After much thinking, fiddling, and testing I have come to another pretty set standard. At least in my opinion of course. Feel free to have your own! As we all know I am an advocate for balanced spring rates and feel that if you change the front spring rate you should also change the rear to match. I now feel the same way about shock pistons and pack which goes against what I stated earlier in the thread when I was first playing around with springs. I believe the lighter end of the vehicle should have more pack than the heavier end and if you have a 2wd where the back is much heavier then you also should have a much greater amount of pack in front. I also believe as with the springs that once you balance shock pack, if you change one end, you change the other.

This is actually sort of true. We do but we don't. Since front shocks almost always are shorter and have less total travel since they are mounted further inwards, the piston never has to move as far as the rear from full extension to full compression. This means that the piston will go a shorter distance over the same amount of time which is really just a slower piston speed. This also leads to a correspondingly slower velocity of shock oil through the holes in the piston which means less pack for the same size and amount of holes. In layman's terms, if you have the same shock pistons in the front and rear shocks, you don't truly have the same amount of shock pack. You merely have the same pistons? Still following me?

The solution to balance them out is to increase the pack at the lighter end of the vehicle. In nearly every case except perhaps with some fwd on road cars, that will be the front. The front shocks need either fewer or smaller holes in the pistons, or both, so that the actual fluid speed through the piston during shock compression, is the same as the rear shocks per the same amount of wheel (not shock) travel. Got it?

So what have people been using all these years? Well most people it turns out have much stiffer front springs than optimal and way too little shock pack up front. The higher spring rates lead to an understeer condition as a result of higher front end roll resistance. The solution for many is to add weight up front to "hold the front end down". The result is not for this reason but rather as compensation for the higher than necessary roll resistance. Moving weight forwards and doing nothing else to the setup effectively decreases front roll resistance and increases rear roll resistance which means less understeer. A rear bias car inherently understeers and shifting weight rearwards, all things being equal, results in more oversteer while shifting weight forwards results in understeer. You can see from the above why this sounds backwards. You just have to understand what else is going on. All is not always as it appears.

The lower than optimal shock pack that most run up front isn't so much felt as a problem up front but rather one at the rear. Over rough terrain the front end may seem to glide over the bumps but the rear may appear to bounce hard and become unsettled. Again, the problem isn't where is appears to be. I am still playing with ratios of shock pack on my car so I can't tell you exactly how different the holes need to be between front and rear yet but it can be quite significant on a 2wd buggy. Your shock oil weights will also need to be correspondingly different as well with the lighter oil going to the lighter end of the vehicle. This too flies against what I was originally doing during the initial spring balancing stages. Learning is fun!

Play around with this and let me know what you think. Again, this is all my personal opinion so don't chastise me if you disagree. The results I'm getting just playing around with it seem to verify the thinking. It just gets easier and easier to drive. Keep in mind I'm not a point and shoot type of driver so a different driving style may very well favor a different setup.