I posted on the streetrod build thread but I’ll put this here to keep the conversation going until I resolve this problem.

I went underneath the truck with a tape measure. At my preferred ride height with the airbags- the height I used when I welded the perches to set pinion angle- I have 3” of compression available, getting into the progressively resistant wedge of the stock rubber bump stop after 2”. The video shows around 2” of seperation at launch so I need 5” of travel. On a lowered pickup I think I can live with a little stiffer ride and 27psi in a DOT drag radial should already ride softer than 38 psi in a nitto summer tire which is what I started with.

I only have a couple hundred miles on the rig so far and my plan was to kind of let it tell me what it wanted when the time came to upgrade shocks. I didn’t get a lot of direction concerning which shocks would work well for me in this thread but it was super helpful to know that the coming shock swap would need a simultaneous re-working of at least the top mounts.

I did a lot of searching on jegs summit speedway and here. Different vendors have different ways to narrow the choices and it can be daunting to find something that will fit, have eyelets top & bottom, and is not spec’d for dirt track or something specific. I was looking for at least single adjustable with 5”+ of travel and a ride height length of 12”-15”. Double adjustables were out of my price range.

After talking to a tech at Qa1 he agreed that unless I needed more travel and wanted to extend my bottom shock mount down closer to the scrub line so I could run a longer overall shock that a 5” travel star stocker 18 way single adjustable would work fine for what I’m trying to do. I went with the ts504 which is an 11” to 16.35” length eyelet to eyelet shock. They were on sale at $160 each which is cheap but hopefully not ‘these suck and now good money has to follow bad’ cheap.

The wimpy cheap stock replacement shocks that are laid back in there now are just enough to keep the empty bed from bouncing after a bump and with the stock sprung bench seat it’s not obvious that the shocks are way inadequate. I drove around 500lbs of music gear to a local show my band did (no highway) and the truck did awesome but showed early signs of squirrely handling around 50mph. This was my first longer trip with the DOT drag radials but they were not aired down for launching and I had them balanced ao I’m blaming the shocks and shock angle. It previously felt great hitting 80mph with nitto summer tires and an empty bed. The single adjustable shocks might not yield my combo’s ultimate 60’ but I hope they make the truck more versitile nimble and quick from a dig.

Hopefully testing will begin in a week or so!

I’m not sure how the brackets will end up but I’m considering making them bolt on the frame instead of pulling the bed and efi computer again in this heat for chassis welding. I have some ideas but it’ll talk to me after the shocks are mocked up off the bottom ears.