Randy Progressive Suspension
Randy has been involved with suspension construction and tuning for over three decades, working with multiple prominent race teams during that time to develop an intricate understanding of its inner workings. For the past six years, he has brought his overall know how of suspension mechanics to the Progressive Suspension team to assist in developing the company’s first automotive shocks in its 40 year history. He is a true believer in the patented Frequency Sensing Technology that lives at the heart of every shock Progressive Suspension produces for the Jeep market.
Hi, I’m Tony and welcome to the Jeep Talk Show, the talk show where we talk about all things Jeep from trail riding to overlanding and everything in between. It’s Friday, so that means another great guest interview. So without further delay, let’s get into it. Are you ready? It’s time for the Jeep Talk Show with hosts Tony, Josh, Wendy and Chuck.
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All right, you boys and girls, it’s time for another Jeep Talk Show interview. Today, we’re going to be talking with Randy from Progressive Suspension. Randy has been involved with suspension, construction and tuning for over three decades. He looks like he’s 30, so I don’t get this. Working with multiple prominent race teams during the time to develop intricate understanding of its inner workings. For the past six years, he has brought his knowledge of know how suspension mechanics to the progressive suspension team to assist in developing the company’s first automotive shocks in its 40 year history. He’s a true believer in the patented frequency sensing technology that lives at the heart of every shock progressive suspension produces for the Jeep market. Randy, thanks a lot for being here with us today. I’m glad you made time for us and look at this, man. You’re all set up with displays and everything. So I need to make sure we did well, we actually have two shows. We have a audio only show and then we have the audio video that we do on YouTube. So if you want to see what I’m talking about, you need to go to YouTube, to our YouTube channel so you can see this. Randy, thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having us as a company as well. So really appreciate you guys reaching out and just really, really excited to be a part of this for the fact that we have something that’s very unique and it’s good to be able to tell that that side of the story for our brand. So I think everybody at some point in their life, maybe not with their Jeep, but I think everybody at some point in their life knows what a bad shock will do on a vehicle Jeep or otherwise. It just gets bouncy or it’s rough or something like that. What do you do or what does a progressive suspension do to help the Jeep other than just, you know, slapping another, maybe a longer Jeep, Jeep, a longer shock if you have a lift. What is the progressive suspension? Why should I buy progressive suspension shocks for Jeep or any aftermarket shocks as far as that goes?
So a lot of times aftermarket shocks in general, they’re good.
A lot of different brands out there are good for a lot of different things.
So ours is a little bit unique, but we’ll talk about another other manufacturers when they have external adjustments, which means you can either adjust the rebound, which would be down here lower on the shock or sometimes on the body or the body itself will have a compression adjuster, which is usually the low speed. If it’s got a dual system on it, which is a low speed, high speed, I mean, it’s a little more tricky.
The good thing about that is that you can adjust it however you want. When we started our testing, we’ve used a lot of different other manufacturers to get a baseline of where we need to be. So by doing that, it takes I got a five mile loop by my house and our first of all, our engineering team is second to none. One of the guys that left his name Scott Hodgins put a lot of time and effort of this and worked with FST for a really long time. And we have Darrell and his team now that have taken over now that Scott has gone. And it is just really easy to work with this engineering team. I work with John really close on doing valving and stuff on it. But the good thing about external adjustments for any other brand out there is that you can tune it to be able to go ahead and have it off road capabilities. Be amazing. And then you’re going to have to get out and put all your settings back in and then go in and hit the street or you’re going to do light trail stuff, which is another. So you have to get settings for everything, which is which is fine if you’re a tinker or you’re a tuner.
Just to give you an example, for me to tune a set of shocks that we had, it took me four hours in a five mile loop. I and that that loop is part of going past my house. And I think on the like 13th loop, my wife, my wife looked at me and said, that’s it. I can’t pass home. Just take me home. She’s like, you’re constantly pulling over. You’re constantly tuning it. But I mean, she gets it. That’s that’s part of what I do. And I I nerd out on it, to be honest, I really do nerd out on it.
So by the time I figured out, I write those settings down and then I got to go up in the dirt and figure out what it does in the dirt and write all that stuff down and figure all that out. With this system, because of the piston, it’s kind of hard to see, but there’s small ports right here. There’s one taken apart. But these small holes inside of this thing, what it is is there is our piston has an o-ring that goes over it more like a Dalron ring. It’s not a rubber o-ring. It won’t roll on itself as it goes together with this piston does.
As this this o-ring will move up and down and that’s determining compression to make it either stiffer or harder. Some people would say and rebound as it goes down. It’ll add rebound to it, which means how fast it comes out, goes back to a stock length or how slow it comes back. And the reason why that this is unique is because it’s an internal, low internal bleed, a bypass, if you would.
As you’re hitting bumps, it’s constantly adapting to everything you’re doing. Sharp edge bump, high speed, low speed. Based off the valving, which is the shims, imagine a pyramid turning it upside down and you have all these little pieces that are stepped upside down. Each one of those bends add a certain amount of hydraulic pressure. So we still have a valve stack, but because of the FST and how this o-ring moves up and down and either pushes or pulls oil, it sits on a certain thing. It doesn’t go all the way down and all the way up. It kind of finds a happy medium. Like this is what we’re doing. We’re going over some low speed bumps at 20 miles an hour and they’re just rollers. So it’s really easy to go through or we’re going 20 miles an hour over pretty big bumps. So I have to let the rebound be a little quicker so that it comes out in the stroke long and I need to be a little softer initially. And then I need to be a little stiffer on the bigger bumps so that it doesn’t bottom out. Because of the FST and the way that we have it tuned or valves, some people would say, it’s constantly adapting to all of that stuff.
