Let's talk shocks. What are they for? They help control the motion of the suspension in travel. Why is this important? It keeps the suspension from bouncing and helps keep the contact patch of the tire in contact with the road.
Regardless of what type of build you have whether street, drag strip, or Autocross/road course, the shocks are imperative to proper handling of the car. I am going to focus on the performance side of things with drag racing and Autocross for a minute. Both styles of racing are highly dependent on tire traction and maximizing the contact patch on the road. When it comes to choosing shocks for your application, most companies are not making them specific to an application, they are making them to fill a wide variety of potential uses. The reality is this doesn't help you as you build your ride. If you are drag racing the rebound and compression needed is completely different from what is needed in autocross. If you drive on the street most of the time and maybe catch a race once every few months, you don't need anything special in the form of valving and a none-adjustable would be fine. However, if you are at the track and focusing on making your car the quickest you can on the strip or cut time at the Autocross, specific valving is needed.
On a third and fourth gen F Body the rear suspension when setup properly will actually lift under hard acceleration. It's called anti-squat. You don't want too much but you definitely don't want the rear to squat when launching either. This creates specific needs for rebound in the shocks. If you have seen a third or fourth gen launch at the drag strip and hook up then spin the wheels 30 feet later, it has either one of two issues, too much anti squat or not enough rebound in the shocks. You can tune anti-squat with the torque arm. It's why remote mounted torque arms have multiple slots to bolt it together. The higher the front of the arm, the more anti-squat that is created. If the anti squat is tuned properly and it is spinning, the shocks don't have enough rebound to slow the motion of the suspension. During an autocross event, that rebound is helping to control the weight transfer as the car is on the brakes. Too much rebound and the rear will have a tendency to want to rotate around as you come into the corner. Once the car is moving compression becomes more important as it is also helping to control the weight transfer. After the car launches off the line and gains some speed the compression will help keep the car from abrupt weight transfer during shifts. In an Autocross it will help it out of corners in planting the tires down to the ground. Too much and the car will have a tendency to be loose on corner exit.
The front struts are just as important. During launch at the strip, the rebound should be light and allow the weight to transfer. As the car is moving down the track the compression needs to slow the transfer back to the front of the car. This helps maximize forward traction. In Autocross, the front is helping to keep the front tires planted to the surface. Increasing from compression to slow the weight transfer to keep the rear of the car from coming around is ideal. As the car has reached its peak point of compression, the rebound helps to keep the weight in place by slowing how quickly the suspension decompresses. This helps to keep the car stable after the braking zone and through the corner.
If you are serious about racing, buy your parts accordingly. QA1 is a great shock for a cruiser. Ridetech offers two different shocks with their Handling Quality and Ride Quality focused shocks. Their focus being oriented towards the protouring and road handling side of things. Detroit Speed uses JRI shocks which are valved specifically for their use of a handling car based on their suspension components. Viking shocks are individually spec'd out for each customer. This includes the springs that come with the coilovers.
We are dealers for every major shock company that is making shocks for these cars. We will work to meet the customer's needs and wants. We are proponents of using Viking because of the attention to detail they put into their shocks. Each set is built to order and put on the shock Dyno before it ships and you are provided with that information to see that it has been quality tested. They come with a tuning guide for baseline settings and adjustments based on what the car is doing. Each track will require something a little different depending on temperature, surface age, type of surface, tire temps, etc. Don't hesitate to reach out for your next set of shocks. Whether it's KYB, Koni, QA1, JRI, AFCO, Viking, or Motion Control, we will take care of you and make sure you get the best solution for your car.