Low Speed vs. High Speed

Low speed vs. High speed in a shock, you have probably heard of this before if you have been around shocks much. This is a term used a lot by many but not often explain, for the end user so they can understand it. This is my attempt to explain it, hope I do a good job. High speed can mean several things depending on who is telling the story, and we are going to assume that we are talking about a racing shock in a race condition. High speed as we use the term is around 10 inches per second of shaft speed and is often obtain when hitting a bump or a hole in the race track. This speed is not really seen much on the race car, but is often used because of old standard. We also have been using it for years to determine the valving of a shock, such as a 5 rebound and 3 compression. As you can see from the chart below the high speed ranges from 6 to 10 inches per second, and in this range the shock will determine how well the car will travel over the bump in the track.

The Low speed on the other hand has more effect on the overall handling of the car on the race track and is not often expressed in any valving numbers used by the manufacture. The low speed in a standard shock is often lower to allow the car to handle better in a rough condition, but the lack of low speed or how the low speed in made is often the reason why your car handles badly on the race track. Low speed is what you feel when you push a shock in by hand and often you can have two different shocks and can not tell them apart by hand dynoing them, this is because the low speed in close to the same in both shocks. I have also seen where a shock of heavier valving may feel softer by hand than a shock with more low speed. Low speed ranges from 1 to 3 inches per second on a dyno chart. Low speed is very important to the out come of the race car and needs to be built in the correct way so the shock helps improve on the cars abilities to produce traction and forward drive in the car. Low speed is often referred to as nose or heel in the shock, and we explain nose better in a article called Low Speed Nose that you will want to read.

In the charts below we are show both high speed and low speed in the lighter shaded areas, the range in between is the mid range of the shock and we are not covering that at this time. If you have any questions or need more advise in concerns to this matter call us and we would be happy to cover it with you.