Real simple Nay - the statment was made
This is the sort of travel the swivel arms and a frame give an 80 with the sway bars disconnected.
And the counter statment is 'you can get that sort of travel with the stock set-up', which is 100% true. Extension and compression of a shock is only a way of measureing the sort of travel (amount of travel) you have, it's not about a swinging competition. If you go off pictures, you can argue angle, or tire size, if you go RTI ramp, you can argue tire composition, sidewall flex, air pressure, how you drive up the ramp, and on and on. If you measure shock extension on one side, and shock compression on the other side, that takes all the pissing contest out of it as that really tells you where the axle is relative to the frame.
Yes, it is only a measure of ultimate stuff and ultimate droop, and does nothing to speak of balance or quality of suspension travel. But that balance and quality isn't what was presented, what was presented was ultimate travel, and that is what was countered.
As far as the 80 not needing 14" of travel in the rear w/o freeing up the front, I can only speak from personal experience in that my 80 handles trails much better with 14" than it did with 10" and I haven't freed up the front.
Actually, the more interesting part of this build is how he frees up the front to make use of the longer travel front shocks, as making use of the longer rear shocks doesn't require any work. And we haven't seen anything on that yet, except the possible use of an X-link. Even in the rear, the more interesting thing in that frame work isn't the amount of travel that can be obtained with it, is the elimination of the panhard bar.
wou .. this exhaust looks good .. really nice !