I got a buddy of mine that’s owned a Jeep before. He got rid of it because he just didn’t like the ride. What I did is on the street as I actually put the Jeep up onto the medium where it’s got River Rock embedded and I kept his side on the street. And he couldn’t believe that that side of the Jeep was almost as smooth at 35 miles an hour. You’re hitting bumps, but it’s not jarring your body and it’s smooth. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a vehicle where you start making this weird noise when you’re trying to talk. All that goes away. It all gets absorbed based off of this FST system versus something where you constantly got to get out and change adjustments. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having those types of shocks. The problem is that consumer usually doesn’t do that. So we had to come out with something for them. And what we did is we took our technology from the motorcycle side, from the Harley side, for the fact that because you have bags usually on a bagger blocking the shocks, it’s too hard to take one down, try and fine tune it, then close the bag, especially if you’re doing a 5000 mile or 3000 mile trip to Sturgis from Florida or California.
You don’t have time to mess with that. Set the preload and you go. And that’s where our engineer team said, you know, we should get an automotive and we have this great technology. So let’s try it on Jeeps. And we did. And it has been amazing. It’s been an amazing two and a half, three years of development and working with our our team of engineers that we have that have been on this. They’re constantly they’re like FST themselves. They’re constantly overcoming and adapting to everything that we have going on. It’s really like I said, it’s a great team. And I think that’s why we are on top, in my opinion, because we still make it fun. And Darrell and his team, Vanessa and John, they just do an amazing job of making sure that what we put out of here is absolute best. So let me ask you to make sure my understanding is correct on this. So would you say that a OEM shock or a OEM replacement shock is made to be average in all kinds of probably more on road than anything else? So the the valving, the way it rebounds, all that stuff is is based on just kind of the average type thing, nothing specific.
I think they they do it. I think.
From what I’ve seen, what they actually do is what you’re saying is it’s made more for the pavement. It can take some off-road stuff, but you’re talking three to maybe 10 miles an hour. Anything after that, the shock doesn’t have enough time to react. So in my opinion, not in my opinion, and just based on what we’ve seen, a lot of the shocks end up cavitating because they they can’t react fast enough to what it’s doing. And if it’s doing some crawling to three to five miles an hour, it seems to be OK. But then you get a big drop and it doesn’t know what to do. So the wheel stays off the ground, then it finally comes back to the rock or even in the bumps before you know it. You’re you’re making the car react faster than the shock can. So you went from rollers. Now you’re now you’re kind of hopping in the front end wants to. Well, I think everybody’s been on the washboard type roads, even people that aren’t in off-road vehicles. And those those are just irritating because of that constant vibration. And just to make sure everybody understands cavitation, cavitation is whenever a liquid gets like air bubbles in it. And as a hydraulic fluid, that’s not good because you could compress a gas, but you can’t compress a liquid. So cavitation means it’s going to be really be acting up as far as not performing the way it’s supposed to. So the thing I’m pointing out here is to make sure people understand why should I put anything other than just a standard shock on my Jeep? And the things you’re describing allows you to make adjustments for your Jeep and for your style of off-roading. The thing I don’t understand is, though, because I’m only I’m only mildly familiar with with shocks like there’s one manufacturer that has a switch like a high medium low or I think they actually call it different things. But it sounds like you’re doing something different here because these adjustments that you’re making, you’re just kind of getting it within a range. And correct me on this, if I’m wrong, you’re kind of getting it for a range based on, I would think, a position on the Jeep and the weight of the Jeep or whatever vehicle. And once you get it adjusted, now it’s going to operate inside that range and adjust by itself. Is that does that sound right? Yep, pretty much what we’ve we’ve done is we’ve taken the average from what the street feels like, but some rollers feel like some over landing, rock crawling. And we’ve come up with the right valve stack that can compensate for all that stuff. And there’s enough there’s enough movement internally to either close the compression off or rebound off to have more than enough rebound and more than enough compression to compensate whether you’re on the street or if you’re even rock crawling or if you’re even doing some 50 mile an hour open desert stuff. It takes care of it. So I know there’s going to be people out there that are nervous hearing you on that five mile track doing all these adjustments, 13 loops and stuff. Is that only for like for your research or is this something that individuals would have to do with your shocks? No, our shocks, they’re they’re both on a go. It’s ready to go. The research I had to do is I had to do it with other competitors to see how I could tune their shock and what felt best to get it tuned for the street over landing and for regular off road and some rock crawling. Once I had those settings, everything gets dynoed and we see what kind of graphic gives us at a certain point, even with it fully adjusted and it felt good. There was some cavitation showing. So ours, because of the FST, it allows it not to cavitate based off of the FST system, the way it works.
An external adjustment is like a like a like a pop pin. So I don’t think I have what I do. So inside of a pin, when you there’s a hole and when you push the pin out, the needle or the pin comes out and blocks it. That’s what the needle does as you as you bring the needle further away from the arborist, it allows a blow by or a bypass. I’m sorry. As it’s bypassing the piston, it makes it smoother and more oil to flow through without having on the bypass side. As you close the needle into the hole, it’s forcing more and more oil to go through the valve. Well, for the most part, you have to do that externally by hand with this system. It does it internally, which allows the customer, the regular consumer to be able to drive the thing without having to know how to tune the shock. Oh, perfect. That’s that’s where I was going with this because it sounds it sounded really complex and I don’t think it is. But yeah, so so are there any adjustments that the end user can do that are simple adjustments? Nope. Plug it in and go. Oh, no, it’s a hundred percent turnkey. Put this thing on, put it to the torque specs.
Our bushings, the way they design, we also have a clamp design. We have a steel bushing in here that when you clamp it down, you can’t overtighten it. It doesn’t matter how tight you put it clamps onto that, which allows our rubber bushing to go ahead and float around that still bushing that we put inside of there. So it’s a pretty big deal. A lot of companies, for some reason, they don’t do it. And it’s super important to make sure shock has movement as it’s compressing. It’s going one way or the other, and it’s got to be able to move. So we’ve designed everything to be able to move. The other thing we use. Go ahead. I’ll just keep going. No problem. No problem. This is good stuff. So what’s the difference between the shock and you correct me on any of these terms, the shock that doesn’t have a reservoir and the shock that does which which one do I need?
That’s a good question.
A lot of times it comes down to the guys that are going to be doing a lot more high speed, open surface. This is going to keep cooler, has more oil and has a larger amount of larger volume of nitrogen inside of it.
