lightningZ

So i went to my local Napa where i had purchased rear air shocks for my old 87 GTA about a year and a half ago, and they said that they do not carry air shocks for my 91 Z28.. so then i lied and asked if i could get another set for my "GTA aka Z28" and they told me they have never carried air shocks for an f-body???? i am confused, and would appreciate if someone on here knew where i could get some air shocks

lightningZ

and yes i have tried ebay and can only find air shocks for 2nd gens

camaronewbie

I've never read anything good about air shocks on a 3rd gen.

Have you looked into drag bags? They are small air bags that go inside the coil, can be pumped up to reduce coil compression some, and can release the air to allow regular compression. About $80 for a set.

My car is lowered, and with my 4th gen rear I get a tad of tire scrub on a larger bump when I'm loaded with luggage for a weekend out-of-town show. I'm going to be putting these in myself to keep my tires off the fenderlip.

lightningZ

nope ive never heard of those,can they raise the rear as well as lower it? and where do you get them, like napa or are they an ebay item?

camaronewbie

They don't lower or raise the car any. They simply keep the coil springs from compressing as much as they normally would (when they are filled with air).

http://www.summitracing.com/search/D...?Ns=Rank%7cAsc

lightningZ

they look decent but not exactly what i need for taller tires

87350IROC

iTrader: (2)

So all you want to do is raise the rear???

There are much better ways of doing that.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Before you even think about buying air shocks, THINK about what a shock is, and what ride height is.

Then, go out to your car and take a good careful look at what both ends of the shock are connected to.

Shocks aren't desinged to hold up weight. Springs do that. Shocks are only there to damp suspension motion. They keep the body from boucning up and down above the wheels, and the wheels from bouncing on the pavement when they hit a bump; and they control how quickly the body rolls during turning, braking, and acceleration. Relatively small forces, only lasting for relatively short times.

Springs hold up the car. Anything that holds up the car has to be pretty substantial. I think that should be somewhat obvious.

Now that you've looked at how the shocks attach to the car, whaddya think? Is that going to hold up the car? Tell us what you found.

THAT'S why you can't seem to find any for sale.

camaronewbie

Yes, if raising is what you are trying to accomplish, get coil spring spacers, available in many thicknesses to raise how ever far you need.

Stangski09

iTrader: (10)

I think he's talking about wanting to install air bags.

Ron U.S.M.C.

Gabriel Hijackers link = http://www.gabriel.com/DisplayTab.aspx?tid=2 click on "Specialty Products"
Auto Zone = http://www.autozone.com/autozone/par...mString=search If you decide to get them be sure to run them independent of each other. Do not use the "T"provided because you don't want air transferring from one shock to the other during turns,etc.

lightningZ

i know the functions of both the shock and the spring... all im saying is that my other car had air shocks in the back and they did indeedraise it up so that it could more easily accomodate a 275 tire 55R16 tire. I never thougt about "blocks" in between the coil spring and the body but i guess it makes sense. The gabrial hijackers that were listed last, i believe thats what they were but i may be thinkingg of my old el camino i used to have

lightningZ

thanks for all the helpful comments guys, i think i will look into the "blocks"

Stevolwevol

iTrader: (1)

I discovered I had air shocks on my RS after I got it. I just checked the psi and there is only 5 psi in the shocks. I don't know why the previous owner put them on. I just know they are a real pain to put shocks on the rear, so I am leaving them. They don't seem to be necessary at all.

Just yesterday, I had the front struts, and rear shocks replaced on my IROC, and it sits fine, and they are not air shocks.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Really? How is that?

It takes longer to jack the car up than to get the rear seat out, and longer to get the rear seat out and back in than it does to do the shocks. It's SO FAST to change out the shocks, that the time it takes to climb out of the rear seat and get under the car and climb back out again, is a significant part of the total time. Like the guys doing NASCAR pit stops having to worry about whether the jack man goes around the tire carrier or vice-versa, if you can figure out how to climb quicker, you can SIGNIFICANTLY lower the total time. I can't think of ANY kind of car that's any easier to change out the rear shocks in, than one of these.

