FOA Shocks and 2010 KOH

[motochris]

Wow...what a week. I'm at work today and all kinds of tired.
This year I decided to bring JD, our shop guy to do the actual shock work, as I knew I'de be busy between watching cars run and tending to our booth in the vendor tent. JD busted ass and valved a good 40 shocks in the 3 days he was there, including some SAW and Radflo's.
Here's JD hard at work--



Got there on Sunday the 7th and set up camp with the Jeff Mello/Rage 4th crew. Jeff said he was bringing us a trailer to work in this year (I worked off my tailgate basically last year)....well....a "trailer" was certainly an understatement! Here's what Jeff supplied us with....



Couldn't have asked for more..no question. Not only did we have nice steel benches and such to work on, but we were indoors..heated, stereo, plasma TV...lathe, drill press....the list goes on. Sure was nice, and it made us that much easier to find as well.

Soooo...... we ended up working on a good number of rigs between just cruising the pits and visiting everyone we saw with FOA's on their rigs. They were everywhere this year. On a good number of race and LCQ vehicles and on chase/spectator rigs all over the place.
Had a blast hanging with everybody from Mello's crew...... wandered around to Jason Blantons pit...they were sponsored by Red Hook Beer...so we hung out there a while. John James and Hobie shared a tent/garage so we made sure to hang in their too. Bigelow, Mercer/Dixon and Usnick also took advantage of the rental tents plus gave us a place to hang our banners.
Funniest comment of the weekend came from JD around Wed. night. After cruising thru about 10 different pits visiting and drinking some of everyones homemade "spirits", JD pipes up... "What the hell is with rockcrawling and MOONSHINE?" I had no answer to that other than laughing, as we must have been offered 15 different kinds of moonshine thruout the night. Definitely not your typical desert race.
Bottom line....we just had a great week. Got to see and meet alot of our customers face to face, and talked to alot of potential customers in the vendor tents. I was amazed how many people out there already knew about us and was just happy to see the product in person. Our new race jack was a big hit for sure. Dirtsports Magazine picked one up for their "Project Elf" Class 11 racecar, Off-Road Magazine snagged one as well.
Thanks for all the good words to everyone I spoke with, it was awesome meeting everyone....though I met so many people and was so busy I forgot 1/2 of who I met already.
Here's a few pics....

[motochris]

Oh yea.... just so everyone knows. The LCQ top FOA qualifier was Robert Foster. He scored one of our new race jacks! We didn't have a privateer finisher, so we turned the $500 in product award into a "FOA Hard Luck" and awarded it to Joe Silva and the Nevada High School build.

[sayb2]

got any shirts left? how many rigs finished with FOA's?

[motochris]

OH yea.... (I'm sure I'll keep piping up as I remember things) You guys should have seen Larry Gipson in the LCQ. His run was short lived as he had a rollover in Backdoor and sheered off all the studs on one wheel....but he was just haulin ass until then. Seriously, I heard a number of people say "Who is that?" as Larry flat got it on thru the short course to Backdoor. When they heard it was Larry.... everyone had that same little head nod of approval.
We valved his shocks without getting to see the truck run, but he said it made all the difference.
There's plenty of Larry haters on the web, but I don't know of too many people that actually know Larry that dislike the guy. He's just a guy doing the best with what he has. Good seeing you out there Larry!

[motochris]

Originally Posted by sayb2

got any shirts left? how many rigs finished with FOA's?

I'm out of shirts...they went fast. I may make more...
I'm not sure of how many rigs started with FOA's...maybe 7 and we had 3 finish in time, (John James, Doug Bigelow and Jeff Mello) plus Usnick crossed the line after the finishline was closed.

[sayb2]

i am glad to hear the products are working. i hope to be in LCQ next year!

[motochris]

Here's another Bigelow pic Larry from Crawl Magazine sent me...

[Travis Waldher]

Are the OP's photos red x's for everyone else too?

