After removing rear traing arms, bearings, brakes, bushes and spring plates (patAAANNG) I was playing around with paint and cleaing things up, as it's pretty disgusting down there.

I made the mistake of checking the rear shocks by compressing them.

They're dead. I have all these cool new bushings and bearings and parts and I'm assembling and everything's going well and then... dead shocks.

Who recommends what? Been looking at Bilsteins and Konis and some generic coil-overs but frankly I have no idea what I should be putting in. It's a '76 IRS which is a daily driver that gets punted around a bit with some feeling: full-on sport hardness is not necessary, but it is definitely not a cruiser.' the 'search' function has given me ideas, but no closure.

KW's look awesome

http://www.eshocks.com/bil_veh.asp?Model_Index=77Q11&Manf=All&SubChar=Q 

I've been happy with my set of Monroe GT Gas for the last few years. They were cheap and you can get them off the shelf at most local car parts stores.

x2 for Bilstien's

I've looked at Bilsteins from e-shocks before (go the search function!) worth getting 'matched' all round? heavy duty looks about right. Monroe has the plus of being an off-the shelf item, but I've heard ppl say they're too hard for dubs.

Quote:

Originally posted by Peter Leonard After removing rear traing arms, bearings, brakes, bushes and spring plates (patAAANNG) I was playing around with paint and cleaing things up, as it's pretty disgusting down there. I made the mistake of checking the rear shocks by compressing them. They're dead. I have all these cool new bushings and bearings and parts and I'm assembling and everything's going well and then... dead shocks. Who recommends what? Been looking at Bilsteins and Konis and some generic coil-overs but frankly I have no idea what I should be putting in. It's a '76 IRS which is a daily driver that gets punted around a bit with some feeling: full-on sport hardness is not necessary, but it is definitely not a cruiser.' the 'search' function has given me ideas, but no closure. KW's look awesome

KYB can be got in oil only but do gas too. Oil will give a softer ride and gas will be stiffer if KYB or Monroe.

Bilstein and Koni do the adjustable gas so you can tune the stiffness

BUT the other big thing to remember is if your ride is lowered or not as a standard length shock won't work as well on a lowered vehicle. This can cause either a stiffer or sloppier ride or even bottom the shock out!!!!!

also if Your car IS lowered a lot, You may need shorter shocks..
I have shorter shocks on the front of My 68 beetle although its only lowered about 2 inches now..
when it was lower I had to go shorter...

the shocks can bottom out on a lowered car... REAR
so it needs to be able to hit the rubber bump stop
before the shock bottoms out.

LEE

so for adjustable Bilsteins or Konis for the rear, does anyone have a part number? the ones I see do not appear to be adjustable. mind you I'm not looking very closely