In 2001, I replaced the 7-leaf (sagging on one side) with a 360# fiberglass replacement rear spring. I noticed the extra "bounce" from the fiberglass spring that everyone has reported. It is amazing the extra damping provided by the interleaf friction. I don't recall the manufacturer of the fiberglass spring as I purchased it from a local Corvette restoration shop. I upgraded to Bilstein shocks with a noticeable improvement. However, going over a bump still really throws the rear end up in the air. I'm 6'2" and I typically hit my head and if I'm accelerating there may also be a loss of traction. I don't recall this with the leaf spring. My goal is to keep the tires firmly on the ground. I suspect that I need more damping on the rebound stroke which probably means two-way adjustable shocks. Does anyone have a recommendation?

 

I have a 380# composite spring, and use QA-1 single adjustable rear shocks. By using a tight adjustment I can take just about all the bounce out of the spring. The adjustability also takes out the "torque steer" allowing straight holeshots at the strip and also limits rear end squat for less strain on the half shaft U-joints. If you get the double adjustable shocks, you will have even greater flexibility but you may not need to spend the extra money for your purposes. ......Others may chime in with their experience on this.

 

Thanks Ken,
I'll give those a try.
Ken

 

I just did the single adjustable QA-1's on the rear this spring for the same reason. I run a 360 lb VB&P spring on the back, and 550 lb coils up front. I set my rear shocks at 5 clicks to begin with, but did end up firming up to 7 to fully dampen the pogo stick bounce I had. Nice thing is,....still got 5 more clicks to play with if I get bored. And I haven't even touched the front shock adjustment yet.

These shocks are definately worth the money.

 

Rule of thumb is that higher spring rates require firmer shock valving. IMHO, the big advantage of 2-ways is being able to separately adjust bump and rebound settings for fine tuning and management of transitions into and out of the different phases of cornering; with the additional flexibility they afford in setting up for surface irregularities being secondary. This is because bump and rebound damping forces required for the latter generally remain linear in relationship to each other since we're dealing almost exclusively with unsprung weight frequencies rather than weight transfers.

That said, yes, firmer rear rebound would reduce your rear bounce issue, but I suspect you'd find that an overall firmer rear shock would likely do the job as well, maybe better as the initial bump would take longer in the first place to occur, and might not result in storing as much energy if this means less suspension travel in the first place. If you decide on multi-adjustable shocks, just be aware that you can easily get lost on setup if you don't have or develop a fair understanding of how individual adjustments can affect handling.


TSW