This, the IFP, it has less.
You still put the right the same amount of pressure. It just doesn’t have the amount of volume of nitrogen. It will get a little bit hotter in my opinion for unless you’re doing way open open desert stuff at 100 miles an hour for a long long period of time. They’re going to react pretty much the same.
But one looks a lot cooler. I mean, you know, and that’s what it comes down to. A lot of people are like, man, this guy has a reservoir and blah, blah, blah. Like I said, this is going to stay a lot cooler, but it also works. Like I said, this is going to stay a lot cooler, but it also looks a lot cooler. I’m not going to lie. It’s just what it is. Have you guys thought about a kit where you just take the thing and add the thing to it?
You can’t. Yeah, you can’t. You can’t do that. It’s a little more complex than that. But the other thing with these is I don’t know if you can see it or not, but a lot of people have to drop the nitrogen to be able to crack the hose loose to move the reservoir into a certain location. Our design, it’s designed to go ahead and just move any way we want it. What with this is a field nitrogen and everything. So with the nitrogen in it, you don’t have to drop the nitrogen down. You’re not going to lose any oil. You can take this off and these will move 360 degrees all the way around. You can spin them all day long. A lot of guys will take this and actually move it up to the front of the Jeep and they’ll mount it there. We’ve done all the testing with tires, different lift kits. And the way we sent it to you with this bracket on it, it’s turnkey and ready to go. It’s not going to hit anything. Things haven’t gotten lodged up in there. We haven’t any kind of problems like that. But to answer your original question, yes, this is going to stay a lot cooler. It does react a little bit quicker, but in my personal opinion, unless you’re a tuner or you pay really close attention to those types of things, they’re going to react. They’re going to feel pretty much the same.
So let’s go to, let’s just assume people are going to want the cool one, the cool looking one.
There’s no downside to having the reservoir, correct? No, absolutely there is not. I mean, you’re going to pay for it a little bit more, obviously, because there’s a material cost involved. You know, you got half of a second body here.
But yeah, I mean, I tested with regular monotubes on our Jeep first for a while. And then before I went to Moab, I’m like, hey, I want reservoirs. And I’m the guy that knows. So and they’re just like, really? And I’m like, yeah, I just, you know, they’re clean. They look good. And it’s a it’s a badass Jeep. Well, I mean, if you got the logo on the side of the Jeep, you definitely want to have cool looking stuff on there. But that’s an interesting thing. And it actually I’m sure makes you guys more money when people buy the one with the additional reservoir on there. But it’s it’s not necessary in most cases. This is the thing that I’ve kind of found was that it’s really for high speed off road because you get the cavitation. So the reservoir helps with the cavitation as well. Right. It does. It helps with the shock staying a lot cooler.
It helps because you have a lot more nitrogen in there. You have more oil.
It does react a lot better in a high speed of the vehicle situation. For sure it does.
This thing also does very well in that type of stuff. But if if we’re in the desert and I’m going to be 80 to 100, 120 miles an hour all the time, I’m going to tell you that this is where you need to be. Yeah. So so if you’re not a high speed off rotor, if you’re a slow and curious rocks or mild shelves or anything like that, the monotube will be just fine all day long. Yeah. So they long and it’s and it’s and it’s nice to have two right like some. Well, there is some different I’ve seen some different stuff that people make for rock guards and stuff that go inside the fender wells. And there is no room for for these. So it’s nice to also have this because it reacts works just as good. And people are able to go ahead and put this still put something aftermarket and still have those rock guards and stuff that they have. They just the opening is not big enough for for two. Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. That’s I guess that would be one of the negatives about it is because you have to figure out how to mount the reservoir someplace. It’s great that you guys have done this where you can move it around. That’s definitely going to make it easier to mount. Do you guys have any kind of mounting kit or any mounting suggestions for the reservoir? I don’t. I see that there’s a lot of stuff even on Amazon out there. I see a lot of different things. You just put the O.D.s and I.D.s of what this canister would be and you can buy different clamps. A lot of guys just go ahead and buy the clap, buy different clamps that fit. And it’s it’s got a little recess and you screw it like sheet metal screw it right into the frame. And once it’s in there, it’s in there. Well, it sounds like it’s only slightly more complex than installing a shock. And if you guys have never installed a shock, it’s really easy, except whenever you cut the strap and you try to get in the right place before it expands completely.
Well, good. So it sounds like this is a good thing to have and a good product to have, especially from the standpoint that there’s nothing you do to it other than install it and drive it and enjoy it. So if people were interested in getting these, what would they need to know? How would they determine which shock they need for their Jeep? And you can pick whatever Jeep you want to pick as an example. So it’s super easy if you you can either call here or you can go to our website and the website is kind of split. It’s got a picture of a Jeep, a picture of a motorcycle. You know, obviously you’re going to go to the Jeep side of it. And we have stuff available for the JL, JK and the JT.
Those are the only ones we have. And this just depends on fitment. I want to say some of the JK, I think we go up to five inches and then most of the stuff is three to four. And then we and then we have it from zero to one and one to three. So if you don’t have a lift kit in stock, you can run either one or if you have the same one, also go to a three inch lift kit. So it can go from one to three just depending on what you have. So that’s how they would they would go about that. Or they could get a hold of Music City in.
Where’s that at, Ryan?
I want to say Tennessee, but I don’t know. It is in Tennessee. Is it? OK. Yeah, yeah. The guys over in Music City have done some really heavy testing on our stuff. And I was really excited to hear that that they had a lot of questions. And I talked with Thomas for probably 45 minutes to an hour at a dinner table. We actually got up and went to another table because everybody was being so loud. And he is he was just like, why no external adjustments? And I and explaining all these different things, I could see it in his face. And I was very fortunate that a president of our company suggested to me and Jenna that we take a valve and explain this so people could see how it actually works. Yeah, because if you don’t have a manual adjustment on it, because there’s there’s ones out there, high end shocks. And you think, well, this one’s not as good because it doesn’t have a knob on it. And that’s that’s where he was. He’s like, I can’t sell this to people without having some kind of an adjustment. You’re it’s just a basic shock. When I pulled the piston out, his eyes kind of went and I explained for 10 more minutes what I explained for 30 already. He looked at me and he goes, I get it. I understand it. And and I at the end of the conversation, I said, hey, Thomas, what’s going on with your Jeep that you don’t like about the shocks? He’s like, oh, nothing. They’re great.
