New shocks gone bad?

[gingerbredman]

This past weekend I bought all new shocks/struts for the front and rear, installed them with the stock (unmodified) springs, with all the proper bump stops and even the expensive bellows. Anyways, it rode perfect that day and now today any little bump will send the rear end shimmying, hopping, outwards. It's bad, it's like the exact charactistics of bad shocks, but I checked all the connecting hardware, bolts, nuts, and checked for anything leaking out of the shocks and nothing.. it all checks out fine. I'm absolutely flabbergasted at what the issue could be, but I know that 'something' must have happened while on the car and after driving it, because, like I say it rode fine the day I put them on.

I don't know if this is important or not, but it was previously on lowering springs for several years on stock shocks/struts, so I'm thinking maybe there's a vital bushing that rotted and fell off when I raised it back up.. I seriously don't know.. and I've been driving it easy so I can't see me breaking something..


Another thing, they're oem spec shocks/struts, front are Monroe and rear are Gabriel. I know I know, I don't mind if you guys rag on me for going rally height if you help me out

[OutToWinPAHC]

Nah not gonna rag, hmmm weird, you sure the alignment is good, nothing bent tweaked or loose?

[gingerbredman]

I'm almost positive everything is good. I aligned the front camber bolts to the best of my ability which should suffice until I install new bushings and get a pro. alignment. The rear looked pretty good, wheels/tires sit real close to factory.

..but see, something happened whilst I was driving, which is what I cannot figure out, it's driving me nuts. The symptoms are identical to blown shocks, yet nothing is leaking.. maybe both rear shocks are defective? If it were leaking air at any rate the fluid would definitely find it's way out I would think. Well tomorrow I'm going to swap over the rear shocks/springs off my other hatch and see what happens. My pops has been saying it's the springs, but I don't see how they could cause that. If those old pieces of junk fix the problem then my new shocks are bad I reckon.

OH, just did the bounce test.. bounces about 2 1/2 times, additionally it seems the driver side rear is stiffer than the pass. side. but even if I isolate the bump to one specific side while I'm driving it it will still shimmy off..

[liquid_cool]

your dad may be rite...springs compliment the shocks to return the weels back to the ground after a larger bump ...its a requierd energy component of the system...if the spring rate has sufferd and is compramised...then your system will not function properly...you can tell rite off the batt if a shock is bad...take it out...compress it..and if it barly moves or dosent move back upwards..its toast...if the spring is your issue..then this is as far as my post will leagally allow me to say..good luck man.

[gingerbredman]

Well, apparently the shock blew out somehow, the rear pass. side shock was coated with the fluid.. I reckon it was just a defective shock. I swapped over the 20 year old factory Nissan shocks/springs off of my other hatch and it rides okay now, but I can definitely tell the age of the shocks is showing, but then again I can't remember what a nice stock 240 rides like haha

eh, I think I'll just get my money back on those Autozone Gabriel shocks, maybe get O'Really's to order some Monroe oem ones, jeez.

Oh, and Monroe is pretty swell, they even put the shock mount nuts in the package

I didn't figure it was the springs, only way I see them causing that type of behavior is if they were substantially stiffened up somehow as the up-down oscillations were crazy fast, like 10 bumps per second. Anyways, thanks guys for the input, I always appreciate it.