Exar-Kun wrote:
1. yes. but I havent seen a 16-way adjustable shock yet. maybe I ahvent been looking. my gripes are not with qulity sleeve and shock systems, they are with poorly engineered and constructed system, I did say that before. At the begninning I said all sleeves, but I corrected that, I needed to make the exception for good systems.
2. also, you could add that stuff, sure, but you'd end up with, in my opinion, is a 'tape-and-chewing-gum' solution to a problem of adjustbility. I still think a prefab coilover with all of that built in would be a better choice.
3. as far as engineering goes, most sleeve manufactureres dont put much reasearch into suspension dynamics(again, G.C. does, and makes good systems), much less spring rate-tuning. but moving on...
4. I dont think this is entirely true. a good fully adjustable system lets you adjust bound, rebound, and even spring tension by use of a secondary spring. true, you can get a good shock revalved, but chaning that on the fly would be hard to find without a prefab system, or access to a lot of tools.
Just a last few comments. I added numbers to the areas I am commenting on. I too lazy to copy and past each one.
1. Doesn't mean you can't find any. And not all fully adjustable systems have 16-way anyways.
2. It depends on how well someone puts it together. You could go as far as to weld the sleeves on, but since the heat could affect the bore and that would need to be checked and corrected if necessary, it would be quite burdensome considering that there are systems available for the 240. But there are cars out there that are raced that do not have much aftermarket support. I'd disagree with the tape and chewing gum comment. Just because a manufacturer makes it doesn't mean it's better than a shadetree mechanic's work. I see a lot of turbo headers out of small shops that are 10 times better then headers made by the big names.
3. I agree. Many are univerasal and may require modification to it to work well on a car, and I would not let any of these companies choose my spring rates for me. I'd imagine most of them are up to the task of holding up the weight of the car though. I doubt GC provides the spring with the kit, or if they do, they either ask you to choose one or help you to choose one.
4. Not all of the prefabbed kits offer all these adjustments either. Separate Compression and Rebound adjustments(external) are rare in any system. Usually they are coupled together in one adjustement.
You do bring up a lot of great features of good suspensions, but they have nothing to do with the sleeves themselves. I would totally agree that it would save a lot of headaches to just buy a prefabbed kit, considering it's availablility now and price. I personally like the GC Advanced design stuff, I'm sure there are comparable ones out there, but it's nice to have support that is more local to the states since most everything else is imported. But they are becoming more available and less are coming through backdoors, so more shops are able to support custom configurations within the states without too much hassle or cost.