[HeavyMetalXJ]

Originally Posted by motochris

OH yea.... (I'm sure I'll keep piping up as I remember things) You guys should have seen Larry Gipson in the LCQ. His run was short lived as he had a rollover in Backdoor and sheered off all the studs on one wheel....but he was just haulin ass until then. Seriously, I heard a number of people say "Who is that?" as Larry flat got it on thru the short course to Backdoor. When they heard it was Larry.... everyone had that same little head nod of approval.
We valved his shocks without getting to see the truck run, but he said it made all the difference.
There's plenty of Larry haters on the web, but I don't know of too many people that actually know Larry that dislike the guy. He's just a guy doing the best with what he has. Good seeing you out there Larry!

i got some footage of Larry tear assing into backdoor in the pirate video, 2nd video on this page about 3:30 in right after his interview

http://pirate4x4.com/king-of-the-ham...10/tuesday.php

[raceanything]

We had a great time hosting Chris and JD from FOA. I want to thank the heck out of Brad Falin from Bradley's Raceworks for bringing his semi down. Once the awning was up we literally had about double the enclosed space to work under on the lakebed then we do at home in my shop. Sharing it with JD and watching him whip through shocks, making changes was cool.

From the lack of time I left to prepare for this race Chris had to make guesses accross the board for my valving and spring rates and I can tell you that he pretty well pinned the tail on that donkey. He's amazing! I look forward to fine tuning the suspension with more time but damn it was 1000% better than last year and made it possible to finish the 135 miles.

For anyone who is considering new shocks FOA is a great deal. Sure they are the new guys on the block but I remember when Kuster, King, and Sway-a-Way were all starting out too and you had to take out a second mortgage to get them on your car.
FOA is extremely generous with their pricing and their knowledge I look forward to working with them for years.

[yield2me]

Yeah, no doubt, Jeff!

Chris and JD re-valved my shocks as well, just going by how we told him the car was riding at Parker. They went through them faster than we were ready to have them back and once back on the buggy....damn!

Customer service has always been top notch for us as well, and Chris even drove up to Beatty for the Vegas to Reno race and handed me a small bag of spare parts in case we had issues since he wasnt going to be around for all three days of racing.

When you call him, LEAVE A MESSAGE, and he will always call back!!!

These shocks can definitely take abuse for sure and they will treat you right.

Chris, Billy at Performance Off-Road here in Fayetteville (my co-dawg) wants to talk about a few customer orders he has coming up. If you get a second, call him at 910-487-5964 at the shop.

Sorry we couldnt get you on the podium at Parker, and fell a little short at KOH, but it was not because of the shocks.....more along the lines of only having 90 hp!!

Rob

[DoveTail96]

Originally Posted by motochris

OH yea.... (I'm sure I'll keep piping up as I remember things) You guys should have seen Larry Gipson in the LCQ. His run was short lived as he had a rollover in Backdoor and sheered off all the studs on one wheel....but he was just haulin ass until then. Seriously, I heard a number of people say "Who is that?" as Larry flat got it on thru the short course to Backdoor. When they heard it was Larry.... everyone had that same little head nod of approval.
We valved his shocks without getting to see the truck run, but he said it made all the difference.
There's plenty of Larry haters on the web, but I don't know of too many people that actually know Larry that dislike the guy. He's just a guy doing the best with what he has. Good seeing you out there Larry!

Thanks Chris we gave er a hell of an effort. Hope we got you some airtime and maybe some magazine pictures. See you next year. Thanks for the shock tuning time. It made our race for us. 115 miles from 74th to 13th isn't bad for a team that wasn't racing on Friday Until Thursday morning.. I did bring it in after the time limit complete with vise grips on my steering ram..

