$80 air experiment

[ShoddyElectrician]

Any air enthusiast will laugh you out of town if you try to taut this little trick as air ride but it was a fun experiment.

I had been looking at Monroe Max Air shocks for my '69 beetle to go air on. I was perusing the catalog when I thought, "Hey I wonder if they have a pair close to the rabbit's specs." Sure enough MA802 was pretty close. The lower loop is an L2 instead of an LS42 and it is substantially shorter than the stock shock. But lowered on something like Racelands you are substantially lower than stock and I constantly bottom out stock style struts (super uncomfortable) so... Why not give it a go?

I ordered a pair from Oreily's for $75 and they came with all the hardware for a simple setup. A bit of rubber sleeve around the bolt going through the loop to minimize movement there and it bolted right up with zero issue.

They are very comfy shocks. I'm still playing with PSI to see how I like them to ride. The shocks share air pressure and it gives it a sort of silly boat feel. However I will be playing with these shocks in different configs of valves and such to see how I can improve that.

All in all:
Easy cheap mod that is much more comfortable than Raceland packaged materials. Probably get a chuckle out of the air guys while I'm at it too. They lowered it 1/8" beyond Raceland out of the box but that's not super important or even noticeable really. Maybe get some more aggressive springs later when I sort out the front.

Pic of fairly full range of motion: (20-120psi, max 150)

[le0n]

neat...

[ShoddyElectrician]

Gonna step this experiment up to a project:

[le0n]

oh, you're adding nitrous.

[ShoddyElectrician]

Lol 7 too many ports on this tank for that...

[le0n]

heh heh...

[ShoddyElectrician]

Trying to decide how much air the shocks really need to be fed. Kinda want to reserve the 1/4" ports for other stuff so I think they will have to live on a 3/8" port. The shock bodies have a 7/16-20 thread on them from the factory so it will be a downgrade from that but an upgrade from the packaged materials which uses 1/8" tubing.