Can anyone tell me the size of the stud on the front ball joint shock?

This would be the stud that is part of the shock that goes throught he upper shock mount.

95% sure its 10mm on a Bilstein shock. Not sure if other brands use a SAE size.

Confirmed, 10mm for a Bilstein stem. The rubber mount gromets have a \"step\" dimension of 16mm which fits into the stock mounting hole. Again I'm not sure if other manufacturers use SAE sized components rather than metric for this application.

My front Bilsteins has a grade 8 3/8 fine thread bolt welded to the top.

DaveCo11 wrote:


Out of curiosity, is that how it came or a repair of some kind?

Naw my dad and I made them about 30 years ago. All the parts to the front and rear shocks are OOOOLD. I showed you my shocks at the Midnight race last year. The ones that hold 3 gallons of oil each, 2 lines with one way check valves. The only way to keep a shock cool. Infact mine run so cool I never burn up seals or oil or anything on the shocks. First did it in 1978-79. The resivors extend from doorpost to doorpost and NEVER fade. Someday the oil will be changed, but they work so well the way they are there is no need to do anything to them. One thing I can say is nothing goes bad because of heat!!

Yeah I remember looking at the shocks and speaking with you. I made a pair of rears with the circulating lines for the Gustavo Mesa class 11 which is under construction. As with the sidemount shocks I think the price and mounting complexity of these systems will be the limiting factor for most 11 cars. The current pursuit is to bring the performance of the base shocks up and deliver the most bang for the buck.

I agree with you about the base shocks and most bang for the buck. I came up with the side mount shock in 1978 and my dad made it which Mickey thompson started to copy our shock but in a 65MM size that some started running in the stock shock position in 5/1600 when you were required to run the stock shock mount in the rear. I turned Eric onto the Idea a couple of years ago which you then made for him. The circulating reservoir my dad came up with in the 1970s when we were burning Bilsteins off the 11 car every race. It works, but I am amazed that more have not done it. If I was to build a class 7 or 7s I would mount the front reservoirs behind the cab and have the lines go threw the cab, think how cool you could keep the shocks in the woops of San Felipe!?!? or a TT or class 1. The shocks on the class 11 I showed you never hardly get warm no mater how hard it is driven or where it is driven. and those are stock shock size on a swingaxel. I find it cool you are making some double line shocks. I have found it unnecessary up front as they just dont get hot enough up front on a 11, I only run a single line set up up front. Just dont go cheap on the check valves, we experemented with a few different check valves before we went full blown overkill and never had a problem since. Good luck with them Joel.