Another great vid. Thanks!
And thanks for the shout-outs. Were you at the Roundup last month?
Luckily your wife is there to hand you bolt bags and give you sound words of wisdom. Documenting the carnage and saving your life a few times over too I would think as well!
Just kidding, I haven't seen many life threatening situations develop just yet. But close!
The Por-15, just like powder, adds just enough extra material that things like bushing fitment are problematic. Sometimes you have to spread an ear or two on a bracket even with bare metal to get the new bushings in, but almost every time a part is powder coated or Por-15'ed you have that much more trouble.
And as you found out. like so many others before you, the shackle has to go on the spring first. Before mounting it to the frame hanger. This is so that the bolt can go in from the inside out and you can put the nut on, without it interfering with the frame.
Hmm, watching this I would think you could go one step further (towards crazy?) and put the lower bolts in the mounts first. You would weld them to the mounting brackets, then weld the bracket to the axle tube. This gives you a simple stud mount to attach the shocks to. Just a nut away from completion then, rather than fighting the hidden nut and a bolt from the outside.
I generally agree with what was said already, but shock damping can also be tailored/tuned to the inboard mounting to help on the street. Anti-sway bars are another step up.
Nice score on the shocks by the way. But checking length would be a good thing anyway. Might not be the optimum length. Or they might be!
Looks like you mounted them to the outboard upper holes too. Agree with that position, and it looks more appropriate for the shock length at least initially.
And in this position, they are not at as much of an angle, even compared to the stock mounting I don't think (anyone have an angle finder they care to use on their stock shocks?), so the effective damping of the shocks in increased. The closer to vertical (or to the plane of travel) a damper is, the more effect on damping it has for a given valving.
You can also use an adjustable shock as well, such as the Rancho 9000 to fine tune things while using a more inboard oriented attitude.
It's not the total answer, but here again maybe the stiffer shocks and anti-sway bars would overcome any extra side roll/lean while cornering?
All that said, I still use the outer mounts (stock location and stock mimic dual location if desired) on mine and it works fine for street and even semi-technical off-roading. Which I hope to do again someday when I have time!
As was said, if you're not trying for a simple way of maximizing wheel travel at the expense of some street control, the inboard shock mount is an easy and inexpensive way to get there. But if continuing down this path, a set of anti-sway bars would also be on my short list.
Anyone running the inboard mounts with sway bars? Don't remember seeing that combo discussed here before.
Paul
