WHAT SHOCKS TO BUY: KYB VS Monroe VS Bilstein's
Anyone have the both the regular length RDC A body shock and the one for lowered suspension? I would like to see how low you can drop the suspension before you have to worry about bottoming in on the shock.
I don't have a set of the "regular" ones, all 3 sets of fronts I have are the 55-R081's which are for the 1" lowered cars. Piston stroke length on the 55-R081's is 5", the lower shock body measures 9" from the center of the lower mounting eye to the top of the shock body. So, from the lower mounting eye to c-clip on the piston is 14". The top of the shock body is recessed so the piston bottoms out before the c-clip hits the shock body.
I can tell you the 55-r081's will not bottom out with the stock LCA's, because I checked when I installed them on my Challenger, my Dart, and my Duster (although I have swapped the Duster for Hotchkis Fox's now). The LCA's will hit the frame, even without any bumpstop on the LCA, before the shock bottoms. However, you DO need to run taller bumpstops for the UCA's, because the 55-r081's do reach full extension slightly before the suspension reaches full extension with the stock UCA bumpstops. Again that was true on all of my cars. Not really a problem on a lowered car with larger torsion bars, because I've found that taller bumpstops are usually needed to keep the torsion bar adjusting bolts seated at full extension as well. That's on a lowered car with 1.12" torsion bars though. If you had your ride height closer to stock the adjusting bolts wouldn't unseat, but on my Challenger and my Duster the adjusting bolts almost have zero tension on them at full suspension extension, they don't unseat but there's not much pressure either. That has to do with the clocking on the bars relative to the ride height. Both of those cars have 1.12" bars, my Dart has 1.06's now but the engine isn't back in the car yet so I haven't/can't set the ride height.
I can also tell you that for the rear shocks, the 55-r092's (A-body) and the 55-r093's (B/E-body) are the same length eye to eye and have the same stroke length. I can only assume that the difference between those two is valving.
