I purchased my car in April of last year with brand new HKS Hypermax GT IV coilovers on it, and they were clean as a whistle. I had put maybe 2,500 miles on the car since that time, with about 4 autox days and 2-3 HPDE sessions, and then had a failure during a normal street drive about 2 months ago. (see pics below).
I understand that I am not the original owner/purchaser, but HKS would not do anything for me, nor could they explain why this happened. It appears to be some kind of defect, I’d think, but unknown as to why this happened. My car was not “slammed”, but was lowered slightly below stock ride height. HKS has commented that the dampening levels should not matter or impact the life of the setup.
To make it worse, they could only order pairs in a set (Front or Rear), but had none in stock in the US, only full setups. To make things worse, this occurred just a few days before the first HPDE of 2016, so I was under the gun on time and ended up having to order a full new set. I went ahead and replaced the rears, then thinking I would have backup replacements for the other 3 corners now as well.
Has anyone else had something like this happen on such relatively new coilovers, for any brand for that matter? I am just extremely disappointed in the amount I needed to spend and HKS’ lack of understanding or initiative to really help in any way, shape, or form. No offer of partial reimbursement or a credit, nothing, zip. For a brand who has been around so long and seems to most, to have a strong reputation, I found it very frustrating. In the end, is this going to happen again? Is this “normal” by any means, and does anyone have any experience with a failure like this?
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