I saw a video of a guy who put these progressive air assist shocks on his e4 and wondered if anyone else has done this? The video is 2011 and they guy is offline so no response to how they held up.
We went over a small lifted section/crack of the road yesterday and the back jarred pretty good but worst, my kid in the back reacted without pleasure. I’m thinking the weight of the motor, front end steering, 2 batteries and driver made the front suspension handle it better than the rear.
Their is follow up information about this mod
Here
Long story short. Works good in the back but it will give you more travel in the rear. This is a good and bad thing. It will most definitely cause your rear sub frame to Crack because of the addition travel and flex. (Stock shocks dot allow the rear sub frame to move much) If it’s not already cracked. No big deal. I had my Subframe beefed up and it took care of the issue. I would also say that the 416 shocks are just a bit soft for a stock gem car with flooded lead acid battery’s and 4 peeps.
Interesting. This person was saying that shocks where are not stiff will let the rear suspension component( “rear sub frame” ) travel too much and cause it to crack? Stated it will also flex too much and do the same…
That seems opposite of what “suspension” is/does. But I can see that if the structure is not flexible enough to handle uneven roads/suspension travel like hitting speed bumps on only the left side, then there’s a design problem and not a shock problem.
My 2002 is 100% stock and when I go over bumps, the front does well but the back sounds like someone took a brick and threw it at the back of the vehicle. It could be the rubber bushings in the shock mounts are worn but I’ll know more when I get to installing the air shocks.
For the record, I believe the video you are referencing is made by the guy who is talking to you now, @grantwest
I went with Progressive 416 Air Shocks. My car had flooded lead acid at the time. The air shocks were not stiff enough. Removed the air shocks and went with Coil overs.
Switched to lithium the coil overs were to stiff and then went back to Air
@grantwest were you able to run them on front as well? I bought a pair but need to fab a bracket to get it to clear up front. Haven’t messed with the rear yet.
Yes I had a fabricator bunny of mine needs some new shop tab is that allowed me to use the box in the front as well
Thanks for bring all this up @dougl. I keep putting used air shocks in my ebay shopping cart but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
I would hold off on the Air shocks until you have a light weight lithium kit.
Someone hopefully will discover and share a air stiffer shock for FLA folks
@diymatt - be sure to add a rebuild kit for those used shocks. They are so old that they almost certainly need rebuilt. Mine came and when I released the air, oil came out. I’m going to install them and see if I like the spring rate before I rebuild them so I only disassemble once.
@grantwest - did you experiment with the different springs that are available for those shocks?
I was not aware of a stiffer internal spring for the progressive 416 series shock
I’ve seen that they sell different rate progressive springs but what I haven’t looked into is what the rates are vs. the stock. I assume that stock would be somewhere in the middle of the range, but that’s only an assumption.
Did anyone find rubber bushing replacements for the GL1100 air shocks? I’ve not put mine on yet since I’ve yet to find replacement bushings.
Even if they feel a bit too mushy with the lead batteries, I will probably see how they feel once I do a lithium upgrade in about a year or so.