Rear shock placement

[JoshC]

I'm driving my Explorer everyday now to work and it is just to much sway for me. I've got RS9000s up front and i have them turned way up. I'm thinking i've got a couple of things that could lead to the sway.

1-Rear leaf springs getting pretty flat and weak (see picture).

2-To high in the rear of the truck, thinking stock shackles to bring it down some will help.

3-Rear shock placement is to close to the center (see picture).

4-Front coils off a Jeep XJ to soft with the weakened leaf springs.

What do you all think. What will help me keep the flex in the rear and help with some of the sway? I'm going to take the rear sway bar hole thing off tomorrow so if i do decide to move the shocks then i can take the bottom of the shock, and move it toward the outside some.

 

[NH25]

Do you have any sway bars on it? I noticed in the pic that you don't have one on the rear. It would help out a LOT if you put a sway bar at least on the front.

As for the shocks it would also help if you were to move them out closer to the tires. At their current position they aren't doing much for the side to side motions.

You would also benefit with the shorter shackles in the rear. Longer shackles will exacerbate the sway motions while on the road.

Good luck!

 

[JoshC]

No i don't have any sway bars on it right now. There is no way i can afford to get one of those currie sway bars cause they're expensive.

I'm thinking the shocks out toward the tires on the bottom and the shorter shackles will solve it.

 

[JDraper]

Josh, is it the axle shifting side to side under the vehicle, or the body just tipping?? If it's the axle swaying side to side, you could fab up a track bar to keep it from moving (I just did that for the front of the Sami). If it's the body tipping, put a swaybar on. You can use your factory bar and fab up or buy some longer links to reach the frame.

You also might want to leave the top of the shock where it is and move the bottoms outboard as far as possible. That'll help reduce the sway too.

You sure all those lift blocks aren't generating sway too??? I'd consider knocking out some of them before I would go to shorter shackles.

 

[Michael]

Replace the rear shocks with Rancho 9000's as well. Crank those up and see how it does. Randall does this on his truck with the super soft EB coils and worn out leaves and it drives fine.

 

[JoshC]

Originally posted by Michael
Replace the rear shocks with Rancho 9000's as well.

Yeah i'm going to end up with these also. I remember Randall telling me that he ran his on 7 for the road and 4 for off road.

The top of the shock is almost in the stock position, it's the bottom that needs to come out. As for the axle moving. I don't really know. What should it feel like? The biggest problem is the body roll, so i don't think it's because of the axle. The blocks have to be there. With out those, the angle is just steep when i'm flexing off road.

 

[Rhett]

I've just put RS9000X's on the rear (haven't had time to install fronts yet) and I can tell you it's much better on-road running them at "5" than it is at "1". (I have been experimenting). I haven't run them at anything higher than 5 yet so maybe body roll will be reduced even more. At 1, the rear was wallowing pretty bad. I was running Edelbrock IAS before and they are excellent at controlling body roll. But The RS9000X's set properly (5 or more) are also pretty good at controlling body roll.

 

[JoshC]

Well, i moved them last night. It helped more then i thought it would. I'm pleased with the results, if you look at the picture above, i moved them on the other side of the sway bar mounts. I'm going to stay over here at work one day and use the plasma cutter to remove the old ones and the sway bar connection tabs. Once i get that done i'll throw a picture up cause i'm happy that it's done.