Revolver Shackles
Why
install another type of shackle when there are so many out there? Because
there is nothing on the market available that renders the benefits of
Curt Hildebrand's invention. This is not just any normal shackle. Curt
ran these and tested them for over two years before the first sale was
ever made. He stirred up the interest in the shackle at Moab last year
using a free Internet offer for web hosting for thirty days prior to the
Moab trip.
Curt took about six sets of the shackles with him and was literally selling them in the parking lot. He was telling folks that if they weren't happy with them to bring them back to him and he would give them their money back. According to Curt, he did not get a return. He slapped them on for free and he knew he had something.
The Revolver shackle allows free movement of the axle in a vertical manner, netting a more comfortable ride. The articulation it gains comes close to, if not exceeding, what you get out of a coil conversion. We all know the price we pay for those kits. They are high dollar conversions that require professional installation most of the time and then add on to the price of the kit itself. It can get expensive quickly.
After
reading about the Revolver Shackle and visiting the company web site,
I gave Curt Hildebrand a call to find out what was up with this shackle.
After watching the movie clips he has on the site, I decided to get a
set to bolt up to my Suzuki Samurai.
The shackles arrived promptly. As I pulled one of the shackles out of the box and unwrapped the bubble wrap, the first thing I noticed was how well finished they were. The welds were perfect and you could tell this was a quality built product with very strict tolerances and machining techniques.
The most important thing to remember about the installation of this product is to take the time necessary to get the full advantage of what the shackle will do. It is necessary to "test fit" the shackle on the rest of the suspension before you take your vehicle off-road. Simply bolting the shackle up will give you a better ride right off the bat. But, the first off-camber situation you get into and you cross the suspension up, you'll get a surprise like snapping a brake line or separating your drive shaft because of your newly found wheel travel.
The shackle will net you as much as eleven inches of wheel travel in the front of your vehicle and as much as ten in the rear. So do it right and test fit before you massage up the suspension. The precautions that you need to take are clearly laid out in the instructions and you can call Curt for further detail. I will cover some of them in the review.
After
the install I can tell say that these shackles are worth their weight
in gold. The ride in my Samurai is now equal to the ride in my 97 TJ,
which, if you did not know, is pretty much the same setup as the pre-98
Grand Cherokees.
My first off-road adventure with the shackles involved me getting out in a local playground and crossing the suspension up to see what would happen. This is the result. I have the sway bar disconnects off in the front and you can see that the wheel travel rivals a coil sprung vehicle.
