up travel vs down travel

Just curious what the opinion is about how much up travel vs down travel i should have. I have a RC 4.5 long arm kit in the front with ACOS and i would say my lift height is roughly 6.0 inches. I am running 35's with a moderate trim and a 5160 with 10 inches of travel. today i spend a bit of time tuning my new bilstein shocks and i was sad to find that i only have just a bit over an inch of down travel in the front. So i am going to dial down my ACOS to reduce the lift i have and possibly reduce the size of the spring that i am running as well as add some sort of BPE or a Detours Shock cheater to give me a bit less up travel. Where should i be as far as up travel vs down travel? I mostly rock crawl and i dont care too much about where my lift ends up as long as it is functional.

last rig was 3" up travel and 6-7" down travel, that was a 93 xj with 3" lift and 33's new project with have similer numbers but 6" of lift 38's and 60's

I find it better to have a 1:2 ratio of travel, for every inch up 2 inches down. I currently need to bump stop mine (dont wanna drop the front end to put hockey pucks in)

I run a 6" lift shock on a 3" lift, nets about 3 1/2" up travel and 8" down.... far enough down to make my tire completely go out of the wheel well on short arms and unseat my springs

seeing as you said rock crawling is what you mainly do with your rig id go with about the same setup as far as ratio. you want your tires to be able to droop down in those serious off camber situations so you can have traction at all 4 wheels (if your locked). I do regular old dirt trails all the way to slick rock and have had zero issues running the shock im running on my smaller lift, never bottomed out even though im not bumped fully yet.

hope this helps. also if you google search the subject and look at rock buggy suspension setups you'll see most run 4-5" up travel and have up to 10" or more droop to keep a low center of gravity

Set your suspension at full sag. Set the bump stops off of this, Max compression. Raise vehicle to full extension and set limit straps 3/4" shorter than this. Straps stretch over time. Set ride height at 2/3 above full sag. This is for off road racing. You want the tire to fall into the lows, small bump up. Hydro bump stops are a cheaper version of bypass shocks.

dirtweazle the problem that i have is that if i take my shock off my front end can drop all the way to the ground with my tires off when i have the "frame" on my biggest jack stand. which measures at pretty much 20 inches of travel. the problem is that a shock with 20 inches of travel will not fit unless i poke it out through the hood.... i can solve this by adding more ride height so that i can clear a bigger shock but i loose up travel as increase the travel of the shock because the shock body is also longer... which is making me think i should run a bigger tire to fill the fender at full compression

how much up travel do you want? how much down travel do you want? pretty much what your going to have to do is decide how much up travel you wanna have and measure it at ride height to establish a shock, then whatever you change as far as tires and what not wont matter because thats what bump stopping is for. obviously if you stuff a 37" tire on a budget boost your gonna have limited up travel anyway

and fyi, your not gonna get the ENTIRE swing of your suspension due to the shock your running, its going to have to be limited somewhere, which if it can swing down 20" id invest in some limit straps.

bump stop your up travel so that you get the compression you want you give your jeep everything that your suspension/tire size allows. then buy shocks that maximize droop.