And of course, you can arrange for the rear springs to fall out LITERALLY while doing this, so if you *accidenatlly* allow this to happen, maybe you can even convince your wife that they need to be replaced, and you can pick up new ones and stick them back in instead of picking the old ones back up too. And of course, since the car is already up in the air, it's a GREAT time to renew the sway bar busjings and end links, since the jacking-up time is a significant part of that job too. For a few pennies and less than a half-hour total, you can have a COMPLETELY RENEWED rear suspsension. For 10 more minutes of work you could evn change out your LCAs too.

Altogether, the easiest part of one of these cars to work on; and the easiest cars to change all those parts on.

DIGGLER

iTrader: (1)

Joe dirt that thang.

84redta

iTrader: (34)

I've been running air shocks for 3 years now, pain in the *** as the hose keeps messing up, but first 2 times it broke were because of poor routing. They are perfectly suitable, and make it easier when I know i'm going to be carrying people in the back seat because roads around me are bumpy as hell. To increase height a little bit, I also used 4th gen spring isolators, and the outcome isn't that bad. It actually maintains a downward angle nicely and can go higher if needed. But really, it is dampening, but it creates a higher compression rate once weight is on it, but yes, others use it to jack their *** up in the air. Only store front i've found them in for 82-92 applications are autozone.



I'd do em again if they were to go. I'm actually working on an air ride system identical to full size Buicks and Bonnevilles. When the rear of the car gets loaded below the sensor position, the air compressor will automatically pump it back up to a preset level. You can call it joe dirting it...i call it touring suspension mods lol.

Stevolwevol

iTrader: (1)

Alright, I'll take your word for it the rear shocks are easy to change. I have never attempted it. The shop that changed them out, removed all the plastic trim out of the rear interior to change the shocks, and they complained about it to me. I assumed it was necessary to do all this.

BTW, is it necessary to keep air pressure in air shocks? Can they be at zero psi? I do not want my rear end raised at all. I am certainly not going to haul anything with it.

BlackenedBird

iTrader: (5)

Just get taller coil springs.

I have a spare axle & still have the front coil springs from my old 97 Jeep XJ. I noticed that the front coil springs from the Jeep have a pigtail,m just like the 3rd gen rear springs do, so I was curious.

I took the Jeep spring out to the spare rear end & sure enough! The pig tail fit EXACTLY on the rear end. Obviously the spring ia way taller than a 3rd gen spring, but if someone needed to lift the rear of their car, like you do? Using Jeep spring look like they'll fit perfectly. Just trim them down to get your desired ride height.

I just looked at the spring to compare the overall diameter under my car, to see how it would fit in the body mount spring pocket & while I couldn't measure & compare exactly? From under the car, they look identical.

In other words....It looks like the Jeep spring is "just a really tall 3rd gen rear spring". So that would be one solution for getting a taller rear spring.

84redta

iTrader: (34)

I believe you need at least 20 or 25 psi minimum. If you aren't going to ever adjust them, might as well get regular shocks the next time you need them, but running them empty will destroy them.

I want just like you to maintain the same height, and thats why I'm working on the auto ride height system so that if I have just myself in the car, or 4 people total and a trunk full on a road trip, I will have the same ride height, and when everyone piles out, the air compressor lets air out of the system to bring it to a natural position.

Stevolwevol

iTrader: (1)

I just put about 30 lb in the system, and it didn't raise the rear. Seems like a good pressure for my purposes.

lightningZ

really? thats interesting, so you said a front coil spring from a jeep.. do you know how much taller it is? also a friend told me about something called "spring jacks" that he uses on his circle track car and they are supposed to be adjustable. Anybody heard of/tried them? If so do you know of an application for a third gen? and lastly, i guess ill drag my feet to autozone.. i try to avoid going there due to bad experiences and junk parts in the past

lightningZ

84redta, this is close to how the GTA looked, i had around 80 psi in them. thanks for the tips and pic

BlackenedBird

iTrader: (5)

I'll get you a pic of the Jeep spring on a 3rd gen rear end tomorrow in the daytime & I'll measure it for you. But despite its height, I dunno how soft it is. If it was really really soft, I suppose it is possible to be compressed so much that it wouldn't lift a 3rd gen, but then it would have to be REALLY lightweight. After all, the XJ is a SUV-style so they can't be real light. I'm sure looking through Jeep or 4x4 forums, you might be able to find its weight.

