Shock travel.

Silly question.  I just installed some drag shocks.  I had to let the suspension hang down a little to get them in.  With the car at ride height there is only 2" of downward travel before the shock bottoms out.  Lots of extension travel.  Is this right?  I thought the car was supposed to "squat" and transfer weight back to the rear? 

Front suspension setup is stock springs with roller perches caltrac shocks and set up loose.  Rear suspension is stock leafs with caltrac bars/shocks 4.57 gear. 500hp small block, converter flashes to 3800 on the brakes.  I'm going to the track for the first time this weekend and don't really want to poke a shock through the floor haha.  The stock replacement monroe shocks I had on there have plenty of downward travel but not much extension.

Sounds like you have the wrong shocks for sure. By  the way where did you get the perches? I'm lookin for a set.

Zrob Mr.Gasket has a shock extension in their catalog .I used them on my comet with monroe shocks .It simply threads on the stud and has longer threads .It will give you an additional 2" (guessing) These are for the back right ? I have the calvert rear shocks on my comet and some old cheap worn out summit drag shocks on the front .Doug

manofmerc wrote:Zrob Mr.Gasket has a shock extension in their catalog .I used them on my comet with monroe shocks .It simply threads on the stud and has longer threads .It will give you an additional 2" (guessing) These are for the back right ? I have the calvert rear shocks on my comet and some old cheap worn out summit drag shocks on the front .Doug

If I read the Op correctly, those extensions would only make his problem worse. He will need to relocate the upper or lower shock mounts to get more extension, or send those shocks back and get the correct ones.

Those spring perches cold also be the problem.

I'm having trouble with the rear shocks. This will be the first time I've ran this car at the strip so I'm not sure how it'll react.  This track is normally a motorcycle dragstrip and they only run cars on it twice a year so its going to be hard to hook regardless haha.

On the street with cheap traction bars and the monroe shocks it would squat a bunch and take off.  Since then I've added slicks, 60hp, caltracs and loosened up the front suspension.

From what I've seen at the track caltrac bars seem to lift the rear of the car instead of "squatting".  If my car does "squat" the caltrac shocks will bottom out, but if it lifts the rear the monroe's will not have enough extension and top out.

Dave, I got the perches from Open Tracker and they are sweet.  My old perches had worn all the way through the bushing I can't turn them by hand.

Ok, thanks . Did you buy the double rollers?

I'm a scrooge and just got the regular ones. 

Also I found a catalog that came with the caltrac bars and it says a minimum of 1" and maximum 2" compression distance for their shocks at ride height so I guess they're right.  I'm gonna leave them on and see what happens.

squat is bad.  seperation is good

Ordered mine today.

You won't regret it dave they're nice.  I hope you have better luck compressing the coil springs than I did.  I made up a few new curse words doing the first one.

Thanks Whatbumper, that is good to hear.

Perches arrived today.. Now if I could get time to work on the darned thing.

You need to use the correct center-to-center shock length for that application (or as close as possible). You can fudge a little if the shock length used isn't 100% correct for the application with adjustable shock mounts (or extensions). But doing so can also sometimes cause problems. If you internally bottom out a shock hard enough/enough times you can possibly damage the shock's piston & valving assembly. And while topping out a shock (or strut) might not damage most of them internally, doing so can sometimes unload a rear suspension, or not allow enough front suspension travel.

I went ahead and ran it with the long shocks. Seemed to work good. Definitely won't work on the street but thats okay with me. You can push the car down a couple inches and bottom it out but thats what calvert recommends. The car seems to separate the rear instead of squatting.

Problem solved!