Having a vehicle that sees both street and strip duty forces a certain level of compromise for different parts, including the suspension. Until now there hasn’t been a good solution that allowed racers to have a vehicle that rode well on the street and performed at the track, and now QA1 has that base covered with their MOD line of shocks.

David and Tina Pierce campaign a 2008 Chevy Colorado that has seen about every surface you can imagine when it comes to drag racing. They have raced the truck on the streets with the cast of Street Outlaws, on Drag Week, and they have made plenty of hits on the drag strip.

To help put the power down that the 509 cubic-inch Chevrolet mill and twin turbos can produce, David decided to make the switch to the MOD shocks. Now they can take advantage of the different valve options without pulling the shocks off the truck.

“Recently, I had to change to a firm valve pack because we were trying to keep the front end down. Wheelies are fun, but they will slow you down and there’s an obvious problem with no steering with the wheels up. We plan on doing some radial racing this summer and the firm valve packs will come in super handy. When we are on a sketchy or slippery surface we can loosen the front shock to get weight transfer as we need. Rocky Mountain Race Week is the biggest race that we attend and it provides the most brutal punishment a street/strip vehicle will see — that’s where these shocks will shine,” David explains.

QA1 currently has available several different versions of the MOD shock that are a direct bolt-on for several applications. David made some changes to how the shocks were mounted to give him easier access to adjust them while they’re on the truck. The lower body of the shock can be clocked in different directions to make the adjustment even easier based on your setup.

After the shocks were installed, David and Tina put them to the test and they quickly showed how the valve pack system is a huge benefit.

“We got a recommendation from Tim at QA1 after discussing the old shock adjustment. What he recommended as a setting we tried and that worked pretty well until we started adding more power to our tune-up. The truck started carrying the tires about 4-foot in the air, so we called Tim and ordered a firm valve pack. The same tune-up we tried after installing the firm valve pack kept the front tires down, in fact, the truck went .08-seconds quicker in the first 60-feet of the track. It only took about three minutes to swap the valve packs, too,” David says.

With the amount and style of racing that David and Tina do, having a shock that can perform on the track and work on the street is critical. So far, the MOD shock has worked flawlessly for them and has been a great addition to their racing program.

“The fact that we have so much adjustability from driving it around on the street, to no prep racing, to regular drag racing, and radial racing is great. I know a lot of people who have different shocks for different types of racing and good shocks aren’t cheap. With the new QA1 MOD series shocks, swapping shocks all the time won’t be needed. To date, we have made only about 25 passes with the new shocks and only about 40 street miles but so far they’ve been absolutely perfect,” David explains.

Check out QA1’s website right here to learn more about the MOD shocks and what application’s they’re currently available for.