Lets Talk Limit Straps

We're SlikRok Productions and we get I kid you not probably a thousand questions a month on different questions on parts, products, just installation things and we want to do our best to answer as many as we can so and we do a lot of it we get PM a lot so we get a lot of people asking us questions but we're going to try to take like the top 20 every month right and and try to break these down and answer them publicly bear in mind there is no dumb questions not at all utvs people who bash other people for for questions they think are silly online really irritate me because they ask those silly questions 1.2 right we all evolve we all start somewhere there's no dumb questions with slick Rock from the easiest answers the most complicated ones we all need to answer your information we do not care we've answered the same questions hundreds of times we don't care we're here to help so all of our platforms if you have something that you need to answered ask us recap we'll help you we're happy deal so one of the top ones we've been getting is centered around limit straps do I need limit straps how do I know I need limit stress apps how do you put on limit straps just that's kind of been the centralized questions around them so let's let's go a little simple there's two reasons you need Limitless traps the one reason is it doesn't apply to 99 of us out there is for racers racers will squat their cars down they want to limit the amount of travel so they limit the amount of body roll it's a very aggressive sway bar so to speak but if you do that you're also limiting where you articulate right your car is going to ride a lot rougher it is a lot more controllable high speeds that's why Racers do it but it really depends on what kind of racing you're doing for the rest of us out there we want to control our articulation we want to control our droop so independent front suspension we don't run sway bars in the car a lot of you guys probably pull them as well if you're rock crawlers you're definitely pull them if you're Mountain Riders the thing is about ifs is it's the acronym is independent suspension and so when you have independent suspension the suspension should move independently if you have a sway bar it's not independent anymore right and so what a sway bar does is it links both sides together so if you go into a body roll situation like you're turning a sharp corner as your car starts to go into a dive it pulls on the other side to start leveling it back out so that's a safer way to go at high speeds but it also takes away your ride quality and so you know we don't run sway bars on most of our cores most people run just a rear on there if you have a front sway bar take it off throw in the garbage can no need to I promise you you don't but but for the most part when we're at full droop especially when you're running portals and you're running you know long travel it's a what you run into is you'll bottom the shock out and you can do damage inside of there if it goes too far or it'll pull your axle apart or pull it out right and so it your suspension will only travel so far and so what we like to do is we like to find full droop and then we'll back that off an inch and measure our mounting points and that's usually we're running because we we don't want to limit any articulation we have we just want to stop it before it pulls an axle out or does damage to itself especially with the amount of mass like you mentioned that we have on the corners of our machines right I mean we're running 35 37 40 inch Tires Plus the weight of the poor portal right it's a lot to bottom out that shock and there's a ton of companies out there that we have on madhouse Motorsports that have done the math for you if you want if you want to run limit straps in a car they're specifically set up they go from shock hole to shock hole and so it's basically just taking one inch out of your travel just to keep it safe so it doesn't come back in right a lot of our cars we do custom stuff on we'll weld our own tabs we use our own straps you can mount them in any way you want and you can you can literally decide if you want to take two inches out three inch um we've got my Kawasaki's on long travel Plus Portals plus spacers plus five two wheels that car is basically Square it's super low and so I had to take two inches of full drip out of that car because it would rub on the axles and you know what I mean so but the whole point of the limit strap is is to not damage anything at full droop right so if you're in a situation where you're articulating and it pulls an axle out or you can hear that thump in your shock that's clunking that'll do damage both of those over time so we just want to minimize that by reducing it a little bit yeah exactly and then let's back up a little bit why do we customize the locations of where we weld mounts to as opposed to just doing the shock eyelet so for me it's kind of two two reasons um you might have a different answer for this but number one I don't like my straps rubbing on on coils right I don't like contact in between there I want them out of the way most of them go from island island they put a space from between them on the back of a turbo car or back of any razor it's kind of tough because if you're on the back side of that your strap's going to melt on the exhaust you need to make sure you put them on the outside when you do that but um but I don't like them in way of that and plus when you're taking on and off your shocks it's kind of a pain in the butt to take your stuff off it's kind of tight real estate up in there and so the angle which it comes down where it stops you can run a lot shorter strap if you're welding a tab onto the frame which is typically what we do right or you know like on the Kawasaki we use the sway bar mount because we don't use sways but it at that point you can really customize yourself if if your suspension to set up a little bit different or you have a long travel kit or something outside of the norm and you buy a kit for your car specifically for your car everybody makes those kits for an OEM replacement and so if you're running long travel or portals and something else that might not specifically work for you you know correct so there's quite a few questions that are really hard to answer in there but I mean if you have those certainly message us so we'll we'll help you in any way we can but for us I think that the custom mounting location is you know one because we want to get them out of the way and for two we can run any length strap we want we have a lot more versatility in where we put them yeah and like Curt mentioned the best way to do that is let your machine fully droop out and then measure it and back it off an inch yeah Jack your machine up Let it droop out all the way put it back down let a squat an inch pull a measurement from bolt hole to bolt hole or for mounting location to mounting location if you're going to change it that's the length of strap you need a lot of people will tell you that a strap will stretch a half inch I don't know if that's necessarily true unless they're wet you know I mean they're really thick they're really Hardy you know what I mean but you can buy yourself a half or quarter inch if you want to if it makes you feel better you know what I mean a half inches is going to make the biggest difference in the world you know yeah it doesn't don't let that part of the equation freak you out a little bit we get that question a whole bunch and the next question is do I need to run limit straps on the front and rear um it really depends most of our cars we only have them on the front if you're not bottoming a shock out and you are not um pulling axles back out you don't even need them you know what I mean yeah and so it's like some of our cars the fronts we seem to run a lot more because we drew heavier on the fronts right The Backs really depends on your setup but if if you're here in shocks clunk when your suspension is drooping out no matter what run limit straps it's a lot better it's a lot cheaper investment to protect the shock and the eternals from that because your option is is you break something in there it's full rebuild it's expensive right yep so it's a good rule of thumb they're easy to install I mean it's like it said just take an inch out of full droop put them at that location and you'll be great perfect so if you guys have any other questions please please reach out to us if not if you're looking for limit straps hit up madhousemotorsports.com yeah we got three four different brands of them on there and we like um Sandcraft makes great ones MTS, SuperATV makes great ones PRP makes great straps whatever you need we got at madhousemotorsports.com