Who Makes a Good Rear Coil Over Double Adj. Shock

Who makes a good double adjustable rear shock for the money? Strange? QA1? Affco? I'm thinking of losing the leaf springs and switching to coil overs. What spring rate for a car this heavy? (3500 lbs)

I think if money allowed the Afco stuff is the nicer of the 3 you mentioned. Strange would be second, QA1 would be my last choice.Not sure what weight is on the rear tires but I would say you are going to be in the 125#-150# on the rear spring. You need to stay as light as will allow on the back and then crank the spring up a little for stored energy. JMO

Afco.

I have to throw in a vote for the QA1 shocks....for the money they are pretty good.

Koni

AFCO, If you decide to go with AFCO let me know, I live less than a mile from there and I can get a pretty good deal.

I am currently using Aldan double adjustable with 130 lbs springs

You can mount the Afco's upsidedown..............

richter69 wrote:You can mount the Afco's upsidedown..............

I love it when people ask me if i know my coilovers are on upside down....lol

Race Ready Fabrications wrote:

richter69 wrote:You can mount the Afco's upsidedown..............

I love it when people ask me if i know my coilovers are on upside down....lol

X2 lol

Santuff followed by Strange, end of conversation!!!

I'll agree with the Santuff comment, Strange would not be my second choice lol. You can ask Duffy about that one, and he builds a lot of fast cars so I trust his opinion. We did put a set of Strange shocks on our fox and for the money they were great..........until a year later and the car was inconsistant all of a sudden........you guessed it.

Double adjustable coil over pecking order.

God tier......
Koni electircs. (Santhuff still has a better dampening window than Koni in my opinion. But being able to change the Koni's dampening during the pass by just setting a timer is da bomb)


Ultra Top tier......
Santhuff
Koni
Afco (haven't messed with them, but they have good reviews)


Top tier......
Strange


Lower tier....
QA1/HAL/AVO group


Shit tier......
Alden/American/Eagle (nitrogen charged crap might be OK for the street, but usless for drag racing. But they also become usless on the street after they loose the charge over time)

Oh sure Dave! drag my coilovers to the shit tier! just kidding, they were bought a few years ago before i started racing.

QA1 on my t-bird, got the kit from autoweld. Double adjustable with 150#springs, but going to 100# now. Steve

I run QA1's and they work great. I think the following guy does too.



He has had some pretty good luck. Most of you know who it is. (a little hint 4.44 @ 175 with a 1.15 60' on a drag radial)

'65 T-BOLT wrote:Oh sure Dave! drag my coilovers to the shit tier! just kidding, they were bought a few years ago before i started racing.

LOL, it can be damn easy to buy the wrong shock since sellers (Jeggs/Summit/etc) don't always give all the needed shock info in the adds. The first set of coil over shocks I ever bought many years ago were damn near useless "big sale over stock" Koni's from one of the big name "kit" chassis shops at the time. But they never mentioned that the cheap Koni's they were selling weren't the desired SPA1 shocks (with the drag racing valving profile). And at the time I didn't know any better, I thought all Koni's were the same.

The Alden business thinking has always been a mystery to me. They appear to have all the equipment & machinery to design/build coil over shocks, so why not design & make a second line of proper shocks just for drag racing that are non-Nitrogen charged? But then I guess that might be asking too much since after all these years they can't seem to come up with a seal design that doesn't loose the Nitrogen charge on the line of shocks they do make.

richter69 wrote:

Race Ready Fabrications wrote:

richter69 wrote:You can mount the Afco's upsidedown..............

I love it when people ask me if i know my coilovers are on upside down....lol

X2 lol

The Afco shocks are damn interesting because of the fact that you can mount them upside down. Sure wish I had a junk Afco so I could take a look inside to see how they designed it. Two things you usually need for shock valving/dampening to work correctly (and offer resistance) is the piston & valve assemble(s) need to be/stay submerged in shock oil. This has me kinda thinking that either they might not have any of the valving assembly on the piston it's self, but maybe some kind of a valve port is drilled somewhere in the middle of the shock shaft. Or maybe the piston is it's self somehow mounted somewhere in the middle of the shock shaft (vs at the end of the shock shaft). Either way that could explain how the piston/valving can be submerged in oil when mounted either way.

whatbumper wrote:I run QA1's and they work great.

When QA1 finally came out with their own double adjustable shock, the fact that they put both adjuster knobs at the bottom & side-by-side had me thinking they looked a lot like Chris Alston's Vari-shock design. I guess it could be that one company might have copied the other, or maybe it's collaboration between the two, or it could just be a coincidence.