This has nagged me off and on for a few years. Someone probably will know right off the bat.
Why do a lot of pickup trucks and related SUVs have 1 shock behind the rear axle and 1 in front?
Is there an engineering reason or is it something more prosaic, like they only need 1 bracket design that can be flipped for use on the opposite side?
I don't know for sure but I would think it's to prevent the dampers from having any axle wrap effect.
I think it's to help control axle wrap and prevent the wheel hop, etc. that results.
yup. And wheel hop.
Damn, beat me to it...
It's only really seen on the leaf sprung rear axles and AFAIK, it's axle-wrap related. The coil sprung setups (like my Jeep's rear end) tend to place both shocks in the same spot on both sides (mine are both behind the axle tubes and pretty far outboard too).
The leaf sprung setups also tend to place the shocks very far inboard, which sacrifices some suspension performance at the expense of making the shocks easier to fit (as they can sit just inboard of the frame rails). For a lot of the HD pickups, they're pretty much targeting "make a suspension that can carry some heavy E36 M3, it doesn't have to do ride well, handle well, or anything else and do it cheaply".
67 Camaro has both shocks front of the diff, 68 has one front, one rear. Designed to control wheel hop in that example.
Late Fox Mustangs had 2 vertical shocks, 2 horizontal ones. Its not only leaf springs that can be badly designed.
Streetwiseguy wrote: 67 Camaro has both shocks front of the diff, 68 has one front, one rear. Designed to control wheel hop in that example. Late Fox Mustangs had 2 vertical shocks, 2 horizontal ones. Its not only leaf springs that can be badly designed.
Hey! Leave the quadra bind out of this. Just because Ford ran that until they went 3 link with the SN197...
I'm sorry, I just don't want to be reminded.
I always wondered that, too! Thanks for the random knowledge drop!
GM engineers said it "controls axle tramp".
Why would you want to control tramps? I say let them run free.
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