Billet Shocks and Springs

Alden Eagles......great quality, rebound and compression adjustment access all external, and adjusting is easy.

As for matching the heights, it takes time. When you first get them (or any) there will be some "sag" during breakin. Additionally, you need to adjust and drive the car for a few miles to get a real look for the height changes.

Bob

Yeah, you can adjust damping rates easy, without taking the wheels off, just rotate the knobs on either end of the shock. I have the Alden's too. Adjusting the spring rates is going to affect ride height and stiffness. To do this requires removing the shocks and a spanner wrench. A little more work, it took a few tries to get the ride height just right, side to side and front to back.

You have to remove the shocks to adjust the ride height? Does anyone know what type of shock PIM sells?

PIM's shocks look different than Alden shocks. If you look at the PIM picture, you see the black ring at the bottom of the spring? That's what has to be adjusted up or down for ride height. It takes a spanner wrench to twist it. See how little room there is with the a-arms? I had to take the shocks off to adjust ride height, it takes several twists of the ring threaded onto the shock housing to go up or down say 0.25 or 0.50" so the shocks have to come off. I also don't see the little knobs on the top and bottom that are used for adjusting dampeng rates. The shock in the picture is adjusted for maximum softness and lowest ride height.

Kevin. No. At the bottom of the coilover setup are two rings with notches in them. Loosen the bottom one and the other would adjust your height. Now, like was also said earlier, you do have a limited amount of adjustment, where you might might wanna go with a higher rated spring versus cranking the heck out of the adjuster if you need more height. As an example Alden says dont let more than 1" of threads show (if possible). You would have to remove the wheel though to get enough movment from your spanner wrench.

One thing I noticed was, that my Aldens are about 3/4" shorter overall than the original Konis.

I have 550# on the rear of mine, and, I may just swap up to 600# to get that extra amount versus adjusting more. (to keep full motion of travel available). Each car will be a bit different.

Bob

Watch your knuckles if you adjust the spring tension with the shock mounted to the car. The brakes, the brake hoses, the uprights, the a-arms are all in your way unless you have a ratcheting spanner wrench, which I've never seen. My spanner wrench is about a foot long and bumps into everything when it's trying to rotate that nut on the bottom of the spring. You'll have to go about 3 full 360 degree revolutions of the nut to get about 0.25" of ride height at the shock and this will translate to less than that amount of ride height difference at the fender to ground measurement.

That's a lot of 1/4 turns with the shock on and I took them off to do it. I had the parking brake on and used the middle or top lug nut to hold the shock body firm while torquing the nut with 1/2 revolution movements. The spanner wrench doesn't fit tight like a socket head, so it wants to slip off. This is another opportunity to bust your knuckles if the wrench slips, so watch the position of the wrench on the spanner nut for safety reasons while loading force on the wrench. If you go only a quarter turn or two, you won't notice any difference at all. You'll see. I tried to do it with the shock on and said forget it, that way will take a lot longer to do and it'll be easier if I just take them off. But maybe somebody has a better tool to use, I don't know for sure. Look at the PIM pictures and you'll see what kind of room you have to work with. It wouldn't be very possible with my spanner wrench. Possible? Yes, maybe.

Maybe I'm wrong. I just looked at the PIM pictures of their shocks and thought what if he's talking about adjusting the spring tension while it's mounted, but with the shock flipped upside down? I'm going to do that and see. It looks like there's a lot more room for the spanner wrench to move. That would be a great improvement. I've adjusted my shocks at least three or four times. I'd love to be able to just jack up the car when I get to Vegas, remove the wheel, and lower the car for the track. Then at the end of the event, adjust them back up. It's going up on jack stands for an oil change anyway, so that's when I'll do it and see. Thanks for making me think about this, nice improvement if it works.

Oops....forgot something. When you do make the adjustments, if the assembly is still on the car, make sure you have the wheels off the ground. You don't want any natural car weight on there.

Bob