08/19/2026
Never hitting a rock trail isn’t really a good excuse to get cheap shocks, in fact it’s easy to argue that literally everything else you could be doing with your rig is why you shouldn’t be scraping at the bottom of the barrel.
When it comes to performance on high difficulty trails, travel and therefore articulation is everything. If your goals are outright rock crawling performance specifically, we think you should spend the money on all the upgrades you need to be able to cycle as much travel as possible first, and pair it with shocks you can afford that are long enough to match.
Although your shocks shouldn’t be an afterthought by any means, if your rig is only in the rocks often times a good 2” body shock will get the job done.
That is not to say there are not huge benefits both in support for when you need to bump something and especially quality of life, it’s everything up to the rocks that might push you up market.
If you hit tough trails your tires probably are not small, and most trails require at least some driving to get to their gatekeeper. If you have 35” or larger tires an 2.5” or larger body is almost a must for it to be drivable on the roads up to the trail, paved or otherwise.
Heavy feet also need big shocks. If you want to drive at a decent speed almost anywhere in the dirt a 2.5” body shock with a reservoir is your bare minimum, and the bigger or the more features the better.
