Yeah, the factory mount is not straight up and down. I suspect the angle actually helps with the suspension somehow, but I don't know enough about suspension to know for sure.
it doesnt, i would bet it was GMs way to use X shock on Y truck for Z price. angling in towards center makes a shock less effective than straight vertical.
it doesnt, i would bet it was GMs way to use X shock on Y truck for Z price. angling in towards center makes a shock less effective than straight vertical.
For effective dampening, Yes. The further from vertical the less effective they are. OEM's and even various forms of motorsports utilize the shocks to help with other things (axle wrap..which is why the old GM's had one shock angled forward and one shock angled back), the other is to help with centering the axle (slight angle inward). I know on my pulling truck (front leaf spring suspension with no panhard bar), the front end would get a shimmy when it unloaded when I put my coilovers in a complete verticle position (removed factory shocks). An old timer told me to put them at a slight angle inward and the shimmy was gone COMPLETELY. I would have never believed it if I didn't experience it myself.
While the OEM's may do things to save a buck or two, they also have some pretty smart engineers who do certain things for a reason.....
Shocks don't do squat for axle wrap in the sense your talking. Throw a gopro under a stock truck with a load in the back, hammer the throttle and tell me axle wrap is under control lol. There is a line between the best engineering of something, if it will physically fit and the actual cost to implement it. Money making business dictates that.
Your don't axle setup and leaning the shocks in is the same affect as adding a pan hard but does not work as well. When you run that low a leaf count, the leafs loose their strength to hold the axle straight. Soon as the bushing start to wear, you may feel the shimmy come back
Understandable but I didn't say or imply shocks would eliminate axle wrap. I simply stated as you did before that they would not do a thing for axle wrap. A shock mounted perfectly verticle will do just about nothing for axle wrap so I'll agree with you there. Two shocks angled correctly, (such as one angled fore and one angled aft) will help slow axle wrap. Stop it no, slow it yes. How much is a factor of angle, shock valving, etc., but it does help
Running without shocks really isn't going to show you anything Yes, it will show A LOT and mostly bad things. All it's going to do is cause a very bouncy, unsafe ride as there is nothing there to control the UP and DOWN movement of the axle Yes and nothing to help slow axle wrap. How the axle then resonates twisting from that bounce is a spring issue. Shocks can't stop the twisting action of a axle from acceleration or deceleration unless they are valved so stiff the truck rides like a brick A shock valved stiff as a brick (AND ANGLED CORRECTLY) would help that a lot, a soft valved shock (AND ANGLED CORRECTLY) will help it a little (and that's my ONLY point). Except that even a soft valved shock made quite a difference when we tested and you can believe what you want. Again, the OEMs aren't complete idiots..
And the axle on a leaf spring won't travel I an arc, nor will the shocks. At no point do we want a leaf to go negative after being in a positive arc to flat. I've cycled the suspension of my old 7200 desert truck. It has 19" of vertical wheel travel in the rear with a 9" shackle. From full droop (max arc) to perfectly flat leafs, there was a perfectly linear line of the axle moving backwards 2" from full droop to flat leaf. No arc to it you could physically see or measure. A shackle will travel I an arc. A leaf will only grow outward on one end and the axle/shock will move up and back or down and forward in a linear rate.