Your friend was talking about Weight Jacks. http://www.ground-control-store.com/products/index.php makes some & so do various circle track places. I bet if you run a Search here on TGO, you'll find a bunch of info about them, from people who have them. Just put 'Camaro' in the Search box on their site, to find thde info.

Nothing wrong with Autozone IF you go in knowing that most of the time they know less than you do. Find out what you need. Go get it. And don't pay too much attention to their ideas or recommendations.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

The top of the shock in these cars is attached to the un-reinforced sheet metal of the floor pan. Using it to lift the car is LITERALLY the exact same thing as putting a floor jack under your floor pan. While it "works" sometimes, it inevitably punches the little stamped place in the floor pan, COMPLETELY OUT OF the rest of the pan.

Yes it happened to me, with just REGULAR shocks. What a POS... the car only made it to about 240,000 miles before that failed. Oh well. I got some big washers welded in there on both sides of the sheet metal. There's limits to how big they can be though, since you have looked by now you'll no doubt know what I mean.

Not sure why somebody took plastic parts out of one of these cars to change the shocks... totally unnecessary. That's definitely a left turn down a dirt road. I hope they didn't charge extra (i.e. make the customer foot the bill for their OJT) for fumbling around and wasting time like that.

Yes it might be possible that some one person somewhere, even someone posting on this board, might have used air shocks, and they "work"; or, more accurately, they haven't failed YET. That would be about like someone I personally know, who was skydiving one day, and his parachute failed to open. Yet, he survived. I guess we could all get on skydiving forums and post that this guy is living proof you don't "need" a parachute when jumping out of a plane? Kind of the same thing. Just because one guy has done it and it hasn't failed YET, doesn't automatically mean that it's a good idea.

The air bags though, those work fine, sustainably. They put the force in the place that it's meant to be put. They are an excellent tool for tuning a rear suspension for launching right in drag racing. If you need to raise the car for whatever reason, and need to be able to adjust it, or want to spend more money and trouble on it than just getting the right springs would take, that would be an option with a chance of long-term success.

The weight jacks are a bit more complex and invasive... basically that's a pad for the top of the spring, mounted on a big screw, such that the height can be adjusted. That's standard procedure for round-track cars. More of an ordeal than most people would find desirable for a street car though.

BlackenedBird

iTrader: (5)

Got those pics for you. Free height on those springs is 18 1/2". Dunno what the stock spring rate & these are stock springs.

JJames

Real interested in those Jeep Springs, I may look into doing that on my car. I wonder if the lift on the rear end would be just ridiculous and stupid looking if I didn't trim the spring?

I recently had a post like this, and until the idea of the Jeep coil springs, I was going to rock out with the 4th gen spring isolators, and Moog 5665's.
The question of the Jeep Spring's rate vs. the moog's come into play though, as I think someone previously addressed. Does anyone have anymore information on this?

BlackenedBird

iTrader: (5)

Where are you located? I have no more use for these & would sell them /CHEAP, if your interested.

Doing some weight searches, I did find:

Curb weight 2wd = 2,891 lbs - 2,993 lbs
Curb weight 4wd = 3,057 lbs - 3,386 lbs

Since they came off my old 4WD, they held up a roughly the same weight 3rd gen Haven't found the spring rate them though.

BlackenedBird

iTrader: (5)

Well, I did just find this:

OEM XJ is supposedly 142-147 lb/in rate. 17" length 5.25" diameter

Isn't that pretty much the same rate as a stock 3rd gen spring rate?

