Tuning air shocks

[evanstaniland]

So a lot of guys are going into the speed side of the buggy racing but there are still lots of people running air shocks.

I'm in the process of getting my Bundy ready for tuff truck and want to spend a day tuning my air shocks.
I have found it hard to get my head around the tuning side of these shocks and hopefully others can chime in and help.

So when the bundy was last going its always had an issue with unloading on side angles and steep drop offs.
I'm wanting to get them more prodictable as we were laying it over every trip out.
I don't want to spend more money on it and look at coil overs as once its back together itll be up for sale so I can focus on out ultra4 buggy.

So I've been doing some pirate searching and after sifting through the shit it looks like I need to play with both oil levels and nitrogen pressures.
I'm running SAW 2.0" 16" travel air shocks which come with 250mls of oil from factory.
From my readings I want to stiffen up my 'spring rate' to reduce the nitro psi ad thus make it more stable.
For my 16" SAW shocks they don't recommend any more than 350mls but even the smallest increments (10mls) make differences.
Ill be looking at pulling mine out and refilling to 300mls and charge to ride height then test and continue up to the 340ml mark if still unloading.


If anyone else has done some tuning post up some procedures and figures as there are quite a few rigs that have not real adjusting done to them.

I'm still a few weeks off testing but will report back!

Cheers

[joshy]

In mine I ended up filling them with the maximum amount after having about half in there originally. Made a pretty noticeable difference!

[joshy]

Just check your max compression after filing it with oil. There was a bit of difference between what I found on the net that they should take and what they did. Had to let a fair bit out as it hydrolocked..

[johnsy86]

Get onto Michael Sweeney he has played around alot with different oils of varying viscosity.

[evanstaniland]

Pretty much every thread on pirate said not to change the oil viscosity and leave the normal weight oil.

[johnsy86]

Like I said have a chat with Sweeney about it he had good results , could also change valving the same way you would in a coilover,sometimes just flipping the packs over can get good results.