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W.W. Shock Absorbers strive to make our products to the highest possible standards. All our reconditioned stock is re-manufactured at our manufacturing workshop here in Virginia so you are guaranteed quality and service.

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W.W. Shock Absorbers is a manufacturer specialising in the re-building/re-manufacturing of shock absorbers. We have been re-building shocks since 1959 and are the original Brisbane Shockabsorber Reconditioners. Craig Barraud and his team can offer expert advice on your shocks and suspension to achieve maximum results.

Guest Article:

The Carrolls Springs story

Carroll’s Springs has been in the business for better than 20 Years. John Denman finds out why it is known as the quiet achiever of Australian suspension.

Forty one years ago in Sydney, Snowy Carroll began a business building springs for trucks. Back in 1962, 4WDs were virtually unheard of as recreational vehicles and a coil spring was something you found in a mattress. Put simply, leaf springs were the order of the day. In 2003, suspensions have undergone vast changes, and as any progressive company must do, Carroll’s has moved along with them. Today, 50 percent of Carroll’s business involves 4WD suspension. They are one of the largest suppliers and manufacturers of aftermarket suspension kits in Australia, and plan to further penetrate the market.

The driving force behind this 4WD market invasion comes via the team of Peter Spowart and Jamie Macfarlane. Peter is the National Sales Manager, and Jamie handles all research and development. Both men came to the job with 20 years’ suspension experience behind them, and a passion for the work they do. Carroll’s could easily be described as the quiet achievers of 4WD suspension in Australia. The years of experience gained in suspension for road transport have paved the way for the development of a 4WD suspension that our testing tells us delivers the goods.

Carroll’s latest push into the aftermarket suspension business is spearheaded by their EFS kit. EFS stands for Enhanced 4WD Suspensions, and it’s the company’s top-of-the-line kit. The Enforcer kit is now the entry-level suspension. Just to clear things up a little, Carroll’s also had a kit on the market known as ‘Fireflex’ Suspension. This is no longer available to the 4WD market and the name is restricted to the truck suspensions the company makes. To get a better idea of what Carroll’s is on about, we laid out a test route that included high-speed bitumen, secondary bitumen, secondary gravel roads and 4WD tracks from easy to difficult. We took three vehicles for the test, a 4.5-litre GU Patrol, a live axle LandCruiser 100 series and a 2.8-litre HiLux just to throw some leaf springs into the mix. All vehicles were fitted up with Carroll’s new EFS kits. Our test route took us out of Brisbane and up the Bruce highway to Caboolture then over the D’Aguilar Range to Kilcoy and ultimately to Alben and Helen Perrett’s property, LandCruiser Park.

Obviously the highway section was no challenge at all for the suspension, but on the secondary road up to Kilcoy, the degree of spring and damper development began to show. The Nissan Patrol has been roundly criticised by us for its underachieving standard suspension, particularly in the rear – a standard Patrol has the feel of springs left uncontrolled by inadequate dampers. The springs, being fairly light in an attempt to give a softer ride, tend to wallow and whole thing is generally uninspiring. I was pretty keen to get a handful of the Nissan on this test and I came away pleasantly surprised. Gone was the wandering back end, and potholes and other irregularities were dealt with by crisply controlled rebound courtesy of the new dampers the company has designed to work with the springs.

Over the rutted gravel roads in the mountains above Kilcoy it was the same story, with both the coil-sprung vehicles superbly controlled by springs and dampers designed to perform together. R&D man Jamie said, “We wanted to build a suspension for a 4WD that would handle the majority of the terrain types. The real test is extended rough gravel tracks.” While our test drive was far from being an Outback run, the two coil-sprung vehicles were lightly loaded, and this always puts load-carrying springs on a difficult footing. How a vehicle handles corrugations when accelerating uphill is always an acid test for any suspension. While no suspension ever made will iron out corrugations, it’s not unreasonable to expect that they will have some control over axle hop. Once again, it was difficult to find fault with the EFS kit.

A common problem with any suspension on corrugations is for the vehicle to ‘crab’ sideways as if the rear axle is trying to come around to the front. We put all three vehicles into some of the corrugations on the access road into LandCruiser Mountain Park and came away impressed. Even the HiLux with a set of leaf springs that Peter Spowart insisted were “not the final product” handled the work well. In fact, the HiLux with its leaf springs was expected to under-perform in these conditions. After all, an unloaded ute and a corrugated surface are not the ideal combination. All of Carroll’s leaf springs are drawn and tapered, and include inserts between the leaves. The HiLux was fitted with a new design multi-leaf spring pack. If you order the long-travel kit for your HiLux, a replacement brake-line kit is included. This has been a problem in the past with live axle HiLuxes. You can achieve amazing suspension travel, but the brake lines start to look like a banjo string. Carroll’s idea is to fit a longer line and include a retaining spring that prevents the line from being snagged when the suspension is either at rest, or fully compressed.

All the dampers for the EFS kit are built for Carroll’s by two of the world’s biggest shock absorber companies. The company went to these manufacturers and had its dampers built to its specifications. The dampers were originally designed for road transport use, so valving had to be substantially changed to suit Carroll’s application. “A shock that is too stiff will end up damaging its mounting point under sustained use,” Peter Spowart explained. All dampers are therefore valved to suit the individual vehicle.

Carroll’s have invested a lot of time and effort into getting this suspension to where it is today. Both Peter and Jamie have bought to bear their combined and considerable experience in 4WD touring, rallying and suspension engineering to offer their clients a kit they believe is not only going to work well, but represents decent value for money. It’s worth remembering that this is a one-product business, so you would expect that they would get it right. Licensed nationally to perform GVM upgrades on leaf-sprung LandCruisers and Patrol cab-chassis vehicles, they do a lot of work for government departments, hire companies, and fleet operators to legally raise the Gross Vehicle Mass of these vehicles by 500kg over factory specs. This is obviously no tin-shed operation.

It is the aim of Carroll’s to offer their customers a high level of expertise and to consult closely with them about their needs. A nice touch is the specification sheet that’s filled out at the time of fitting, taking note of how the vehicle is set up, as well as listing the suspension components fitted and the date, as well as the suggested time for a check service. It’s all about professionalism.

Suspension Terminology
There are a few terms regularly used when suspension components are being discussed. What they actually mean is set out for you here. Shot Peening. A process that is designed to relieve surface tension of steel springs to resist cracking. The steel is bombarded by shot, usually as it is rolled around in a bin designed for the job.

Scragging. Done after the shot peening is completed, the coil spring is then fully compressed, and then measured. A decrease in length of up to 6mm is tolerated, any more than that and the spring is discarded. Some springs are double scragged, but this is more the exception than the rule.

Valving. Valving in a damper will determine the amount of damping resistance the shock will offer. The piston is velocity activated, in other words the harder the damper works, the more resistance is given. Resistance is often felt after slowing down on a very corrugated road, and you get the impression that the vehicle is going to shake itself to bits. As the damper resistance lessens, so the ride improves.

Words and Pics: John Denman - Taken from the Overlander 4WD website. http://www.overlander.com.au/pg/equipment.php?id=48