4x4 Parts Shop, Colorado Springs, CO 80915

[threecol_two]Now that the axle in place, and the suspension hooked up, it was time to break out some of the sexiest shocks you’ve ever seen. We know what you’re thinking, a “Sexy Shock?” My wife would say that there is no such thing as a “sexy” shock , I can hear it now; she’d say: “How can a shock be sexy?”

Like this baby, like this!

Let us introduce you to the Sway-A-Way RaceRunner Emulsion Shock. These babies can be ordered in 8-18″ travel sizes, but this set of twins are 16″ travel. With a extended length of just over 40″ (yes, about 3.5 FEET) these shocks are built with winning in mind. The shocks come bear, most everything you see in that last picture is an add-on. The coils go for $50-125 EACH (and each shock takes two), even the hardware to mount springs to these shocks is $98ish extra. But spare no expense, at over $500 fully equipped per corner, the Sway-A-Way RaceRunner shock is a powerhouse in the desert racing and Rock Crawling circuits.

If you’re wondering where the normal little “bottles” at the tops are, remember this version of the RaceRunner is what they call an Emulsion shock. Which means everything that’s needed, is in the body. If you were to build yourself a desert racer, you’d want the remote-reservoir shock (the ones with bottles). The reason you’d want the reservoirs is that desert racing (with its quick-moving suspensions) generates more heat. Which in turn requires better cooling. And those bottles (they are actually reservoirs) provide more surface area to keep the shocks cool and provide additional space for the oil and nitrogen (inside the shock) to separate. So why didn’t we get the remote reservoirs? Simply because Rock Crawling is a slow-moving sport, which means we don’t need to spend an additional $50+ per shock.

Like we said, these shocks are tall, which means that the chance of them fitting under the scout is, well, impossible. At over 40″ long (at full extension) we knew that we had to rig a custom mount for these babies. So we did. In order to fit them we cut a rectangular hole through the bed. Using the 2×3 box tube we quickly built an “arch way” where the twins could be securely mounted. This arch stuck about a foot out of the bed.

We had two problems on our hands. First the shocks were to tall (made us wish we opted for the 12″ or 14″ travel ones) and second, we couldn’t spread the mounts out further because the stock Scout frame was too narrow! This means that the shocks will mount close to the center of the axle.

Mounting a spring too close to the center of the axle poses the most problems. First it makes the body have too much leverage on the axle, sure you can get lots of flex, but you’ll need to increase the spring rate to control the body lean. And if you increase the spring rate, then you’ll make every bump a boulder, giving it a harsh ride.

We killed the problems with one stone. The first problem (shocks are too tall) was fixed by tearing out our original arch and building another, new, taller and stronger one. Why build a stronger one if the original one was plenty strong? To accommodate the second problems fix. We can cut away the frame.

Before you go postal on us for cutting up a super clean scout, remember “the customer is always right”, so go get Nate instead! But really, the shocks really to be mounted further out and the frame was just too narrow for that, so we built a new frame in its place, one that the shocks could ride outboard of. This fixed our problem, not only did we build the new arch with wider mounts for the shocks (so the tops were farther apart), it allows us to mount the shocks closer to the brakes, which means we get a more stable and comfortable ride.

The reason we wanted to build it so strong (even though the only thing behind it was the gas tank) was that we wanted to make sure P3 would be ready to do whatever the owner desired, from extreme wheeling to towing a boat. Therefore we rebuilt the frame and gusseted it to insure that no strength was lost.

We also plan on putting frame-extensions on the cage to further its rigidity, but regardless, this chassis is strong! Heck, we even put in new floor supports to make sure the floor was still capable of holding its cargo!

[/threecol_two] [threecol_one_last]