Interesting thought on shocks

[jnbhobe]

I had my rig into the spring and alignment shop yesterday and everything checked out good. My friend who owns the shop brought up the Trail-air Equa-flex, he thinks the shocks are mounted the way they are because there is such a long range of travel with the center pivot and the rubber of the Equa-flex that the shocks are used to keep the axels from bouncing since only the front eye of the springs on the front axle and the rear eye of the springs on the rear axel are the only solid mounting of the axles. I am just throwing this out there to see what others may think. JON

 

[2010augusta]

I'll respectfully disagree with that hypothesis. Most of the leaf-sprung vehicles made have one fixed end and one shackled end. the shackled end allows for the spring to elongate as the spring flattens as the axle moves upward. And on Most of these cars the shock-dampeners are near vertical.

In the trailer world the equalizer has replaced the shackles on both springs and it helps to mediate the actions between both leaf springs.

I still have no reasonable explanation for the current angle of the shocks.

I have a friend in the CG that is learning to weld and is slowly piecing together a mobile welder on his truck, as soon as he gets it working, I will let him "practice" by moving my mounts to a vertical position.

 

[caissiel]

I did a lot of mesurement on the possible shock angle situation for my BC 3500RL with 7000Lbs axles.
I realized that the shocks bottom attachment rod was bend and the rubbers were failing after 3000 miles.
I moved the shocks to a decent 60deg from horizontal as suggested by Dexter axles.
Now the shocks are installed to match the angle on the axle plates and the new rubbers now fit properly.

I had observed that if the springs were installed under the axle the shocks then would be mounted at exactly 60deg.

So my conclusion is that they are possibly using this arrangement and installing the axle under the spring thus moving the shock bottom support plate attachment up by about 2.5" thus changing the angle to 32deg.

By moving the shocks to 60deg I noticed the the unit is much more steady while we are parked, and only have the rear stabilizers on with front jacks down.

Though the shocks are installed flat I noticed that we at least have some on the unit compared to SOB that have now on units as large as mine.

 

[jmgratz]

Just a thought about a different design. On my previous 5er (an Alfa Gold) there were three axles. Each axle has a shock on it. One end of the shock was mounted to the bottom plate which had a bolt welded to the end of the plate. Just another idea, which is to weld a bolt to the plate to mount the shock to.