I said, so rock crawling. He said, man, I jumped it this morning. Check this out. I didn’t mean to any any. He hopped it and it jumped and it landed. And I’m like, what it feel like? He’s like, it’s never felt that good ever. He’s like, I’ve used all these different things. And here’s what I came. What here’s what I had on it. Here’s what I got your stuff on it now. And I put a thousand miles on the street and he goes, I’m at about 800 miles on the in the desert. And I I love it. I said, so why are we having this conversation? What a knob.
And he kind of chuckled and looked at me and said, I don’t know. I don’t know. I go, so it shouldn’t work the way it’s working without adding a bunch of compression and letting a bunch of rebound out. Right. And he’s like, kind of, you know, I got to get out and put my notes in. I go, this thing, you’re driving it. And then he goes, I’m not even airing up. He goes, I’m staying at 15 to 20 PSI. And he goes, I just leave and drive back on the streets. And he goes, I just can’t believe how well it works. I guess so. Why why do I need an external adjustment? And he goes, yeah, I guess you don’t. It’s kind of a gimmick. It’s it’s new. You know, it’s not good. Shocks shouldn’t feel that way unless there’s external adjustments in people’s heads. So he was trying to wrap himself around it. He thought that if I had an external adjustment, if our company did that, that it would work that much better. And I’m like, no, man, you’re are you bottoming? Nope. He showed me all the stuff. And I’m like, what? Where where are we going with this? And he’s like, man, you’re right. So it was really it’s really good working with those. And at this point, those guys had sold, I don’t know, seven or eight sets now to customers. It’s actually well, that’s the thing. You got to get people to buy in on it. And as soon as they buy in on it, then they can explain the thing that was bothering them about the thing. And and it’s cool that you got the realization that why do you need an ob if it does takes care of itself? I mean, that’s the ultimate thing is it takes care of itself. You you get to enjoy the off-road experience without having to worry about making adjustments, pulling over and stopping. Oh, I got to adjust this. So that’s great. So have you guys thought about not that the the shock would actually be Bluetooth enabled, but just coming up with an app for so that you can change it on the app. It doesn’t do anything. It just makes people feel good because it’s gadgety and new. We there’s actually been talk about that from from some of the other stuff we make from the Harley Harley side.
No, because I don’t the app is cool, but at the same time, I don’t there’s nothing the app would really show you. It’s not like there’s a there’s not something that you need. You need like a temperature sensor. You need to use some sort of specific gravity of the oil, the hydraulic fluid, how much nitrogen. You know, that would be cool. That would be really gadgety. And the kids would love that. That would be cool. And I can’t imagine how much that would cost to put all those kinds of sensors. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. They’ll just tell people it doesn’t. You’re absolutely right. They’re like they’ll buy it because it has that. Exactly. Yeah, it’s crazy. All right. Well, let me give you an example. And for example, I’m going to use my 2021 Jeep Talk Show Gladiator is the example. I put a two inch Mopar lift on it.
How it is, let’s say I’m going with the reservoir one because it looks cool.
You got it. You got to do it. So I have a two inch lift, but it’s not really two inches. It’s a two inch lift wound up being about two inch lift in the rear and over four inches in the on the front. So what size shock do I buy or do I buy a four inch pair for the front and a two inch pair for the rear? You actually can. You can buy the one to three for the rear. So it’ll cover you all the way up to three inches if you decide to do something back there. And if it’s only sitting at two inches more, that’ll cover you all the way across the board there. And you can buy the two point five to two and a half to four and a half. Who is it? Or Ryan to the rescue. Ryan to the rescue again. Yep. There you go again. Yep. So yeah, like Ryan said, it would be three and a half to four for you said. So that that would easily cover the front. No problem. And we do they you can buy them separate. They come in a pair for the front or a pair for the roof. Perfect. Perfect. All right. So I don’t know that everybody measures the their Jeep when they put the lift on. A lot of people do. So I could see that might be an issue. Like say if I bought a two inch that two inch shock for both front and rear. What problem could I have? Could I actually damage the shock because it’s it’s extending itself further than what it should. Well, it’s going to try and extend itself further than it should. But the shock is not going to let it to be honest, because just like anything else, if you catch air at a certain point, the shock is going to have so much droop. And at that droop, there’s no nothing you’re doing other than it’s just going to sit on itself inside.
One of the things about our shocks is that we put a million cycles on them before they’re ready for us to even look at to sell. And we put it through a pretty hard test. So if you were to buy the wrong shocks, I’ll be honest, I’m not really worried about it. So with ride quality suffer, if you got the wrong size, you’re going to you’re going to lose downstroke. So if you have if it’s a four inch lift and you put two inch shocks on it, it’s going to hold it down a little bit. So it is going to be pulling itself down. You are going to have a lot more spring on the trying to separate itself. So the spring is going to try and constantly top itself out. But because there’s enough rebound dampening built into the shock and the way the FST works, it’ll still control. You’ll have a great amount of spring force and you also have a great enough. You’ll have enough amount of rebound damping force to control that amount of spring force. If that makes sense. So I ask that because not everybody does the measurements and they may not know what distance they have. Is there a way they can do a measurement on their on their Jeep to determine the length that they need? Or would you need a forklift to be able to figure that out? No, sometimes you can just go ahead and drop it out and let it droop all the way out and you can kind of guesstimate from there like, all right, here’s how much travel I have. I want to be short an inch of that. And you can make that measurement from eye to eye. And then you can call here and we can talk to somebody. We have all of our fully extended lengths and all of our collapsed links. So you’d have to you kind of have to know both a little bit if you’re unsure.
But for the most part, we’ll get it figured out for you. OK, good. So call is really the answer there. If you have any questions about it, call that you guys can figure it out together. Yeah, we have we have a great sales team here. Our CSRs do a really good job.
