METALCLOAK VIDEO: Falcon/TeraFlex vs RockSport Black/MetalCloak | Real Data & Hardness Results: Shock Dyno Comparison
This detailed comparison explores the MetalCloak RockSport BLACK Performance Long Travel Shock against one of its major competitors, Falcon Shocks. Using shocks that have been through real-world conditions such as the Rubicon Trail, Prairie City, and street use, this review highlights key differences in shaft size, body size, seal alignment, mounting position, and adjustability. Real dyno data demonstrates the effectiveness of the RockSport BLACK’s tuning capabilities versus Falcon’s, emphasizing MetalCloak’s focus on durability, precision engineering, and off-road functionality.
Complete Transcript with Time Stamps:
[0:00] I want to take a second to try to compare at least some basic features between, shocks commonly used in our industry that many of you will already be familiar with. These are all used shocks right here. These have been on rigs. We've run them. We've test them. We run them over the Rubicon. We've run them at Prairie City. We've run them as much as we can on the streets to try to see how they perform over time.
[0:24] But, so that's why you're gonna see some dirty shocks here, including this, RockSport has also been run. But one of the key points to note here is that common competitor of ours, Falcon, I wanna show you what their, shaft size is. Their shaft size is the 3/4" shaft. What that does is it does restrict them on their induction hardening on the thickness that they can do because they still have to maintain a soft core. We have a lot more flexibility in ours, and our unit is 7/8" (0.874") in size. It's induction hardened to about fifty thousandths deep. We try to run it about 60 Rockwell.
[1:06] A typical, a Fox shock, granted this is not in the same category as these others, but you need to watch out for what you do buy and try to get as thick a shafts as you can possibly do. In this case, this is a 5/8" on this particular Fox. Granted, it's a 2.0, but they have a 5/8" shaft. Trying to just show you in comparison the size of the shafts that we use.
[1:30] Now, let's also look at the body size. In this case, MetalCloak uses a 2.5" body. Falcon uses a 2.3". And in this case, no no problem against Fox because it's it's near 2", but they claim it's a 2".
[1:50] If you look at one of our competitors here, you will see that the stem in which they attach to a JK front is offset from the shaft. That's a really bad, design feature. And I understand why they did it because it's an it's a less expensive way to get away from the frame and get the offsets you need for the, for the shock body, but there are other ways to do that that we do it that way.
[2:20] But when this is offset, you are building a side load into your seal, head. From the very beginning, you have a force coming here and a force coming here, and they're twisting. They're trying to put a side load at all times on your seals. That's a bad practice. Even if it's only an inch, that's a very bad practice.
[2:39] If you look at ours and most of the industry, you will see that our stem aligns perfectly with our shaft. Therefore, we have zero side load on our seal head. Longevity. All about longevity. We choose to get our, offsets away from the frame by making brackets and connection points different that you have to add to the assembly, to the whole assembly, and it makes the assembly more expensive. That's what it does. It makes it more expensive by adding brackets that create that offset. But it's much better function for the shock itself.
[3:20] At MetalCloak, we are always trying to design for flex and clearance because we started our roots in rock crawling. And rock crawling, you need clearance or you damage your parts underneath your Jeep. So even when we design our shocks, we try to get away from the things that will contact obstacles underneath the Jeep.
[3:42] In this case, it's very interesting that we found that Falcon built a shock where their entire mechanism mounts at the bottom or near the, the axle of the rear of a JK. Well, by doing that, as you can see, this this has been out on the trail and been used, and one of our customers gave it back to us after we replaced his Falcons with our RockSport Blacks.
[4:09] You can see what happens. This is a precision device here, and it's getting beat to it's just getting beat to death underneath the rig. That's not a something we just randomly added or that just is use. Use just beats the crud out of the bottom of these Falcons.
[4:27] We design ours to mount on our JK in this direction so that the smallest and least likely items to get caught so that we have plenty of clearance from objects is at the bottom. The reservoir and the shock body are at the top tucked up underneath. So it we just went throughout designing this entire process. We were thinking of our customers and their needs and make everything as simple and as functional and with the most feature rich product that we could do.
[4:59] So we're here at the, R & D section of MetalCloak where we do our dyno testing of our Black shocks as well as our other shocks. With Spencer, he's one of the engineers on the RockSport Black Shocks, just like I was. We developed that together. But he's a much better at handling the dyno. So he's gonna go through the dyno and show you how we actually test the performance of our shock and in the case of the, RockSport Black, the reservoir adjustments system on the Black shock.
[5:33] So here we're using a testing machine called the shock dyno and it cycles the shock back and forth and we're able to record the force that the shock puts out. You might use the lower settings, you know, one and two for a softer, plusher ride. But if you're carrying some weight or if you want a tighter ride, you can turn it up to eight.
[5:52] When we graph it out, we can see the difference between our different settings on the clicker. A lot of shocks out there, when you make adjustments, you can't quite tell what's going on. You don't feel it. But with the RockSport Black, you definitely can feel the difference between the clicker positions.
[6:06] We've tested other competitor shocks. This is a Falcon right now. On this shock, on the Falcon shock, they have ten settings, but when you actually look at it on the dyno, the difference is pretty minor between the last several settings. You're really only getting a little bit of adjustment.
[6:27] At MetalCloak, we were very careful in our design process to make every feature optimized for a wide array of vehicles. Our RockSport Black Shock is custom engineered, meticulously designed, and precision manufactured in the USA. Designed, engineered, proven. MetalCloak.
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