Road King shocks

[m37charlie]

Some feedback on road king shocks. I have a 2005 Unimog U500 with Unicat camper.fully loaded it weighs 17,600 pounds on the rear axle and 9900 pounds on the front axle. It has a lot of unsprung weight because of the portal axles and very large tires. I ordered a set of road king shocks.


The salesman whose initials are "WH" recommended the lightest settings "A" on both axles despite my repeated concerns to the contrary.Now after driving 5000 miles across Canada and 5000 miles mainly through Russia I can say his"advice" was absolute ****. I cursed them every time the rear end Bottoms out which is every 1.5 seconds on many stretches of road. I am going to attempt to have them revalved this winter while the camper is in Germany getting some work done and upgrades done. Hopefully I will be able to use Hellgeth A very competent Unimog up fitter that specifically works on suspension components.
To add insult to injury Roadking refuses to release valving information i.e. damping contants to customers because it is "proprietary"
I should mention that Roadking has offered to revolve the shocks themselves at no cost except perhaps freight but at this point I have little confidence in their "Engineering department". At the beginning of this process I sent them of course all the weights and graphs spring deflection versus weight which should have allowed them to easily calculate spring constants.
To say that I am unhappy with them and unimpressed with their engineering is a gross understatement.
Charlie

[m37charlie]

To the other commenters:
Physics is physics. I gave them ALL the info to properly calculate
Weights spring deflection graphs. Unsprung weight. They screwed up.
I don't think they KNOW the physics. I do, but to them I was a typical dumb customer.

Charlie

[m37charlie]

To the other commenters:
Physics is physics. I gave them ALL the info to properly calculate
Weights spring deflection graphs. Ubsprung weight. They screwed up.

[m37charlie]

They have be disassemmbled at the factory

[SoCalDesertRid1]

If there are 'damping settings' for the shocks, which suggests they are somehow adjustable, why don't you adjust them to a firmer setting and find out what works for your situation???

[dons2346]

J-Rooster wrote:

DSDP Don wrote:
My guess would be that Road King doesn't sell a lot of shocks for a Unimog. I don't know if it's fair to bang them so hard on something that is really a specialty item and may take some fine tuning.

X-2!

X3

[J-Rooster]

DSDP Don wrote:
My guess would be that Road King doesn't sell a lot of shocks for a Unimog. I don't know if it's fair to bang them so hard on something that is really a specialty item and may take some fine tuning.

X-2!

[DSDP_Don]

My guess would be that Road King doesn't sell a lot of shocks for a Unimog. I don't know if it's fair to bang them so hard on something that is really a specialty item and may take some fine tuning.

[m37charlie]

Not the problem. The problem is that there are 10 different damping settings for the shocks and Roadking insisted despite my reluctance on using the softest possible setting.

[rgatijnet1]

It seems like the shocks are not sized correctly to provide enough resistance/dampening which allows things to bottom out.
I assume that you have check the total travel of the shocks so that it is NOT the shocks that are bottoming out.
I know that many off road vehicles have 2, 3, or 4 shocks at each corner to take care of the high un-sprung weight and the conditions where they are used.
What shocks were on the Unimog to begin with? How do the Road King shocks compare in extended and compressed size?
Perhaps you need to beef up the suspension springs.

[m37charlie]

bluwtr49 wrote:
I'm not sure how a Unimog issue relates to motorhome but I will say that the Road Kings on our front axle work flawlessly...but there again I don't have a Unimog so my experience may not apply.

The vehicle is a motorhome/camper. The problem is not the shock itself but the lack of competent engineering despite me supplying all necessary information.
Charlie

[bluwtr49]

I'm not sure how a Unimog issue relates to motorhome but I will say that the Road Kings on our front axle work flawlessly...but there again I don't have a Unimog so my experience may not apply.