Hot Rods Friction shocks or Tubular shocks

I'm building a t bucket and would like some input on front shocks. I prefer the look of the friction shocks, but I plan on doing a lot of driving and am concerned about the harshness of the ride.

 

That's funny, I'm considering driving mine without any shocks. I'll be watching this thread

 

The harshness of the ride isn't gonna have much to do with the shocks in a T. Tune your springs for the best ride and pick the shock that does the best job of DAMPING the spring's oscillation.

 

I have used friction shocks for some time on my drag car with the plates torqued to 25 ft/lbs. The shocks work great on the drag car, however; I wouldn't see any issues on the street once you have the setting/damping (torque) figured out.....

 

tubular

 

My avatar has home made friction shocks on the front and original Hartford's on the back. A solid front axel and rear axel combined with a short wheel base is not going to ride as good as a new car. Springs are for supporting the car and flexability of the suspension. Shocks are for dampening or controlling the springs bouncing. Friction shocks will work fine on the street but will not give you a new car ride.

 

It's not funny, it's stupid.

Running a car without any kind of dampers on the front suspension is just begging for control issues.

What happens is when the car encounters a bump in the road (either one big one or many little ones), the tire bounds over the top and the spring absorbs much of the energy. However, because the unsprung m*** has m***, it also has inertia and momentum, so the force of the jounce will give the unsprung m*** enough energy to carry the tire on past the height that it needed to clear the bump.

In other words, the tire loses contact with the ground entirely.

Then, as the spring unloads and gives back all that energy to the unsprung m***, the wheel hurtles back down toward the road at whatever maximum speed the spring can muster. Of course, this speed is far too high to stop right at the road surface, so it smashes into the ground with enough force to distort the tire carc*** (storing energy in that "spring").

The tire carc*** "spring" then unloads, jumping the tire back up off the ground again.

And so the cycle continues until the friction of the pivots and the internal plies of the tire carc*** bleed off all the energy and the cycle stops. This takes many cycles, during which time, the tire is in contact with the ground only intermittently.

Of course, it goes without saying that you cannot use a tire to turn the car if it isn't in contact with the road.

Same for the rear end, except you subs***ute "accelerate and brake" for "turn the car".

Use some kind of damper.

Hydraulic Tube or Lever dampers are head and shoulders better than friction shocks.

However, friction shocks are orders of magnitude better than no dampers at all.

 

Thanks for that Coolhand (I'm serious, not being sarcastic). I certainly don't think you can drive without shocks. This thread reminded me that while I'm almost finished mock-up and am thinking about painting my frame, I haven't done anything for shocks! Obviously tubular perform the best, but I really don't like the look for what I'm doing. I do have a set of old lever shocks (unknown condition). What do you think of that option?

 

Lever shocks in good working order are fine.

Better than friction shocks, and just as good as all but the best tubular shocks.

There is at least one place out there that rebuilds them back to new specs.

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the place though.

Hopefully a search on lever shocks will reveal the info, but I remember reading about a shop that specialized in rebuilding old Chevy knee action suspension and all manner of lever shocks.

 

Thanks again for the advise. I really like the look of the friction, but after this I think I'll check out installing a set of lever shocks. Sounds like a good compromise.