[acidtonic]

Busted my ass this weekend and installed 4 new Tokico D-Spec Shocks/Struts.

Struts were not to hard to install but keeping the shaft from spinning was a bit tough. Ended up using a leather dog collar and wrapping it around a few times until sinking a vice grip into it for leverage.

When it came to remove the stock front struts I found the flathead screwdriver thing to be wack. Didnt work and the metal in the struts wasnt strong enough and it stripped out. Used a large long crowbar under the retaining cap and got it to unscrew that way without spinning.

Rears were a piece of cake and very easy to work with.

First impressions:

Just installing the fronts and going for a ride there was an immediately noticable gain. I started with 4.5 turns from full hard. The car instantly felt much better up front but the back was now quite obviously handling worse. I think it shed some light on how bad the rear shocks were.

I got the rears installed and then it was yet again another entire car difference! Again I used 4.5 from hard due to instructions saying it gets out air bubbles and improves the life of the part.

The fun began when I moved both front and rear to 2.5 turns from full hard. So far its amazing. The car is quieter, doesnt roll hardly at all in the turns, and the wheels correctly follow some pot holes that are smooth dips and not the 90* angle drops. The car used to skip over them now the tire quickly moves down then back up following the road and no longer upsetting the cabin.

1st gear now has much better grip but the 1st-2nd shift seems a bit rough when giving it all shes got and slamming 2nd at 7200rpm. The rear skipped out about half as much *Worse* than it did stock, but otherwise it was extremely stable easily better than stock.

Now disclaimer is that I'm now just learning about the adjustments. I have about 2 hrs of driving on these and I need to play with more settings. I think softening up the rear will fix that issue but seriously I dont mean to exaggerate it because the car was so much better I was just in aww.

I found them for 540 shipped from THMotorsports and the company was polite and quickly got me a tracking number. Shipment arrives 2 days earlier than what they guestimated too

I'm going to start keeping a log of my settings and thoughs while I tune these bad boys. Speaking of tuning the shocks it takes about 2 minutes to do all 4. Stop pop hood/trunk and whip out the keychain adjuster. Unscrew a small hand tight cap and insert the tool which has a nice red line from the center to one edge making it easy to visually count full turns. It also has indicators for which direction is softer or harder. The line is also indented a bit into the cap so you can feel it with your fingers when you cant see in the trunk area during adjustment.

5 out of 5 and it made my lightweight cobra handle about 10 times better than stock. I'm still smiling

[blown96stang]

[acidtonic]

They're just struts/shocks man

My phone just died on me a few days ago. No camera until I get a new one.

Anyone want to discuss adjustments?