Mounted up the rear shocks and bumps today. I spent a lot of time thinking how I wanted to mount them. Hoops or crossbars or what. I wanted them horizontal for the best dampening.

Finally it dawned on me that very little support is needed for shocks in any other direction besides vertical. I was imagining some type of removeable crossbar or bolted crossmember so I could remove the bed if I later wanted. Since the shock is mounted at both ends and able to swivel, it can't exert any forces on the mounting brackets except for vertical. It would be like trying to push a cardboard box with a broomstick but you could only push against it with the palm of your hand. Gussets and crossmebers for the mounting system are not necessary. So I just made a very simple mounting system. This might be very obvious to some people, yet I see a lot of people building very elaborate mounting systems for rear shocks...

I did not want to wait until I was done with the pinion angle/spring perches to do the lower shock mounts So I just made some tabs for the u-bolt plate. What's also nice about this is that I can change pinion angle or add more leaves and not have to change mount/bumpstop locations.




The bumpstops are stock Isuzu ones found on first gens. Nice alternative to a $40 polyurethane one...

Shock mount tower is 1x2 1/8 wall, tabs are 1/8". The bumpstop bracket is angled to match the ubolt plate. That was very tedious as the underside of the frame is curved. Not wanting to spend another 2 hours trying to match the angle of the cut to keep everything in line I just mounted the tower flush with the top for the frame. The tabs are tilted to put the shock bolts parallel. Looks kind of dumb but it should work allright. The tower has a piece of 1/8 bar welded to it at the bottom to line it up.





I set the bumpstop height at where the springs will go flat to keep them inverting. Once mounted I found the distance the ubolt plate will travel until it hits then added the width of the bumpstop, bracket and frame. Add an inch to that for a margin of safety. Then I took the total shock travel and subtracted the number from earlier I got 9.75" which is how high the top bolt is from the frame.








In this pic the front tire is jacked up by the hoist and the passenger side rear has about .75" before it hits the bumpstop. The drivers rear is all the way extended.