Most people end up talking to Rose or Edgar. And and if you’ve called in the past, you definitely know who Rose is. She’s a great lady and she’s pretty real. So but we love her. She has a great job and she’s got a lot of knowledge of of the motorcycle side and is also learning the Jeep side as well as Edgar is and myself. So, I mean, we we have the phones pretty much covered. And like I said, our staff, if they don’t know it, they know how to find the answer. So rest assured that if you do call and they tell you, hey, let me get your number because I need to find it, they’re going to get you the answer. Whether they know it or not, they know how to find it. And that’s what makes it. That’s what makes them such a good team. They don’t. I’m not sure. But at least they’re being honest and they’re absolutely not everybody knows all the answers, but I’ll find it and let you know is a perfectly acceptable answer. And I think that people appreciate that because they know not everybody knows everything. And if you do find somebody like that, they’re smart, a lot smarter than you or lying to you.
Yeah. And that’s and like I said, I know I keep saying it, but that’s what I think makes it so great to work here for these brands is that
one way or another, we have some way to find the answer, someone that knows the answer. And it’s just it’s really good to work with people. No one’s no one’s. Well, I’m smarter than you. We all work really well together. And it’s amazing to be able to work, go to work and work with great people that make it easy to design stuff like this and work with stuff like this. And they also back it to you. So it is it is it’s a fun place to work. And I’m very, very fortunate to be able to be a part of the progressive suspension team for sure. So if people wanted to check you out on your on their website, that would be progressive suspension dot com. Right. Yes, sir. And that’s where you can go in order. Do you guys do only direct or do you have dealers across the country? Maybe places that could be installed or how does that work? We’re working on dealers right now. Like I said, we introduced it just just here at Eastern Jeep Safari just recently here. I was that in April, I want to say or somewhere in there. I travel so much. It was it was March. It was earlier. It was about a week earlier. We were concerned. We had twenty three Jeeps from Jeep Talk Show listeners and team members out at AJS this year. I got a brag a little bit. I was just so so honored that so many people showed up and we were a little concerned that there’d be snow because it was a week early. But no, no problems.
Yeah, we we’ve said we’ve said a couple of people up, like I said, Music City 4 by 4 in Nashville. Those guys have done a great job.
There’s another company out of Texas. I’m not sure the name. We just talked to Nick this morning about it. So I’d have to get a little more efficient that. But there is some shops out there for will parts in West Covina. They don’t carry it. But if you walked in and said you wanted it, they would go ahead and order it for much directly. And then they also install there at that at that facility there in West Covina. Yeah. So right now, the best way to do is to go to Progressive Suspension dot com. Figure out what you need. And if you can’t give you guys a call or an email, work out what it is that you want for your Jeep and then place the order and get them and install them. That would be the best way of doing it. It is. One more thing I do, I do it only here in California out of our facility here because I’m able to do that when I go locally to off-road places here in Southern California, where we’re at, I get people my business card and I give them the opportunity to go ahead and do what we do on the road for our suspension stuff for the Harley side. I do it for the Jeep side as well. But it’s only for this area. If someone wants to come in and try it, they obviously can. But I do what’s called the try and buy. So I’m so confident in how this works and how well it’s going to work for you.
That doesn’t matter what you have, what Jeep shocks you already have on there or if you haven’t bought any. And if you’re just curious what shocks feel like, I will go ahead and we will install them on your Jeep. Give us about an hour and a half. We’ll knock it out real quick. And then you take your Jeep for the day and come back the next day.
If you want to borrow them for three days, it doesn’t even bother me. But at least you know what an aftermarket shock is going to feel like on your Jeep. And if you already have aftermarket shocks and you’re not happy with them, this gives you another way to look at shocks with a different style of system to be able to go ahead and make your mind up. Is this something I want to buy? Is this what I want to spend even though I’ve already gone ahead and bought some shocks? So we do a try and buy trial here. So that’s something that’s also available. If someone calls in from another state and they want to try it, I also don’t have a problem doing that because we can easily set it up for a full day soon. Yeah. Well, that’s a good way to sell something. It’s kind of like I think Amazon does with clothes. People are always concerned, “Will this fit?” So Amazon just does you, “Yeah, here, try it and set it back. If it doesn’t fit, you don’t like it,” or whatever. That’s a good idea. So this begs another question. So for those people, very few, I’m sure, though there are, the shocks that come back, the way they take them off, they didn’t like them, they didn’t want them, whatever, what kind of a discount do you get on scratch and dent shocks? We don’t. I sell everything brand new. Those shocks that we demo out there, the exact shock you would buy, but like you said, they’ve already been bolted onto something. So they’ll just go to the next… They just come back off. We put a full brand new set on and then we go from there. Do you have Ryan shine them up so they look like new?
I’m just giving you a hard time. Ryan is enjoying this since you give him a hard time all the time. He actually is enjoying it. He’s over there smiling.
All right. Well, this sounds really, really cool. So you go to the site, Progressivesuspension.com. You pick what shocks that you want. I think you’re aware of this. Whenever you make the decision to buy something for your Jeep, you got to have it now. How long would it take to get this stuff? And is there a shipping cost?
There is a shipping cost that I’m not sure on, but if you were to buy them today for most models and most lifts, up to five inches on some of the JKs and four inches on the JL stuff, which is also the JT, I pretty much have them in stock. Oh, and is there any difference in shocks for the JT, like for the rear, the JT and the JL, or are they the same shocks in the rear for both of them? In the rear, it’s the same. The JK and the J, what do you mean? It’s the same for the front or different for the back?
It’s a post.
But just because you have the bed versus…
Yeah, the JT has a bed. That’s the reason why I was asking. There are several things that are different on the JT. No, JT and JL are the same shocks for the front.
You have different parts for the back. For the back, it is different.
Yeah, we do have fitness for both, but there is a little bit of difference on the rear for the JT. Yeah, I always think it’s… And this is one of the reasons why I asked this. I want to make sure people… I mean, most everybody’s going to do it the right way and they’re going to be buying it for their Gladiator. They’ll get the right stuff. But don’t make the mistake of getting it for… Just getting shocks for a JL because the rear shocks are different.
