Would this work?

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warrior111

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I was just sitting here thinking, and i wonder if you could weld on another set of shock mounts on your bottem a arms( like to make it lower) and put the longer 450 shocks on it. would this put stress on the balljoints, and would it be good for jumping? if its welded on solid it cant be to weak. and maybe make it an inch or two lower for handling.
anyway, i was just wondering what you guys thought...
 
It's been done,there are pics on this site,don't know how it worked out.
 
This is a hit and miss thing. Suspension systems are designed with exact angles and distances in mind. When you change both the length of travel and angle of the shock you have a lot of things that you have to check. One of the biggest issues with the longer shocks on stock a-arms is that even if you modify the mounts so the shock fits, the shock may have too much travel to work safely. The bump stops in a properly working system will stop suspension travel on bottom-outs before the ball joints and all that get pushed to angles they can't handle. The longer shocks will have more travel than stock, and might not hit the bump stops soon enough, causing stuff to bind up and break.

There are a bunch of other factors that are difficult to measure until you have everything in hand, set up, and all that. So you are taking the risk of spending this money on shocks, and adding those mounts on the a-arms, just to find that there isn't a way to make them work safely. The most important thing when you're doing custom work like this is to make sure nothing binds up at any point in the full range of suspension travel. Spending the money on the shocks and finding out you can't use them sucks, but a $10,000 medical bill and being off work for several months because a ball joint let loose at high speed and launched you over the handlebars head first is a hell of a lot worse in comparison.
 
Medical here is free ;D But seriously, i see what you mean. i just didnt know if the shock mounts would balence out the balljoint stress. Thanks for the input.
 
What do you think about making a set of shims to stop the travel of the shock earlier? The shims would move the bump stop down. You would lose some travel but it would prevent the ball joints from being over stressed. I haven't seen a set of the shocks so I don't even know if this is possible, but its a thought.
 
In theory, shims between the shock body and bump stop would take care of that problem when everything is measured out properly, but installing them would be difficult. You would have to tear the shock down like when doing a rebuild, then after installing them the shock would need to be filled back up with oil and pressurized with nitrogen. Not all that cheap and more work than most of us would want to get involved with. I'm sure there are ways to rig up shims that would slip over the shaft, but that could create even more issues.
 
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