digitalfiend
Expert Overthinker
The last lowered vehicle I owned never had the ride quality that I was looking for and I even tried three different set of shocks (stock, kyb, and bilstein). Since it was so hard to find a shock that gave the ride I wanted I have always wondered how well adjustable shocks work on a daily driver...once I bought my Tahoe I found myself daydreaming about QA1 shocks on it. I was recently able to make this happen for the rear of my tahoe and here's a rundown of what I did.
First, you need to check YOUR requirements for fully compressed and fully extended shocks by measuring your rear suspension travel *without* shocks and springs installed. I called QA1 directly and they recommended that I use shocks from their "Stocker Star" line. I found details about extended and compressed shock length here:
http://www.qa1.net/qa1_motorsports/drag-and-street/shocks-and-struts/stock-mount-shocks-and-struts/stocker-star/single-adjustable.html
I removed my springs and rear shocks and measured the extended and compressed heights that I needed. I ended up ordering TS802 single-adjustable shocks:
One challenge of the TS802's is that they come with a stud for the top mount and an eyelet for the bottom mount. The stud will not work on our NBS Tahoe's:
The fix to this is to order an extra pair of upper eyelet mounts and swap them on. This is incredibly easy to do yourself. Here's the "factory" stud end:
You loosen the lock nut:
Then you remove the stud:
Here are the stud and eyelet mounts next to each other:
Then you install the eyelet mount and tighten the lock nut:
Here is a comparison of one completed and one "out of the box":
The eyelet mount ads a little bit to the length, so keep this in mind. It's hard to tell from the photo below due to the angle, but fully compressed measurement is right around 14" and fully extended is at 21.5" - this fit the rear of my Tahoe's setup PERFECT. Here is a comparison of fully compressed and extended:
There are two other things I did to get these to fit. First I picked up new bolts for the top and bottom of each shock that match the sleeve diameter on the shock's upper and lower eyelets:
*) 1/2" x 3.5" bolts (2) & 1/2" nuts (2)
*) 7/16 x 3.5" bolts (2) & 7/16" nuts (2)
The bolts ended up being a little too long, so I really should have gotten them in 3" in length. Next I needed to get the shocks centered on their mounting bolts. My short term solution is to use washers to ensure that the shocks are centered. This isn't ideal, so my long-term fix will be to make some spacers once everything is dialed in with the rest of my lowering project. Here's an installed pic:
The results are OUTSTANDING. The shocks have 18 settings for adjustment. For everyday driving I set them to adjustment 8. My wife and our two kids just drove from Texas to Tennessee and back and the shocks performed perfectly...the ride was perfect. And as far as adjusting them, I can stop the Tahoe, jump out and adjust both shocks and be back in the Tahoe in less than a minute.
Important note: these single-adjustable QA1 shocks dampen the ride by way of valves instead of gas pressure. Because of this I observed somewhere between 1-2" in loss of height in the rear of my Tahoe after putting these on. Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how much it lowered the rear since I didn't measure ride height before installing because I wasn't expecting this. This isn't a bad thing, it's just something to look out for if you do this.
In case you can't tell, I highly recommend doing this.
First, you need to check YOUR requirements for fully compressed and fully extended shocks by measuring your rear suspension travel *without* shocks and springs installed. I called QA1 directly and they recommended that I use shocks from their "Stocker Star" line. I found details about extended and compressed shock length here:
http://www.qa1.net/qa1_motorsports/drag-and-street/shocks-and-struts/stock-mount-shocks-and-struts/stocker-star/single-adjustable.html
I removed my springs and rear shocks and measured the extended and compressed heights that I needed. I ended up ordering TS802 single-adjustable shocks:
One challenge of the TS802's is that they come with a stud for the top mount and an eyelet for the bottom mount. The stud will not work on our NBS Tahoe's:
The fix to this is to order an extra pair of upper eyelet mounts and swap them on. This is incredibly easy to do yourself. Here's the "factory" stud end:
You loosen the lock nut:
Then you remove the stud:
Here are the stud and eyelet mounts next to each other:
Then you install the eyelet mount and tighten the lock nut:
Here is a comparison of one completed and one "out of the box":
The eyelet mount ads a little bit to the length, so keep this in mind. It's hard to tell from the photo below due to the angle, but fully compressed measurement is right around 14" and fully extended is at 21.5" - this fit the rear of my Tahoe's setup PERFECT. Here is a comparison of fully compressed and extended:
There are two other things I did to get these to fit. First I picked up new bolts for the top and bottom of each shock that match the sleeve diameter on the shock's upper and lower eyelets:
*) 1/2" x 3.5" bolts (2) & 1/2" nuts (2)
*) 7/16 x 3.5" bolts (2) & 7/16" nuts (2)
The bolts ended up being a little too long, so I really should have gotten them in 3" in length. Next I needed to get the shocks centered on their mounting bolts. My short term solution is to use washers to ensure that the shocks are centered. This isn't ideal, so my long-term fix will be to make some spacers once everything is dialed in with the rest of my lowering project. Here's an installed pic:
The results are OUTSTANDING. The shocks have 18 settings for adjustment. For everyday driving I set them to adjustment 8. My wife and our two kids just drove from Texas to Tennessee and back and the shocks performed perfectly...the ride was perfect. And as far as adjusting them, I can stop the Tahoe, jump out and adjust both shocks and be back in the Tahoe in less than a minute.
Important note: these single-adjustable QA1 shocks dampen the ride by way of valves instead of gas pressure. Because of this I observed somewhere between 1-2" in loss of height in the rear of my Tahoe after putting these on. Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how much it lowered the rear since I didn't measure ride height before installing because I wasn't expecting this. This isn't a bad thing, it's just something to look out for if you do this.
In case you can't tell, I highly recommend doing this.