What is it?
Bigger. Bigger. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I was just going to say before Ryan said that too, the same thing Ryan just mentioned is that when you go to our website and after you click on the Jeep stuff, on the right hand corner, it’s got a little red box and you click that select vehicle. You go, “You’re making model.” And when you do that, whatever populates on that page is the only thing that’s available for that Jeep. So if you’re on the JT, it’s only stuff for JT for that year. If you’re on JK or JL, it’s the same. Are you guys fitting all the way up to 2024 for the JL and the JT? As of right now, yes, we are. Good. So all the shocks that you’re selling that we’re talking about right now are just for Jeeps, correct? They are. Expanding, our R&D team, the engineering team is actually doing, is also working on Toyota 2024 right now after that gets done. Then we’ll go back from 23, I think, to like 2000, I think. Oh, 05. Oh, I’m sorry. So to 05. Very nice. So we’ll get the fit brought up on that. So are you guys going to be going the Bronco route that so many people are going these days? Because I mean, that’s a huge market. It is a huge market. And we’ve been to quite a few different places. And at this point, we’re not touching Bronco at this point. Well, I personally like that answer.
Not that I hate Broncos, but it’s not a Jeep. So what do I care?
It’s just, yeah, they’re just from what we’ve seen and what we’re being told from some of these places we go to, it’s they’re just buying wheels and tires for these things. And maybe a rack for the top or maybe even a tire rack and that’s it. They’re not even putting lift kits on them. They really don’t care about this inside of it. And tie rods, they have to have a spare set of tie rods.
Oh, yeah. People out there with Broncos are going, you son of a bitch. You always work that in.
All right. So, oh, you mentioned motorcycles earlier. Let’s talk a little bit about that because I know there’s a lot of Jeep people out there that do the motorcycle thing too. What do you guys do with motorcycles? I would assume it’s something, it’s another fun and interesting product like the, like for the Jeep.
It is, it is. It definitely is. It’s my passion, license, suspension shocks in general.
We, this company has been in business for about 42 years now and Progressive has been doing motorcycles from old school stuff to Harley stuff and a lot of Harley stuff. I want to say Fitment goes back to, do you know how about Far Far Ride?
It goes all the way back to freaking, yeah. So like even 40s, I think all the way to current 2024. We have a semi that goes to all the Harley events. We go to all the rallies. We set up the semi and we install rear shocks and we have a monotube system that goes for the front end. We do M8 soft tails, so like we do the old school soft tails where the shocks are underneath. We do the new school soft tail shocks that go up on top and then we do the monotubes or the single shocks that go on the rear of the mainly baggers. Some of the Dynas and the FXRs, but we’ve been in business doing that for a long time and that technology of FST came from the 944 series and the 444 series and that’s how it kind of developed into going into this because of the way that it’s constantly adapting on a motorcycle the way it rides.
I did some interviews for this company and when I did, what made me nervous on the motorcycle side is they’re like, “Hey, we have a lifetime warranty.” And I’m like, “How is that a thing? How can you tell somebody of a limited lifetime warranty?”
And they said, “That’s the way we build our shocks. The components, the hardware, the stuff that we use that tells us that this is going to be great and it’s going to last the life of the customer’s motorcycle.”
And they weren’t kidding. I tried a motorcycle without it and then tried one with it and that’s what made me make my mind up. I came from Supercross, Motorcross, Road Race. I’ve done quite a bit of that for my career, especially tuning and coming up with valve stacks and for me to be able to say, “Money is one thing in this world,” but for me to tell somebody that this works and that they do need it, I’m not going to do that for a dollar. It has to be something that I believe in and when I got brought on and worked with Scott Hotchins on some stuff, it was really impressive to see how this FST worked and how you could write it and how it would change and how it was an amazing system and it still is. So I was like, “I need to be a part of this. I do want this job.” So I took the job and I have no regrets. I haven’t had one yet. It’s a lot of work. I can kind of tell by the way you talk about this product. You really like it. You really believe in it. It’s not just some thing to do so that you can get off and go home and watch TV. This is a passion for you. It’s fun. On the weekends, when I take our Jeep up to the local mountains here, that’s not something the company is asking me to go do. I do it because the Jeep, it’s put together really well. We’ve had a lot of people help us, give us stuff, put the Jeep together because this is new to us anyway.
I go up there and talk to people and I’ve had people drive the Jeep and they’re like, “Yeah, but it’s your Jeep.” I go, “I get it,” but I also give them my card and tell them, “If you want to do it on your Jeep, let me know. Come to the office. We’ll put shocks on it and you can come up here too and beat up on them and drive it home and you can tell me how it feels.” I believe in this system and I know how it does work versus other systems out there. It’s very impressive and it’s beyond itself. We’ve talked to other manufacturers.
Even at Easter Jeep Safari, we talked to another manufacturer and they were impressed with it themselves and they were like, “It’s great to have somebody have something that’s different and it’s new because it keeps all of us on our toes.”
That’s where we’re on the Harley market too. There’s other manufacturers out there that have something and why is it better and how can we make ours as good or how can we make it better? It keeps us on our toes. Well, it helps the whole industry because if somebody comes out with something new and innovative and then that presses the rest of the market and us consumers, us Jeepers, are the ones that win from this. Let me ask you. We’ve talked about everything but price.
For example, we’ve got several Jeep Talk Show team members that have purchased shocks and they’ve got the remotes and they’ve got little knobs that they can adjust and they’re really cool and I was looking at it for my Gladiator and I was looking at a $2,000 price tag for these shocks.
From what I’m seeing on your site, these aren’t $2,000 like the STR47s that I believe that’s on your right side or the left side. This one here? Yeah, the right side of the screen, your left side.
Anyway, I got that wrong. I’m really, I have a problem with left and right. Don’t pay any attention to that. Yeah, there you go. On the DR-47 site. So anyway, the STR47 series, I’m seeing on the site that it is $779.95.