Mine measure 18.5" though, but it certainly wasn't lifted. I actually pulled those out to put in lift springs. Maybe that was the compressed height installed? No clue.

Stevolwevol

iTrader: (1)

OK maybe I took a "left turn down a dirt road", but no they didn't over charge me. I was dismayed when I walked back into the shop and saw all of my plastic removed from my IROC. Infact I came unglued!

I would like to know the correct way to access the top of the rear shocks.

84redta

iTrader: (34)

Where the heck did we go from talking about air shocks to them prone to fail!? Only issue i've had with mine was my naivety in routing the air hose too close to the exhaust. They aren't prone to failure, they have been used for decades, so where this assumption of air shocks being of poor design, I don't see. Are they a band-aide to the people that want to jack the back end up to the sky, maybe, but they do serve their purpose to people like me that don't feel like running air bags and occasionally run with loads in the back.

Retracting what I was saying about the body thing, misunderstood, but I still don't see how jacking it up by shock perch isn't close enough to the coil spring that it would affect anything. I'm sure it's possible, but I would think something else was at play with that though.

To Stevo, usually you just pull up the rear carpet, and when done pry it back underneath the side panels. If they bunch up and become a pain and ugly, then yes, i've had to pull the panels partially out to get the nap in the back of the carpet to lay flat.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Alot of cars, the shock fastens to the frame, or something substantial.

Not these. They just stick through a hole in the sheet metal.

Where the spring perch is, is some significant metal. Not the upper shock mount. It just sticks through a hole in the sheet metal.

It's not that air shocks "don't work"; it's that they are THE WRONG thing for these particular cars. Might work fine on a Chevelle or something; but not a 3rd gen F-body. There's nothing structural there for them to fasten to, just the sheet metal. Therefore they can't POSSIBLY exert any substantial force for any significant time, without destroying the sheet metal. Doesn't take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure out that it's just not enough material to hold up the weight of the car.

Usually I can just grab the underside of the plastic panel with something that has a hook, and just poke the carpet back up under there. Anybody that's ever done shocks on one of these cars should be able to figure that out. As stupid as I am, if I can "get it", surely all you smart people out there can manage it. Just like looking at a piece of sheet metal with a hole in the middle and figuring that out, it's just not rocket science.

84redta

iTrader: (34)

I agree with the sheet metal, just never seen any fluxuation of it. I don't doubt your experience, everyone has seen something someone else hasn't so that's why i said, i don't doubt it, and I do understand more now the fact that earlier generations were frame mounted, but like I said, I may go regular shock later, but for now, I enjoy them, a buddy of mine enjoys them, I did it because of my 4th gen axle and 3rd gen wheels at the time rubbed, and I had these to begin with and it fixed the issue of the tires rubbing the fender lip. He did it to hike the a$$ end up, lol.

lightningZ

thats true, most of the time.. it would be nice if the parts store recommended the right parts though.. i guess we can dream haha
as far as the air shocks go, i thought installation was easier on my GTA than it was on the old el camino, which surprised me, but yes i do remember the passenger side air line ran real close to the exhaust. I was a little worried about the integrity of the skinny cheap **** hose, next to the warm exhaust lol i NEVER had problems with them, i mean maybe it takes longer than the 13 months i owned the car for them to mess up, but in those 12 (installed them after i had it about a month) months they worked great. I believe ill look into the small air bags that mount inside the rear coil springs thanks for the lol

lightningZ

and not sure about the whole " removing panels and carpet" to install air shocks ... i didnt need to

Stevolwevol

iTrader: (1)

The shop that dismantled my interior probably didn't know much about third gens. How many do they work on every day? They are all old cars now, so probably not very many at all. The more time that goes by, the more pervasive the problem becomes.

camaronewbie

I can see having to remove the plastic interior pieces to get the carpet out - believe that's what I did. But the tops of the shocks are just under the carpet, each side, on the "hump" behind the rear seats. Maybe one could remove the rear seat back, and slide the carpet out from front to rear to get to the shock tops. Either way, it's one of those things that's easy to do, just takes some extra time because you have to get under the carpet to the 'hump'.

