The Truth About Long Travel
In the early '90s a company named Laeger busted out on the scene with the ProTrax suspension design that took the ATV world by storm. The limiting factor in travel at that time was ball joint bind. In order to remedy the problem, Mark Laeger designed spindles that do not have ball joints so that travel would not be limited. He figured significantly more suspension travel would be used with his new front end and that shock length was going to be the next limiting factor. While doing his research, he found that repositioning the lower shock mount would allow for a much longer shock to be run. The position was not only lower on the A-arm, but moved farther out on the arm, which also gave the benefit of reducing body roll. What happened next was riders like Kory Ellis and Greg Stuart were showing up at races with long-travel quads that sat extremely high, and some of the performance gain of the long-travel setup was actually lost in cornering. CT Racing's Allen Knowles then built the first two-spring shock, which would allow one to control ride height and was run by Mickey Thompson champion and speedster Charlie Shepherd. Riders such as Ellis, Shane Hitt and Joe Bird soon followed to this extremely expensive hand-built hlins Big Body shock setup. Wayne Mooradian of PEP shocks was not far behind releasing his own ZPS (for Zero Preload System), which gave the ATV a ride-height control spring suspension package as well as lots of wheel travel. Obviously this time period kicked off all sorts of exciting new suspension innovations and advancements for ATVs.
The myth while on the subject of A-arms is the long-travel terminology, as long shock does not mean long travel. The ball joints are the limiting factor for travel, and few ball joint front ends can actually exceed 12.5 inches of swing without the shock even bolted on. You can get 12 inches of travel from a 16.25-inch shock, so having a 19.25-inch shock does not add travel but rather adds what we prefer to call "quality travel." The only true long-travel front end on the market that we can think of is the Laeger ProTrax. It doesn't use ball joints, so the swing is usually limited to the A-arm tabs. Your travel is limited by your shock builder, but ultimately it's going to come back to around 12 inches, and that's attained by most of the quality ball joint front ends on the market today, such as Roll Design, Lonestar Racing, Houser Racing and Walsh Racecraft.
ATVs that come stock with short shocks such as Honda's TRX250R, TRX400EX, TRX450R, Yamaha's YFZ450, Banshee, Raptor 660 and 700, Suzuki's LT-Z400 and Kawasaki's KFX450 all benefit the most from long-shock A-arms if you're planning to go with a wide A-arm setup. This allows the shock builders to do more with the shock like add rebound without sacrificing travel and have added leverage ratio benefits. Both the Suzuki LT-R450 and Yamaha YFZ450R already possess very good leverage ratios from the factory. The Can-Am DS 450 has a wide top shock mount, so it benefits from having the lower shock mount moved out, which helps to cut body roll. The KTM ATVs have the shock mount too high on the A-arm, which limits travel. This quad benefits from lowering the mount, and there are some companies that can just mod the KTM stock arms to achieve this benefit in a cost-effective manner. All four of these machines have long enough shocks that the benefits of purchasing aftermarket A-arms is less significant than those listed above.
Shocks: The Real Suspension Workhorse
So the reality of it is that the new design of A-arms didn't necessarily give us more travel, but gave us the ability to run a longer and better-designed shock. In the early years there were very few companies to choose from, but now with such great advancements in the world of suspension it's possible to get great product from a plethora of companies like Fox Racing Shox, Noleen J6, Works, Motowoz, HLS, PEP, hlins, Custom Axis, Elka, Race Tech and the list can go on for days. Many of these companies have made certain breakthroughs in their own ways as far as shock performance.
Fox Racing Shox went a very unique direction in its design compared to everyone else. Its shocks feature both high- and low-speed compression damping as well as rebound, but instead of using springs the Fox folks developed an air ride technology. The shocks come with air pumps so that you can run as much or as little air pressure in the shocks as you want, which is the equivalent of changing springs without the extra hassle. Another added benefit of this design is the reduction of weight, since the springs have been eliminated. By no means was this a new technology for Fox, since it has been making air shocks since the 1970s, but this was definitely new technology for the ATV market. It's also important to add that Custom Axis has also developed its own unique air-shock design and has experienced good success from its design and weight savings.