If you’ve been following this blog as we go through changes to improve handling, you know we’ve started by adding a larger front sway bar and cutting the springs to improve handling and dialing in a little more static negative camber.  

The next step in this handling-improvement process is probably a good set of shock absorbers. We could probably do the next 100 blogs on shocks and still not cover all the important information about these babies, but let’s start with some basics. The shock absorber’s real job is not to absorb shocks but really to dampen the natural oscillation of the spring. If you’ve ever seen a car on the road with dead shocks, then you know that when it hits a bump, the car continues to oscillate up and down after the bump. This is the spring doing what comes naturally. Since this is unacceptable for any car, the shock absorber’s job becomes very important. There are two basic forces that are used to tune a shock—compression (also called jounce) and extension (rebound). A shock uses internal hydraulic valves to dampen these forces of jounce and rebound. The key to improved handling is to find a shock that will have the proper valving to improve the handling on your car. We’ll get into that in the next blog.