFO THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND THAT IS JUST WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS SITE1

That is why that they make sawall's:flipoff2:

If you want it to work great I do not think this is the best idea to go with. the two shocks side by side with the bodies tied together is an interesting idea. to get the same damping ratio as you would with a single shock mounted normally you would need two pairs of shocks per side, That might get back into some packaging problems but maybe not, then you have the funkyness of the portion in the middle free floating around. I guess that is not too much of a big deal.

The other method mentioned here with two shocks atached to the frame and the third shock from the axle to a rod, is also pretty clever but not for optimum performance Those shocks have different valving for compression and rebound and in that mounting arangement two of the shocks are being used backwards so they are being compressed during rebound etc. If you used a rebuildable shock this would be easy to fix. and with the rancho 9012's you would be able to make adjustments to both compression and rebound valving.

Another option is to mount coilovers on the control arms. If you are sticking with radius arms you could just build a bigger arm and mount a 8 or 10 inch travel racerunner part way back on the arm. You could do the same thing with 9012's but if you really want performance sell those 9012s and buy some Sway Away prerunners or Bilstien 7100's you don't have to use coilovers just a good shock will get you the performance you need. One shock per wheel will be plenty unless you will be getting it on in the hot desert for several hours consecutavly.

Thanks for the post Gordon, I have thought about the shock farther back on the arm but my rear shock on the front end could only go about 3" ferther and it is a 13" travel and is being maxed now. I am only looking for long travel off road and I see that the valving is not the best in this 3 shock format but for rock crawling it should dampen just fine and for the street it gets a 9012 in front of the coil and I feal this would be plenty for good street driving. What do you think.

Yeah if crawlin is what you do that would probably be pretty good. I wasn't sure if you were just into crawling or also liked to fly through the desert, anyway go ahead and give it a try, I would like to hear how it works.

you could come up with some way to hold that top pin solid while on the road.... I can't think of anything simple off hand, maybe some sort of strap? It might not even be worth messing with.:)

Ok gonna put this simply:

Don't you think that this is to much time/money for little gain?

Whats funny is that I really like the 3 shock idea, and I've already hacked off the brackets from my IFS. The upper a-arms brakets would've been perfect for the lower mount of the 2 shocks. Now I have one 5012 mounted on a funky but functional long shock mount.

Maybe I should read more on this board more often.

how about something like this
Left and right shocks would work together for added travel when one wheel droops or compresses(like getting twisted up in the rocks) with the center shock adding damping to the two shocks in series. Left and right would be like a normal setup when both wheels bump at same time.
The amount of travel could be controlled by the length of the bellcrank arms, drill arms with multiple mounting holes.

http://home.earthlink.net/~taloya/_uimages/Jeep_Shock_Idea.JPG

At the risk of taking all the fun out of this thread....
Why not just check with any of the EB aftermarked people? There are inboard shock mount, forward shock mounts etc. that will work just fine with amount of travel your getting. And will work if you decide to modify your Bronco to really get it to twist. Most are bolt on or very little welding required and you won't neet to cut sheetmetal.
Try:
Duff's
BC Bronco's
Wild Horses
Tom's
ProtoFab

Toyola has an interesting idea that should be looked into, although i dont really see the function of the middle shock. i think don't think the pivot points would work very well. if i am seeing it correctly in my head, there should only be one pivot point in the middle. it would probably have to be pretty stout, too. actually, on second thought, after pondering it a few minutes, i have no idea how you could make this design work. you would have to have some sort of pivoting pivot, if that makes any sense at all. okay now i am confusing myself...

on a simpler note, i understand how angleing normal shocks in would reduce the effectiveness of the shocks, but what would be the effect on a leaf -sprung vehicle with SOA like a YJ? would the leaves wear out a lot quicker? so the solution to this on a leaf- sprung is to go with Bilstein's, right? i want to be able to get good travel for rockcrawling but also have a good shock for flying through the mud and daily driving. are the Bilstein's good for this? any input? thanks!

- jake

Am I the only one who can't see how you are going to get more Droop out of the Roger Brown setup? The only thing It increases is stuff. The truck will droop the same amount as if one shock was mounted to same spot where the other two are fully compressed.

Now if you took his first drawing and used another shock and a bracket on the right you would have the same amount of stuff as the but a huge increase in Droop. W/ my truck at least the stuff is fine it's the droop that I need.

Someone please tell me how this works? From looking at it, if the main wshock in the middle runs out of travel, how are the other 2 going to ad to travel? It looks like they are all bolted at the same part, so how would this ad travel??

The trick is that you could mount the middle shock lower than normal becuase you don't have to worry about up travel, The other 2 take care of that.

If you had the middle shock only (12"), mounted centered at static (6" up and down travel) well you only get 12" of travel. But this the 3 shock setup, you can mount the middle further down (9"down and 3"up for example) because when the middle bottoms out at 3", the other two start their travel.

The bodies of the 2 shocks are mounted to the frame solid. A sort of automatic adjustible upper shock mount.

basicly you add the travel of the 2 shocks to the middle shock. 12" of the middle to 5" of the 2 others = 17" without having to buy the expensive race runners at over $200 each. In fact you could get away with using 5000's at $30 each=$120, plus if one breaks, they're easy to replace down at the local store.

HIX, here's the reason for travel increase. Assuming the long shock is a Rancho 9012 (14" travel) and that you would normally use a 14" travel shock by it's self.
<font color="red">
COMPRESSION:</font> since the single shock is at full stuff, it acts as a solid rod to push the other two shocks upward until they max out.(They have ~6" of travel form what he posted). You would be able to turn the two shocks down to the "1" setting or something to get their damping around what you would expect from a single shock.
<font color="red">
DROOP:</font> since the two are fully compressed, they act as a solid mount for the long one, which has it's whole 14" of travel JUST FOR THE DROOP.

What your missing is that at static height, all the shocks are at one end of their travel. Two are used just for compression, and 1 is used for droop. Normally you have the 14" travel shock to use ~4" of it's travel for stuff, and only 10" for droop. Got it?

Here's why I like this setup: You have variable damping for compression and droop. The dual shocks provide a stiff damping rate for the road, fighting body lean and so on. But for droop, you get a softer rate from the one shock, allowing more rapid conformity to the terrain.

Also, since they're 9000s, you can adjust the knobs to get the damping where you need it.

What can I say? I was creative, and bored at the same time.. so I came up with these (They're two completely different designs, not two views of one setup)

<img src="http://www.people.memphis.edu/~ecmills/POR_PICS/funky_shocks.jpg">

Damn I hope I hurry up and get my Extreme membership, then I will post a couple pics showing you can get MORE then enought travel with a single shock setup.. even on the front of a EB :flipoff2:

Anyone seen the front end of a EB with the Wild Horse front suspension? single shock and sick flex(ok some people run 2 side by side..). Ever seen the back of one of Cambells pink buggies? single shock and sick flex. if your worried about not having enough dampining add another shock in the same configuration, will be cheaper then 3 shocks :D

so show us pics of the sick flex, NERok- toy!!!! let's see the badass single shock setup!!

- jake

http://www.off-road.com/rock/cedar2000/event/DSC_0007.jpg

http://www.jamesduff.com/images/eb/longtravel/01-lthoops.jpg
These are just two good examples, and the first one the only thing that is broke is the swaybar end link and limiting strap! The shock is still doing its job

true, but your springs are disconnected. do you always ride like this? doesn't that give you more flex?
- jake