My '78 is getting a set of #7100 Bilsteins

[Patrick Morris]

Well I don't remember if you bought the same ones I have exactly. But you are probably fine with just getting some aftermarket spring/Ubolt mounts and maybe adding higher mounts to those. Seems unnecessary to swap out 8" shocks (rear) for 10-12" travel shocks just because they're longer when fully extended. 8.25" (the actual travel) is not a piddly amount of movement.

But of course what you should really do it take it out somewhere, remove the existing shocks, and getting crossed up, like what I did. And take some careful measurements. Then you will know for sure what what dimensions you're working with.

 

[chico]

Did you ever exchange the rear shock since the pressure was lower?

 

[Patrick Morris]

No. Is that what I said? Lower pressure? Been so long I forgot. Doesn't matter anyway. The pressure is adjustable and I have an n2 setup. I try to keep them all at 200-220 psi.

I might have been saying that I didn't care for the "255/70" damping on the rears. I'm going to be trying something different there shortly. It's actually not bad if the rig is full of camping gear and extra fuel and water, but I want to try increasing the rebound and decreasing the compression slightly. Again, just on the rear for now. I bought some damping shims from a local shop and I'll be pulling the rear shocks apart soon. Doesn't seem like rocket science performing the swap. I saw a video where a guy changed the shim stacks on one 7100 in about 18 minutes. I don't plan on trying to beat that record though. First time through I'll go nice and slow, and careful.

One other update since I last wrote here is that I positioned my rear shocks to optimize the travel. Wasn't a hard thing to do.

Edit: one other update. I had a blowout with one of my old general tires (31") in October so on a bit of an impulse (and got a good online deal) I upgraded to a set of 32" coopers. See pic. I May need to do a little trimming of the front corners, like what's been done on your Scout.

Regards.

 

[chico]

Those tires look great on their! You have any pictures of the rear?

 

[Patrick Morris]

Thanks. I discovered that I May need to do some trimming at the front, for when it gets crossed up. Wasn't expecting that with just 32s, but oh well.

On the shock mount pics, sure. See attached. Since the original config was just a little short for these shocks, I put in new upper mounts to gain some length. The upper mounts, even moved outward as far as they'd fit, actually made the for slightly too much stretch. So I split the difference by changing the lower mounts. Simplest solution (and best, imo) was to weld on some 2" long .5" id heavy tubing to the spring plates. They make for a very solid mount. And as I've said, very simple in design. Didn't even have to remove anything to get them on there. Then I just needed to buy some longer bolts.

The beauty of this lower setup is, if I ever change ride height or shock type, I can always weld another tube above/below the existing one to make adjustments.

another update.: The other day I pulled the rear shocks apart and did a little revalving on the compression side. That's why the nut is lose in the pics. I decided to snap them midway through my removal.

I changed out the "70" shims for Bilstein's "60" profile shim set. The result seems very favorable so far. I won't know for sure though until the truck's loaded up with gas, water, and gear, and bopping around on a desert trail. I hope for that to be very soon.

 

[chico]

Right on! Lookin good. I didnt notice the front corner rolled like that until you said something. Thinking about taking it higher and cutting off the sheet metal below the front turn signal and wrap it around for more clearance. Those tires are 33' s. I also switched out the the 8 inch shock for the 12 inch because when I cycled the suspension not much drop. Even moving the mounts. So now I have the 12's in the back and gonna order 14's for the front. And sell these 8's. And also did what Jeff did and attached the resevoirs opposite of each other. I should have those 14's by the time I drive down to scooters and pick up his shock hoop frame. When I do ill post the pics how it looks. I need to start my own readers ride thread ive done so much and have all the pics just to lazy hahaha.

 

[Patrick Morris]

Adding new info/update to this thread. Changed my damping a little, finally, and so far I'm pretty happy. To summarize, the "255/70" damping worked okay in the front. But I didn't like that setting for the rear. Despite the rear shocks being angled over, I think the compression was still too stiff back there.

The image below, the red box shows the damping plates that came in all of the shocks.

note: I made one correction to the chart. For some reason, all my shocks came with 0.10mm thick rebound bypass plates, not the specified 0.15mm plates. These plates are actually pretty critical to the behavior. Thicker bypass plates soften the shock's overall damping, thinner or no bypass shims can make the shock much firmer overall. (note that the stiffest settings in this chart don't use bypass shims.)

for the rear shocks, I wanted to soften the compression a bit. Not knowing exactly where to start, I just bought a set of the "60" compression shims. Doing that made the rear end ride like a cadillac. But when loaded with gear it was a little mushy. So, cut to the chase, this is what I've done:

rebound stack: stiffened it up a bit by replacing plates #3 and #4 with 0.50mm thick versions (up from 0.45mm).

compression stack: stiffened it just a tad from the basic "60" setting by going to a slightly thinner (0.15mm) bypass plates.

By this time I was getting pretty good at pulling the shocks apart. So I decided to soften the front shocks' compression too, but only slightly. I did so by swapping the bypass plates with thicker (0.15mm) plates. Now it seems to ride really nicely and handle rough terrain with even more grace. I'll report back once I take it out to the desert again.

 

[chico]

Sweet!

 

[kiks1272]

I ve also had a bite of a issue with my shock set up

http://forums.IHPartsAmerica.com/suspension-tech/11211-missing-shocks.html

 

[Julian537]

One tech tip. The Ford shock towers have holes that are less than 1/2" I.d. Do yourself a favor and drill them to 1/2" diameter before welding or installing. It was a pain to drill mine, after they were installed.

 

[Patrick Morris]

one tech tip. The Ford shock towers have holes that are less than 1/2" I.d. Do yourself a favor and drill them to 1/2" diameter before welding or installing. It was a pain to drill mine, after they were installed.

Did I not mention this above somewhere? Thought I did. But it's worth saying twice. Yep, I was warned about this by a friend before I started. First thing I did was chase the holes with a half-inch drill. I think these towers must be made for metric hardware.

 

[Patrick Morris]

Been a couple years since I added an update to this project. So far the above valvings seem to work well in almost all conditions. The only terrain were the suspension seemed lacking was when driving on really wooped-out roads in the desert blm lands east of san diego. Too many quads and pre-runner trucks traveling some of the trails out there, really wreck the terrain. But whater yagonna do. They're entitled to have their fun as well.

So anyway, those repeated porpoise-dives, one after another in a Scout.... Being a bit nose-heavy and having just a 100" wb... I would need a lot more shock to handle it. More fade-free compression damping anyway for sure. But I just avoid those kinds of trails for the most part anyway. Mine's a camping/expedition rig, not a race truck.

I noticed last year that one of my shocks was leaking oil. Close inspection revealed some mysterious pitting on the shock shaft. Long story short, I found that pitting had shredded the seal a little. So I replaced the shaft and seal. It's all good again.

Another new thing is, I modified my front spring plates and shock mounts last summer. I had been living with the spring plates as they were before I added the 7100s, but I finally decided to do things a little better. Below are some random pics from the project. You can see that for the passenger side, I've stuck with the stock-type spring plates. I just made them super-duty by boxing them up with steel and adding a "skid ramp" to the front.