If you didn't remove carpet in your 3rd gen car, either you have no carpet, or you did it really wrong!

JJames

I appreciate the offer on the springs, but I actually work in a shop, and have access to purchase brand new springs pretty much dirt cheap without shipping due to discounts at our parts warehouses.
So the spring rate is essentially the same? How much would need to be trimmed in order to "make them work" or could they be installed without trimming? Trying to figure a way to tuck 315/60/15's and These may be just what I'm looking for! Thanks!

BlackenedBird

iTrader: (5)

If the info I found on Jeep springs is correct, it sounds like you would want them 1 or 2 coils taller than a stock 3rd gen rear spring BUT considering how easy the rear springs in a 3rd gen are easy to take in and put out? And that you are basically treading brand new ground?

Personally I'd put the Jeep spring in straight off the shelf and see where the cars sits. Cut 1 coil off. See where it sits afterwards. Then decide where you want it based on how much 1 coil cut off dropped it.

JJames

I see a lot of discussion on the Moog 5665's. Are they considered factory 3rd gen height?

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Yes, they are more or less a direct replacement.

lightningZ

no, i did it correctly. My carpet had flaps ,im assuming precut by the previous owner, but nonetheless it had precut flaps over the top of the rear shocks which made zipping off the top of them a breeze. The flaps were approx. 3" squares with 3 sides cut and 1 intact and when i was done i tucked each "flap" back in and was ready to roll.

1986 305 RS

What I and I imagine other people would like to know is is there anybody that has the jeep springs installed with or without cutting and what shocks are they using of course with no bottoming out.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Why "Jeep" springs?

Why not "Camaro/Firebird" springs?

If you're going to change out the springs, why not just get the right ones and be done with it? Not rocket science, after all.

cosmick

My 'maro came with air shocks. Then I found new Moog CC635s for $ 50 / pair. So the air shocks can go in the trash where they belong.

1986 305 RS

I would love to go with camaro springs but what year. My rear end is up in the air and I want it higher. Im currently running failed air shocks and they are getting ripped out along with yards and yards of wire thats not needed, all ac stuff all emissions all the interior ect. I don't know if they are stock but a pair of the most embarassing springs I have seen with 25 cent shock blocks are going too. These cars are so fun to work on and yet so expensive and time consuming cleaning up previous owners crap.

1986 305 RS

Thanks for the moog referral I will have to do some research cause $50 a set sounds scary cheep. Im thinking I may have to go the more expensive route because its up in the air......kinda.

1986 305 RS

Hey cosmick I noticed that you have t tops so do I. I eventually am going with all new weather stripping and I was wondering do you have new weather stripping and is it doing what it's supposed to do. It makes me ill thinking about dropping between 700 to 1000 on a set but all the suppliers got us in a corner and they know it

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

82-2002

No other years will work

No s*** Sherlock. THIS is why I tell people not to mess with air shocks; besides the fact that those (a) don't work, and (b) DESTROY the car. Springs are SO CHEEEEEEEEEEEEP, there's just absolutely nothing else you can do to get the same effect, that's any cheeeeeper. Putting air shocks on a car is like pushing $100 bills out of the way so you can pick up bent pennies that won't even work a bubble gum machine. Only a moron would do THAT. I can't seem to figure out what kind of person would put air shocks on their car. Which is not surprising since I'm well and widely known not to be the sharpest tool in the shed. But even I, stooopid though I am, know better than to put air shocks on a car, ESPECIALLY one of these.

1986 305 RS

Air shocks are stock. ....what years idk nor do I care cuz they are Installed by the same geniuses that thought it would be a fantastic cost cutting idea to put atf into manual transmissions thats why when my warranty is up on my tranny im going to use 75-90 gear oil like 90% of 3rd gen manual tranny owners use I hope.