Kings VS Icon

[GBrown1867]

Gordon,

It sounds like you and Matt had a good time out there, wish I could of made it but we found out my kid is alergic to her asthma meds so it was a long friday to say the least.

Anyway, I'm suprised you find the low speed control of the Fox horrible. Do you remember what the ride heights were of the trucks you've been in with the Fox 3.0's? The reason I ask is because they are very sensitive to adding to much pre-load on the spring because of internal bypass technology, if they are set at that wrong height the piston is riding in the last part of the effective ride zone. This can cause the ride to feel off and somewhat out of whack.

One thing we make sure of when a customer purchases a set of Fox 3.0's from us is that we set the ride height exaclty where it needs to be. We know if the customer has a SCAB or SCREW, find out what's riding in the truck and try to find out the weight of the driver (sometimes a touchy subject). Because the Fox's are both velocity sensitive and equally important position sensitive shock, proper setup from the get go is critical. We have been playing with these things for almost a year now and its crazy what we've learned with regards to ride hieghts and performance. When set

Next time your back in town lets head out to the desert so you can play with our truck a bit. I know you will be blown away at how fast we have the shocks setup, they are comfortable and plush in the slower speed and washboard type stuff without tossing daily driveability out the window, yet fast and powerfull in the big whoops. It's all in the tuning, and when you have a shock that is able to be tuned for both velocity and position, it's amazing how good you can make it perform in almost every environment it's asked to work in.

Glad you guys made it home safe and sound.

Jarrett
I was bummed when I heard you were not going to be able to make it. Glad your daughter is OK and I totally understand why you couldn’t join us. We had a great time and switched the route up to encompass more types of terrain. We did some rock crawling, high speed whoops, very high speed groomed roads and some great trails/roads that are perfect for a Raptor.
This was the first time Matt and I have had the time to actually take the time to compare our two trucks. Since I live in Nor Cal, most of the time I am down there is when we are doing the RE runs and we are way too busy to stop and take the time. Having your truck out there would have made it even better so we could have actually put these three setups side by side. I don’t remember how the Fox truck was setup that I was in and am more than open to seeing how yours performs.
Plus like I said in the beginning of the post, mine was just an opinion and they will all differ from person to person. I am sure we will get a chance in the future to compare them all together and maybe we all change our opinions. Haha
Take care
Gordon

 

[ICONRep]

The ICON Vehicle Dynamics Raptor 3.0 front shock is not technically a "bypass" but it is position sensitive to create more force in different stages of the stroke similar to an internal bypass shock. However the ICON 3.0 has the advantage of more control and tune-ability in the ride zone because ride tuning is done with shims and bleed on the main piston instead of holes in an inner cylinder. The need to have a rebound zone also in an internal bypass means some of the holes have to be unchecked allowing a lot of fluid to go either direction uncontrolled. A simple hole is harder to calibrate over a broad flow range, and tends to have a loose low speed feel when compared to using a more sophisticated piston controlling the flow. Additionally, the ICON piston was engineered with digressive rebound for further tune-ability and stability over a broad range of wheel speeds.

So if it's not a "bypass" then how is it position sensitive? It is essentially 2 separate shocks in one. One is the shaft you see and works over the entire stroke of the shock. The other is built into the top of the shock internally and has 3" of stroke. The second "bump" shock also has a blow off half way through it's travel to create (2) 1.5" zones. This second internal shock has its own piston with tunable compression and rebound shims. In it's last 1.5" zone the second shock is capable of creating 1000's of pounds of "additional" force for superior bottom out control and to prevent rebound bounce after extreme hits. This gives a total of 3 "positional" zones of compression and 3 for rebound which is equivalent to a 4 tube bypass. We also built into the main piston assembly a droop damper or "top out control" to prevent hard extension when the tires leave the ground.

If you look at the three shocks you will see the cylinder on the ICON shock is much longer because there is a lot of stuff going on inside. That is why you will notice the top of the shock packaged as high in the bucket as possible, and the lower coil cup is deep so the shock body can go down inside. The external compression adjuster is for additional user fine tuning. It is not intended to help much with bottom out control, that's what the internal second shock is for.

Bottom line is ICON highly respects the other shock manufactures and the shocks they are building. Internal bypass shocks are very cool in many ways. Our 3.0 ICON Coilover Shocks are designed and engineered, packed full with features, specifically for the Ford Raptor to bring out the full performance potential of the truck. When users talk about ride on street or comfort in different off road scenarios, we feel that is all subjective to the specific user and what conditions the truck is being faced with. With the many pre-tuned features we have built into these shocks, and our user friendly compression damping control valve, the ICON shock makes it extremely easy to fine tune the ride to work best for your needs.

 

[408RCLB]

I can only speak from personal experience, but there's a reason ive had kings on my last 3 trucks, they just plain work! 99.9% of the guys that have trucks like mine run kings too, they're the best, hands down! from support, to quality, to appearance, they have it all. champions run kings for a reason