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TUNING GUIDE: SUSPENSION: SHOCKS

Performance Shocks: $300-600 a set

When looking to buy shocks there are a few questions you should ask yourself before you buy.

• What is your drving style? racing around the city, long highway trips, etc.
• What are the road conditions like where you live? lots of bumps, bad roads in general, etc.
• How short of a spring are going to install? on the ground, 1" drop, stock springs, etc.

Once you have answered these questions you can more easily narrow down your choice of shock to buy. So if you race around the city all the time a stiffer shock would be good for you, while if you make long trips a very stiff shock may not be to your liking. If the road conditions where you live are horable you might not want to buy stiffer shocks because you dont want to visit the chiropractor every week. Spring height is very important to consider, if you are planning on seriously lowering your car you must have a stiff shock to prevent fouling the arches. A soft shock will only give you more headaches than you will want to deal with. If you are only lowering the car about an inch there is really no need for an all out sport shock but you must uprate the damping to compensate for the stiffer spring you are installing, otherwise a shock too soft (ie. oem shocks) will wear and fail much faster. Brands available

There are a wide variety of shocks available but the major brands include, Boge, Bilstien, and Koni. Boge shocks are very close to oem shocks in terms of ride quality, I would recommend these if you are replacing oem shocks and want something better than the pep boys special. Bilstien makes a high quality shock in a few degrees of stiffness; the HD's provide a comfortable ride while also giving you much better damping control; the Sport's are a stiffer shock for the daily driver who can handle the extra stiffness (these shocks are highly recommended for lowering applications more than 2 inches); lastly the Race shocks are for autocross or race track use only, use of these shocks on a daily driven street car is highly not recommended. Koni adds a special feature to their shocks, instead of offering various levels of stiffness they offer an adjustable damping level where the driver can set the stiffness of each individual shock with the turn of a wrist, set it to the softest position for the highway trips and then crank it up for the weekend races.