[6pack] Rear tube shock conversion

[Robert Lang]

 Hi All - I wasn't going to jump in on this one, but I just wanted to chime in on a couple of notes. The two things that the bolt-in-place of the stock shock units (not all!) seem to lack is: 1. the lower bump stop (the upper stop is that squarish thing in the wheel well, so no need to duplicate that) and 2. the ability to compensate for the arc of motion of the trailing arm. 1 is easy to deal with, but you need to be careful that you don't wind up with sudden loss of motion else the car will handle in an evil manner at the limits. 2 is also easy to deal with provided you use a compliant mount (upper and lower) to allow the shock mount to sort of swivel. If you go too stiff on the mounts, the energy has to transfer somewhere, hence the broken frame mounts and/or cracks.
The shock that mounts through the stock spring location, more or less like a coil-over is okay but you are limited to how big of a shock you can fit in there and that limits how effective the system will be. The main problem there is that the center line of the spring intersects with the wheel so basically it's "little shocks" or nothing. For hard driving applications, the result would be degredation of damping as the oil in the shock heat up (and then foams or whatever). In a street car, you probably would never see this except in the worst roads over a long period.
Regarding the advantages of the lever shock - most importantly, lever shocks add the least amount of unsprung mass to the suspension. Depending on how you mount your tube shock, you might be adding unsprung weight and that's going to effect handling.
All that said, for tuning suspension, the shocks are the last final fine tuning, not the beginning of a handling tune. Keep that in mind.
FWIW, I run modified levers for my race car. They work great. They don't give the same amount of adjustability that a modern coil-over might provide, but for the way I use the car, they work great. So, plus one for World-Wide from this owner. Do think about the upgrade to the adjustable option - it is worth the extra money. These are sometimes referred to as Armstrong 22's which is a throwback reference to what was offered back in the day.

Regards,Bob Lang

    On Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 8:54:13 AM EDT, Stan Foster via 6pack <6pack at autox.team.net> wrote:  
 
 
I do around 1200 miles a year in the TR6. It was a bumpy dirt road that finally broke the mount and I would say the welds holding the crossmember to the frame were pretty iffy to start with and I had never once checked to see if any were starting to crack. I bet if I had I would have spotted this starting to fail and fix it without a ratco replacement crossmember.
 
  
 
Stan
 
  
 
From: Greg Lemon <grglmn at gmail.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020 12:55 AM
To: Stan Foster <stan at redtr6.com>
Cc: 6pack <6pack at autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: [6pack] Rear tube shock conversion
 
  
 

Stan, 
 

  
 
Curious, how many miles and how did you use the car in 10 years?  I am sitting at about 10 years and maybe 12,000 miles on mine.
 
  
 
Thanks, Greg
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