I've recently rethought dampening a bit and I feel stupid for not thinking this way in the first place. I am now running more pack in front than rear but like balancing spring rates it's all about leverage. Many people already run more in front but now I have a logical excuse to do it. I prefer to think through why things work rather than to just blindly accept that they do. A shock that is mounted further inward on the arm like front shocks are have a shorter stroke which is why they are shorter. This means total piston speed per the same amount of suspension (wheel) travel over the same amount of time must be lower which means that the velocity of the oil through the holes in the piston will be correspondingly slower. This is less pack even though the total hole area may be the same. By running a "higher pack" piston with smaller holes we can increase the fluid speed through the holes to more equalize the velocity of the oil through the pistons in the same amount of time with the rear.

I tried simplifying things a bit rather than calculating piston speed. I'll play with piston speed calculations later but for now what I did on my old RC10 experimental beater car was to see what the ratio was between the front and rear springs when balanced and then used the generalization that the ratio between total hole area in the front to rear pistons should also remain about the same as this number. This left me with a #1 piston in the rear and a #3 up front in the Associated shocks. I have also tried using the bounce test to determine oil weight too. Not for total dampening but rather to compare wheel rates with the goal of keeping them the same with oil. It isn't terribly easy to see though. When I was running the same pistons all around, I ran a higher weight oil up front. Now with more pack up front, I run a lower oil weight there. I'm still playing around but so far it works quite well. I personally love having everything balanced.