Shock angle opinions

[Az33]

Hey guys, looking for opinions/advise on rear axle shock angle/direction.
I've seen them angled forward, backwards, side to side and straight up and down. So how much of a difference does it make, is there a 'wrong way', and are there different situations that call for different shock mounting directions?

Specifically for my application... I'm going to be running airbags and still need to squeeze a pan hard bar in, so space is dwindling pretty quickly. Think I can run some from back of bag mounts up and forward to cross brace in front of axle. Would this be effective?

 

[Old Iron]

Shocks can run from straight up and down to 10 degrees forward, backward, side to side.
I run most all nine at 10 degrees and 5 degrees angled in at the top. Theory is, the shock is more effective in stabilizing the vehicle in corners. jmho
Some manufactures run one shock in front of the axle and one shock behind the axle. They were trying to eliminate wheel hop.
The more angle applied to the shock the less effective it is and also the softer the effect is on ride quality.
On street application, just about anywhere you install it will work.

 

[Az33]

Sounds good, thank you sir

 

[lvin4jc]

This forum is the bees knees. I literally logged on to post this exact question. I lowered my '69 f100's rear suspension a lot and one of the ways I did this was to flip the rear axle which means I have to install shocks from scratch.

I had the same question about angles and directions. This was the very first post I saw in this category of the forum. Boom, ,easy peasy.

Thanks again RRR!