Yeah, for a pair. Yeah, that was going to be my next question. So you got to get front and rear for this. So the price tag would be around $1,600 for a pair about. Typically, yes. Yeah, which is less than $2,000.
It is and like I said, I know it’s a little bit higher priced but at the same time you are paying for a technology that nobody out there, nobody else out there has and it’s a technology that because of the way it’s designed and how much material and what we have to do to these pistons, it’s costly on our side as well. But it’s also very important for us to have people try it and educate them on it because we definitely believe in what it does. I haven’t had anybody yet that’s gotten in the Jeep. It’s like it blows their mind that they can drive the Jeep at the speeds or it’s on the street and it hits bumps or whatever we’re doing and it’s smooth. It’s very smooth. I’m not telling you it’s like a tell you ride but I’m telling you that it is definitely
a huge difference over anything else that we’ve been able to put on our Jeeps. Very nice. So I’m just on your site and I’m configuring up for my JT, 2021 JT. And so you guys know, you can go to the site, progressivesuspension.com and do it yourself. But you just select a front pair or rear pair and then you select your lift. That means you can select a different size lift. Like in my case, it’s two inches for up front, a little more than two inches and I’m sorry, four inches up front and a little more than two inches in the rear. So and the price is the same.
Doesn’t matter what lift you have on there. So the price is the same for both front and rear and doesn’t matter which lift size. I think there’s two choices on the lift size. And so yeah, so about, yeah, about, about $1,600 for a set of these things. And you don’t have to do any adjustments. You just bolt them on and enjoy your on-road and off-road experience. And if I’m not stating anything correctly here, correct me on it. No, everything’s right. And then these, and then the regular monotubes, they start at $499.95.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using the monotubes. If you don’t want to look cool and you’re not going to do high speed desert racing.
(laughs)
Very, very nice. Well, I mean, I think we’ve covered everything here. Was there anything that maybe I got wrong or that you wanted to add to this?
– The only thing I left, I want to say is the warranty is a two year warranty for these as well.
The other thing on top of that is I want to mention is that this is a fully rebuildable shock.
If it starts to leak or if there’s problems or there is guys out there and girls that figure, “Hey, you know what? Every two months I want to change oil in this thing.”
As we get more and more involved with this, we’ll have a service center here, but you’ll be able to, as we, there’s a certain way we build these. We use a machine to fill it. We don’t just put it and start pumping it and fill it by hand. We actually use a machine. So as we get more and more dealers, we’ll actually get them trained.
The reason why for that is because a lot of people just pump a shock basically by hand. You’ll never get all the air out of the chamber and you will have some bubbles in there. So to prevent that from happening, we actually use a vacuum machine that’s designed for this type of stuff.
That’s how we put them together. – That’s going to be fun to have access to all that stuff because you could mess with your own shocks that way and just do a little thing here. Maybe you have an idea, you do a little thing to it. That’s really cool.
Before we get done here, I just want to mention, and you correct me, this is a USA made product. – Yes, sir. – There you go. Randy, thank you a lot for being with us here today and we’ll have to have you back. Contact us if you have anything that comes up that you’d like a new product that you have coming out.
So shocks for Jeeps and Harleys. I know there’s going to be some people checking you out with the Harleys because everybody, I mean, shocks are just so important to vehicles, whether they’re two wheels or four wheels because you have to use those every time you’re moving.
That’s probably all the time. So yeah, these are really good things to look at. And I’ve learned a lot today. – I do want to mention one thing before we go is that this is a 2.0 body. It’s a true 2.0 and our 2.5, 2.5 is actually on the Jeep being tested now and we’ve got a lot of dyno testing and a lot of actual real testing. The off-road part testing is actually coming up this weekend here on Saturday with the guys over from Dirt Nation.
They throw together a really good thing. A lot of local people, they try and get the word out there of new off-roaders and the guy over at Dirt Nation, super nice guy and he invited us to go to this next ride to be able to talk to people and do some off-roading with them. So we’ll be testing our 2.5s in real rock crawling situations and going through the canyons and going through the mountains this Saturday. But that’s the time that’s- – Man, I’m so sorry you’re having to work on the weekend. That sounds rough.
So tell people what’s the advantage to the 2.5 over the two. Is it just more fluid, stays cooler better? – So a couple of different things, right? So it is going to stay a lot cooler. We’re only making the 2.5 in a remote reservoir only. It does stay cooler. It’s got a larger amount of surface because the piscence is a larger diameter. The other thing is the shock shaft is also bigger so every time the shock shaft goes in it’s more displacement inside the shock.
Because of the nitrogen body everything just reacts a little bit quicker. Not that a lot of people are going to be like, “Holy crap!” but the 2.5 is a lot more beefier and you can definitely try and beat the hell out of it as much as you can.
It is a really good looking shock. I can’t show it just yet but it will be out here pretty soon. This is also a great looking shock and that thing is going to look really, really sexy when it comes out. – Yeah, well it goes back to the looks on it too because the nice big 2.5 inch body is like, “Wow, look at the size of that thing. That’s beefy.” What is that there? – As far as we can be on that, the piston size itself is going to be 2.5 inches so the body is actually quite a bit bigger. – Oh, nice. – When we say it’s a 2.0 it’s a true 2.0 and the piston size is 2.5. Our piston is actually 2.5. The body is built around it so it’s a very large diameter shock. – Well, it’s like people put the D-rings on. They get the bigger D-rings because it’s more impressive.
It’ll look better for those that are going for looks. You know how jeepers are. They like showing off their stuff. Randy, thank you so much for being here with us. Oh, and really quick, where are you guys on social media? I’m sure you’re on the Instagram, maybe the TikTok. – Our Instagram is progressivesuspension.com. Our TikTok, but I’m sorry, not .com. It’s just progressive suspension. At progressive suspension. And then the TikTok is also just progressive suspension.
