Thread: Shock Absorbers for P38

Of the units I have tried:

• Original Boges are a reasonable all-rounder and well priced if you can get them from somewhere other than a LR dealer. Carry a spare front and rear if/when they break a seal.
• Bilsteins are too firm off-road and pretty harsh on-road. Expect to pay $150-200 a corner.
• Terrafirmas are ok off-road, but a bit too soft on-road for my liking.
• Tough Dog adjustables were too soft on road to be useful. No idea what they cost as they came with the Hard Range stock-on-hand we purchased in early 2010.
• Offroad Boss 12-way adjustable shocks are very good on-road and off-road and are the ones we recommend/sell with the Hard Range 2" lift kit. They cost around $200 a corner and the post-sales support from them has been excellent.

Have heard that Koni adjustable shock are also good, but haven't forked out the $300+ per corner to try them yet.

Cheers, Paul.

Unless you are driving on "billiard table" smooth roads, steer clear of Koni Heavy Track adjustables. Excessively priced, gassed up such that you need to chain them closed to fit them (which means using a floor jack to compress them against a bracket bolted to a wall)...the standard wire frame used to hold equivalent Billies in place just distorts and lets go;and even on the 'softest' setting they are hard as nails.

further: while they are the same overall length as OEM shocks, the latter have a captive nut welded at the bottom of the upper attachemnt pin. This enables the shock to be properly held while tightning the attachment nut and compressing the bushes.

The Konis I bought (specified for P38) do not have the nut welded on the pin. This creates 2 problems:

1. No place to get a proper grip to do up the shock

2. The extra 10mm or so of effective pin length due to the absence of the captive nut means that the unthreaded lower portion of the pin is too long and so you can't do the shock up tight enough to compress the bushes sufficiently. I overcame this by dropping a spare oversize nyloc over the pin ...in effect a thick washer to take up the slack.

Because of the excessive gassing pressure, what should have been a 2hr job including coffee break turned out to be an all day affair because of the need to find a way to restrain the compressed shock so it could be fitted safely...

the bushes also are slim and transmit a lot of road noise and vibration through to the chassis and body.

I put about 4k km on them (a couple of trips to Sydney) then reverted to OEMs, a set of which cost about the same as a single Koni... I have thought of going back to the shock man in Underwood (Qld) and getting them revalved, so that the compression is markedly reduced to enable the airsprings to do their thing, and get him to concentrate on the rebound characteristics... but am not sure what to ask for! Oh yes, and now I have my U-beaut welder I could tack the captive nut on to make up for Koni's crappy cost cutting design

BTW I did write a polite letter & phoned the distributor seeking assistance: They in turn contacted Koni in Europe. The response from Koni was as arrogant as might be believed. No wonder they're in trouble with the Euro...

So I screwed up buying a set of Bilsteins (yet to be fitted)?

Mines got Koni's on it - did when I bought it.
Great ride - love em - not too harsh like the bilsteins I have on the classic.
Would put OEM on if I had to buy new shocks - anyday.

Koni's went soft at about 220k's, took them into pedders, dont know what they did, but like new and didn't cost much at all, got 35k on them since.

Must agree the Bilsteins are firm. I think they are more suited to on road than serious off road.
I snapped the bottom mount off one while driving on the road.
Contacted Bilstein and they asked if i drove the car off rd (Eer yes) no warranty.
The Hard range recommended ones or OEM sound like the go.

i run pedders foam cell on mine. they are a fair bit boatish but are soooooooo smooth that i don't seem to care about needing a captains license to drive to work and as for off road...... well it still feels like your on the motorway even when you get airborne.

Lots of choices by the sounds of it. What they sting you for the Pedders??

The off road Boss that Paul recommends are good because you can adjust the hardness softness with the spin of a dial. At the moment i am running them on 7 which i find a bit like the Bilsteins i was running and a bit hard for off-road (not that i have done much of that yet) but good for street driving. I am hoping when i finish tidying the car that i will dial in the shocks to something that i like!