Adding King comp adjusters - valving change?

[sredish]

I'll be adding comp adjusters to my old King 2.5 x 12 shocks. Salesman at King states the most open setting will still increase the damping a little. This is on the front of a Dodge truck w/ 39s and it gets worked quite hard. I was going to upgrade to some 3.0s but with the lead time, I'll watch for some used to pop up and in the meantime, going to upgrade these.


In a perfect world, I wouldn't mind a little less harshness in the small stuff lets say like the crossover road but still have similar damping at high speed but with a 2.5, it's hard to get it all. I typically use tire pressure to help with that and it's really not that harsh but there's a little.


Right now, it seems pretty close to what it needs through the stroke but the adjusters supposedly a little more damping and I'm afraid it might be too much. If I take a little low speed out and keep the rest the same, then I can finish tuning with the adjuster but I would like the adjuster to have some dial up and dial down, not just "this is the softest and it's all incr comp from here"... I'm also a little afraid that taking out low speed could introduce chatter in the front end which I don't want.


Additionally, we have a few pairs of hydro bumps. I was thinking if I can get it set right between the valving and adjuster, with a little less low speed comp, I can dial in the last bit of stroke with a hydro bump as a second stage. I have a really nice poly bump in place that allows 3" of smooth movement with a nice progression, so no harsh bump hits with them but I'm very rarely on them. One of the hydro pairs is a 4", I can set it up to engage an inch before the poly bump and then dial in the pressure for feel. Right now, I have approx. 7.25" of up travel. I'm changing coils as well so this number might change but 7 to 7.5 inch up travel is my goal and I intend to maintain that.


Anyone have any thoughts on this? I'll have the shocks apart this week and can report back on the specific valving in there.

 

[Fifty]

Who are you buying the clickers from? I wonder if you were to buy from accutune or from ADS, if they wouldn’t offer you some tuning advice since your a customer....

I wish I knew enough to offer, all I know is my clickers really change the feel of the shock.

and from what I’ve read, it splits the heat generation a bit so that must mean the valving resistance is shared, meaning that adding a 15 stack in the clicker would change the comp effectiveness...

now it must be adding more restriction since you are going from an open port to a ported cup and another valve stack...

But I don’t know if the piston and maybe bleed holes are identically set up for a comp adjuster vs non comp adjuster...

And then also: do they alter the valve stack to push more fluid through the reservoir hose to the comp adjuster than just what the added shock shaft volume and any fluid being pushed by the pressure wave of the piston moving up...

I would almost think you’d want to go thicker on the high shaft speed valve shims?...

please take my ramblings as someone who knows nothing and is just trying to visualize things.
I come from the land speed aero stuff and I get that there are similarities in air moving and oil moving, but shocks is a voodoo art I’d love to learn but don’t know.

 

[MCM MOTORSPORTS]

Adding a compression adjuster will make the shock more efficient. So instead of just pushing oil into the rest and some through the piston. You end up with more through the piston. Thats why a bypass has the resi outlet in the bottom section. Oil has to go through piston before going to the resi. But you can do that with coils.

As for how much it will change. It depends on the valving on your adjusters. Plus its impossible to give suggestions without knowing the actual valve stack on the compression side of the piston now. If its a standard stack, you could go to the next size down. But if its a mixed stack or has a flooded, it gets complicated.

It will be trial and arrow no matter which way.

 

[dixon cider]

you will for sure have to soften the compression stack with the addition of a base valve if you want it to remain at all similar.
If you had all the dimensions of the base valve piston and its valve the valving to keep the damping the same could be determined with a program like shim restackor.