Oh yeah, I want to say it is progressive suspension one. When you open up the TikTok, you’ll see that it’s got a lot of our motorcycle stuff. We haven’t updated it yet on the Jeep stuff, but the at progressive suspension Instagram and Facebook, you’ll see that there’s Jeep and motorcycle stuff starting to float in there together and they’re holding hands. So, somebody’s playing with it. – Well, that’s good because like I said, there’s a lot of jeepers that do the motorcycle stuff and a lot of Harley stuff. Wendy, one of our female co-hosts has her and her husband have a Harley that they do regular rides on during the year. It sounds wonderful, but I think you could see as much from an open jeep, but that’s just me.
Randy, thanks a lot for being here and thank Ryan for us for jumping in there and keeping us on track. – No, for sure. Yeah, big shout out to Ryan and a big shout out to everybody at progressive suspension. Everybody that’s a part of our team here deserves a big pat on the back. I know that a lot of people see me as the face and that’s the guy. I’m just the guy because of the company behind me that helps us do this. From the people I’m receiving to our CSRs, to our engineering team, everybody does a great job and it’s really nice to work with everybody as a team that we have here. So, couldn’t be happier enough to work here and progressive and myself are really excited that you invited us in the show. – Oh, yeah.
We love hearing about new products. We have a lot of new jeepers that listen to us. So if we can get them on the right path early, I think it helps them overall and we get the credit for telling them about it. – No, that’s perfect. And if you’re listeners, you got them in Southern California and they are interested in that try and buy, all I got to do is go ahead and give a call, ask to speak with me, Randy Acevedo, and we’ll get it dialed in and we’ll get them on some try and buy stuff. Even if they don’t buy it and they just want to know what the difference between the stock and something aftermarket feels like, I have no problem with them just trying it that way either. – Great idea. Randy, thanks again. – Hey, thank you. I really appreciate it. You have a great one. – Hey, thanks again to Randy of Progressive Suspension. Visit the website right now, progressivesuspension.com. Hey, coming up next week, Tyler of, or from All Roads Taken. You can go over to their website at allroadstaken.com. This is the company that will make custom badges for you like the Jeep Honor Badge,
but they’re shaped a little differently. They are a 3D type of thing. It’s not just like a sticker or some thin Honor Badge lookalike. It’s actually quite nice. So go over there and check that out and certainly check it out for next Friday when you’re listening to that episode. – You’re listening to Jeep Talk Show. The number one Jeep podcast. – My mom’s house.
Hey, if you haven’t already heard, Greg Henderson with Unofficial Use Only has joined the show as a host. What a great resource Greg is for a lot of Jeep information, including Jeep history. And I mean the history over the last 20 years, not 80. So I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the history from way back when, but the recent thing like who built the TJ, who was integral with the changes, like who built the first Rubicon and how it came up, how it came to be. So Greg just has a wealth of knowledge and it’s right there at his fingertips that he just, he can instantly talk about it. And it’s just a lot of fun talking to Greg. I’ve enjoyed talking to Greg a lot here over the years. He’s usually in our round table episode and you can actually interact with Greg right there on the round table that we have every, it gets, this is a little confusing. It gets published on Wednesday, but we record it on Tuesday, 7.30 PM central time, just join our newsletter and then you can get a reminder about when the recording is and you can join.
So I just want to mention a little something here about this show. It just amazes me over the years. What this little show has accomplished.
The people I’ve met online and in person, I would have never had a chance if I didn’t try something without fear of failure. Well, I can’t say there was no fear of failure because there was of course, because you think as soon as you start putting yourself out there, people are going to laugh at you. Well, I guess I do tell jokes. So I like it when they laugh for that, but anyway, they’re not, they’re just not going to receive you very well. And you guys have received me and my vision of the show very well. And it just, it means so much. I know your existence and listening for the, to the show isn’t for me, but it is important to me. And I just want to share with you that it really does mean something to me. I get up every day. I do something for the show each and every day. And it’s just wonderful that you guys are listening and you’re looking forward to the show.
We have great people that have joined the show. Team members, Greg, for example, Chuck, cowboy and Kansas, Wendy, who has been here for so many years doing the flagship episodes with us and now chick chat as well.
Natalie from high lift off road has joined us and she’s just very excited to be part of the show and helping out. And it’s, it is such a huge honor of to have people that want to be a part of this. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you to all those people. Thank you to you, the listener. It’s just amazing. Thank you so much.
And that’s a rapid today’s episode of the Jeep talk show. I want to give a big thank you to our special guests for joining us today and sharing their knowledge and experience with the Jeep community. Remember we have five, five as Josh would say, one, two, three, four, five episodes a week. And it’s understandable if you’ve missed past episodes. I forgot to mention Josh. Josh, my God, he, he’s the one that kind of kept the show going because I was doing this thing by myself.
And boy, I mean, uh, you go to a cave and you say echo and hear it back. That’s only fun for so long. So, uh, Josh was a huge help on this show and, uh, his intention is to come back and, uh, we’re, we’re certainly looking forward to that. All of us are, uh, anyway, four episodes a week. I’m sorry, five episodes a week. And it’s understandable if you’ve missed past episodes, you can always find us on your favorite podcast platform or on our website with over 1,000, not 900, not 999, over a thousand. I think this is episode, uh, 1,074. So pretty soon I’m off to change that number to 1100 episodes. So there’s plenty of Jeep talk show to entertain you while driving to your destination, working out at the gym, mowing the grass or working on your Jeep and prove your day by listening to more Jeep talk show. And I mean, I know it’s five episodes a week, but you can listen to more. You can go to our back catalog. I mean, how many of you have actually listened, uh, you know, back, uh, hundreds of episodes? I mean, I mean, my gosh, if you would download all those episodes to your phone and you were, uh, lost someplace, you could listen to the Jeep talk show until your battery ran out.
I’m not saying it’s going to save you. It’s just going to make it a little more entertaining while you’re there. Uh, there’s so much stuff that we’ve talked about. It’s just, uh, it’s just so much, been so much fun to get in here and talk to people. And I hope you can tell whenever we’re doing the show, it’s just fun for us.
So we love hearing from you, our listener, reach out to us via email, phone, or social media. We use your voicemails on the show. So until next time, keep on jeeping and we’ll see you on the trails. Remember Fridays are red. Remember everyone deployed.
Broadcasting since 2010.