King Off-Road Racing Shocks

Cognito's bread and butter is designing lift kits, so when it comes to shock options, they leave that up to the owner to decide on. Although the company has been around for decades building shocks for everything from SCORE Trophy Trucks to Unlimited Class 1 Buggies, we have noticed that lately a lot of  lifted diesels we have featured are running King shocks. Before we decided to run King's Pre-Runner Billet Piggyback Reservoir 2.5 Shocks, we decided to give them a call and see what all the hype was about.

King goes the extra mile with their cylinder bores, honing them to a tolerance of +- .001. It's an expensive process, but an invaluable one to consumers. The rod end of King shocks is made from 7075 cold drawn aircraft aluminum and uses spherical bearings. The piston is also made from the same aluminum, offering extra strength and less heat expansion at high temperatures. The shaft itself is ultra-hard since it's crafted with induction-hardened high carbon steel and micro-polished to a surface finish of 2-4 RMS. Reservoirs are made from hard-coated aluminum to save weight while having improved heat dissipation characteristics.

Internally, all seals are made with high-temp viton material with a wiper seal machined in-house from a carbon composite material. To ensure consistency and accuracy, King uses precision diamond tooling to machine their seals. Along with a piston design unique to King Shocks, the valving is designed for high temperature use using heat-treated stainless to keep it from losing strength as temps rise. All shock parts are available individually and can be rebuilt with no special tools.

King custom makes most of their shocks based on customer needs or specifications. If you don't know the exact valving or adjustments needed, give them a call and they'll be able to provide the right setup for your truck.

Rolling Gear

One of the hardest choices when it comes to any project is deciding which wheels to run. We found a match with American Racing Wheels' chrome Chamber wheel in an 18x9.5 size. Part of the new ATX Off-Road line, the Chamber takes a classic multi-spoke design and updates it with a tougher look. It's available in a chrome or black Teflon finish and for eight-lug bolt patterns it can be had in 17- and 18-inch diameters.

When it came to tires, we went with Cooper Tire's Discoverer STT-short for Super Traction Tire-in a 35x12.5x18 size. The all-around 4X4 tire has an E load range and max load rating of 3415, making it completely capable of handling anything we were planning on hauling. The Discoverer STT uses Cooper's unique Armor-Tek3 carcass construction, employing two radial polyester body plies and one angled polyester body ply. This helps the tire resist impact breaks and bruising.

The computer-designed non-directional tread pattern also looks downright mean. Not that we're going to take the Sierra rock crawling, but if we did, the deep buttress shoulder lugs extending from the tread down to the sidewall with a flawless finish in every little groove would come in handy when aired down, and the STT has a rim flange protector to offer some extra insurance against damaging the lip of the Chamber wheels. Down the center of the tire, an integral stone ejector rib prevents stones and debris from lodging into the crevices. In the short time it took while we were getting the tires mounted and balanced, several of the customers and technicians at the tire shop commented on how attractive a tire the STT was.

On the highway, there is a noticeable increase in tire noise-that's to be expected any time an aggressive of a tread pattern is used. But compared to similar tires we have driven on, the Cooper produces less noise than the majority of its counterparts. The response to steering input and handling in general was on par with the factory rubber as well, which is impressive considering how much more sidewall there is to flex. Overall, we think the addition of the new STT to the Discoverer lineup will be a valuable one for Cooper Tire.