Shock questions

[Ron Roberts]

I wanted to get a your ideas on the following:

Shocks have both upward and downward travel. In my case my Kyb silvers have 2" in each direction. That seems like it should be optimum, but when I think about it, the optimum amount of travel in each direction should vary depending on spring rate. If the springs ar stiff you might not need as much upward travel as downward. When you go over a pothole or something the springs are quick to stretch the shocks, but if you hit a bump with stiff springs the spring will travel a small amount and then lift the whole car.

What got me thinking about this is I need to make the right choice of shock if I were to lower my front end with drop spindles and then raise it back up 1" with adjusters in the beam. If I do that with my current shocks I would have only 1 inch of travel in the upward direction befor the shock is fully extended. In this case how do you go about choosing the corect shock for the amount of weight and the amount of split in travel?

Thanks
Ron