Hey guys, some of you already know that I blew one of my shocks (passenger rear) last week at the track. It was due to an assembly error issue; I scratched the piston rod on the shock and had a very bad feeling about it. I was under the gun to get the car together for an alignment the day after so I could go to the track the day after that. I put everything back together, went to alignment place, went to the track... boom, oil all over my shock/spring two sessions later. Anyway:

I am curious to hear from others who've had a similar experience, especially with shocks that are not very old (say, less than 5 years) and have relatively light milage on them (say, 20-40k miles). Something like 90% of those miles are off track.

QUESTIONS:

1) Given the age/milage/use of the shocks on my car, what is your opinion as to replacing just that one shock that blew, versus replacing the whole set?

2) Is there a simple, "cheap", way to easily verify the shock performance? I would like to compare the damping characteristics of the new shock versus the old shock (that is not blown). Both of the rear shocks on my car are the same part so it would make some sense to compare the two.

BTW, it's an FD chassis with Tein S-tech springs, freshened bushings/suspension arms, new bump rubber/spring perches, new front stabilizer bar links, Tokico Illumina shocks. Car handles like it is new, until the shock blew The drive home was a little scary

 

If you push down on the shock, there should be resistance and it should come back up. You can tell if it's blown or not. I'm not sure if that's what you're asking. You might as well replace the whole set up so that everything has the same amount of mileage. That's just what I'd do.

 

Call the fine people at Tripoint. They have a shock dyno and do shock rebuilds. Not sure if they do it on Tokicos but any shock rebuilder should have shock dyno.

 

Shocks are actually "supposed" to be replaced at around 30,000 miles, very very few people actually do. I noticed on my Illuminas that after 30,000 miles they were very soft and even the stiffest setting was fine for street use. I thought I was going crazy until I got a new set just to try it and had to set them on setting one or two to make them as stiff as the old ones were on five.

I guess I'm saying that you should just replace them all on general principle.

 

I don't think the cost of shock dyno'ing would justify the minimal replacement cost of this unit.

It's sad but true. At some point you'll have to compare time vs. cost, and cost of full replacement vs. cost of bench testing.

If you're looking for a "lamen" way to acquire this data it still might be fruitless as the test will have human error and would not be tested under load.

1. You can choose the same setting for each shock.
2. Get a stopwatch, lol. you know where i'm going with this.
3. Fully Compress both shocks, i find this the easiest.
4. Let Go of both at same time.
5. Measure the time in which the shaft takes to fully rebound.

If both rebound the same time for each setting, in theory they should be equivalent. But i guess that all comes down to how quickly your reaction time is, eyes to brain to finger to stopwatch.

If these were JRZ, Penske, Motons, Koni then what you want to do is justifiable and in fact the reason you spend those bucks. I haven't heard of this service being performed on Tokicos in general so the "parts" might not be sourced.

Rishie

 

The Tokicos for my celica were not rebuildable, I tried but nobody at the company was any help and any shop I asked didn't want to touch them. I would guess it's the same for all their shocks.

 

Sealed type OEM units are good until they are blown/leaking so there's no need to replace the others if they aren't leaking.

If you need another rear shock send me a PM.

Based upon what you're doing w/ the car I'd recommend coilovers which aren't too expensive these days.

Howard Coleman has dyno tested oem shocks and the mileage really doesn't matter the results are the same.

 

yes, Fritz, i dyno tested 31 FD shocks with miles from 3500 to over 100K and amazingly they all dynoed out very very similar. i had one shock that had a blown seal (fluid on the outside). generally it is from over-lowering so the shock rod bottoms out.

stock shocks work well w Eibach springs.

hc