[DoveTail96]

My crew and rig. Gipson Racing has been running FOA suspension in 3 years of King of the Hammers events. Thanks Chris and FOA our suspension works great

[Mr Roxy]

Just wanted to say thanks to Chris and JD, they are top notch. I had only spoken to Chris twice before the race and he treated me as I was one of the long time top racers.Coming from a newb to racing that meant alot. Chris brought out some parts I needed last minute, and helped me get the car drivable, as I had no seat time to tune. He speant time helping me understand how bipasses work, and I was able to do alittle self tuning. Also huge thanks for the race jack, I already have Brett making me some trick tabs to mount it. I cant wait to spend some serious time with Chris valving the car to perfection and would recomend FOA to anyone looking for new shocks or coilovers.

Robert Foster
In the Pink Racing

[Mr.S]

One more on the list of F.O.A rigs that finished. OK, so if you look at the results we DNF'd but The Nevada Union High School Buggy finished all 135 miles. It took us about 30 min to long, but we never gave up. We had 4 fuel pumps fail, but never had any issues with our shocks. We would have had a great finish if not for the fuel pumps. Hopefully next year we will return with a good finish. We might even have some by-pass shocks on the front. What ya say Chris?

[desertoy]

This was the second year running FOA shocks in KOH. We ended up having JD re valve our shocks twice on the lake bed. that is after re valving them twice the week before. It was nice meeting JD. He's REALLY fast at re valving shocks and seems to know exactly what he's doing.

Thanks Chris and JD. It was nice hanging with you. The Marlin Crawler Formula Toy rode great in the rough stuff. We were passing big horse power rigs with our 10 inches of travel just because of the shocks.

FOA shocks are definately something everyone needs to look into when buying for their rig. They are a great choice with reasonable prices and top notch customer service.

[a2b]

hey chris, it was nice hanging with you in our garage tent thing. even though i wasnt running FOA you were cool talking about my setup i had going. thanks! maybe next year i will be cool enough to be a FOA guy like john james

[motochris]

Originally Posted by Mr.S

One more on the list of F.O.A rigs that finished. OK, so if you look at the results we DNF'd but The Nevada Union High School Buggy finished all 135 miles. It took us about 30 min to long, but we never gave up. We had 4 fuel pumps fail, but never had any issues with our shocks. We would have had a great finish if not for the fuel pumps. Hopefully next year we will return with a good finish. We might even have some by-pass shocks on the front. What ya say Chris?

Did you hang out for the awards? You guys got our $500 hard luck award!!

[motochris]

Originally Posted by a2b

hey chris, it was nice hanging with you in our garage tent thing. even though i wasnt running FOA you were cool talking about my setup i had going. thanks! maybe next year i will be cool enough to be a FOA guy like john james

I heard Johns rig was the fastest F-toy/Hendrix/whatever based rig in the whoops. Faster than the coilover f-toys even. We'll just knock off his valving on yours. (John kept the settings secret...he even made JD put the shims on blindfolded )

[Mr.S]

yes i did. thanks for everything!!!!!

[YAONTO]

FOA was the Official Shock of the 2010 Griffin King of the Hammers and it sounds like they stood up to the test! Congratulations!

It was great hanging out with you Chris!

[bnsfab]

Thanks Chris & JD for getting my shocks all dialed in. My buggy is 100 times better through the whoops. You guys are great guys to deal with. Your always welcome to come by our camp for some RedHook beer. See you guys next year. Thanks again and let me know if there is anything we can help you guys with.

[NUTTY4X4]

i tell ya ive been researching for awhile and i must say i will be calling foa for shocks when it is time to spend my hard earned cash, you guys seem top-notch!

[raceanything]

So recap:
Great customer service, product that works, and a low price let's get some hotties in the booth to complete the marketing profile.

I started to worry about JD and that long hair after I notice a couple racers from Arkansas "eying the product"

[motochris]

Thanks much for all the good words guys. Makes me feel like we are getting somewhere.
I discussed the "hottie" idea with a number of people during the event....it'll probably happen next year.