where can i find travel range and rebound and compression energy info on various models of shock absorbers? the retail web sites are worthless, and I've found nothing anywhere else either.
I'd like to get past all the marketing blather about zinc this and diameter that and find out what shocks do what: what the travel range is and how much energy they manage in that range.
any ideas would be helpful; thanks for your time.

 

Umm most shocks aren't going to list that unless your looking for a set of high performance ones such as kings, foxes, sway a ways, bilsteins upper series shocks, etc. Not only that but once you get to those shocks compression and rebound rates are adjustable anyways usually via shims in the shock.

Easiest way to find travel numbers is take the extended length and subtract from the collapsed length and then round down to the nearest whole number.

Is there any reason your looking for these specs?

 

There are specs but only found with the speciality shocks for off road use and the very high end remotely adjustable units from a dash control and on shock adjustability.
For common road use, there is little info to use as a guide.
What I might like for my application, use and feel may not be what you would like or be the best for your overall application.
In professional racing, the shops actually have shock 'dynos' to plot the compression and rebound for rates, weights and extension movements.
As well there are gas pressurized and non gas shocks to consider in any application.
The first time I towed a large hard trailer, the truck was like a Porpus at every dip in the road. The second factory set new was no better so whent to Ranchos and cleared that condition.
Now the third set is Monroe HD for normal use.
Good luck.

 

good info, but i'm still searching. Pizzaman, the reason i want a guide is to help me design a suspension before i buy the shocks. I can't be buying shocks just to measure their travel! lol!
anyway, i'd rather buy the right one, or as close to it as i can get, than dissassemble one to rebuild the shims, etc.

the design goal (for today) is to build a long travel suspension with a stated payload. i can find long travel shocks in several places, but finding their payload is iffy.

 

Okay well for "payload" that's not going to be the shock, that'll be the spring. Since your talking long travel, that'd mean the coils in the front, and for the rear either on the leafs (either atlas or national can build them to your specific specs, can't remember which off the top of my head) or on the coils again if you decide to backhalf the truck and link it. The coilover spring rate is what's going to decide the payload/ride height/etc.

And again since it's long travel, the shocks you'll need (fox, kings, high end bilsteins, sway-a-ways,foa's, etc all will have the travel numbers you'll need to know posted on their site. And you can look at other companies kits to see what lengths they use to get an idea of what size you'll need to build around.

You can also call the shock companies or places that sell them like polyperformance and they can custom valve them before they ship them out to get them close to where you need them at. FOA I know will custom valve the shocks.

But still even then, you can't really set the compression, rebound, etc perfectly until you have the truck all put together and can take it out and test it where you'll be driving and how you'll be driving it. Setting up a good home fabbed lt kit is a lot of trial and error. A lot of people if they don't have a shop tune the shocks will take a video camera out with them so they can record the truck running to see how it react's to the terrain and compare it both to how it feels in the cab and also you can see if it's nose diving to hard, the rear is bouncing too much, and all the stuff like that.

I'd recommend doing a lot of reading over on dezertrangers, and probably starting a thread there too. There's a lot of long travel knowledge floating around on that site.