Spax Front Dampers

PostPost by: Roy Gillett » Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:08 am

I just want to share experience. 22000 miles (5 years) ago I rebuilt the suspension on all corners of my +2 130. I used Spax gas filled dampers on advice from Spyder Engineering. These have been really good until very recently.

Just before arriving home from the Goodwood Revival meet last week my offside front suspension collapsed accompanied by a mighty bang. On strip down I found the damper rod had come unscrewed from the top yolk, allowing the spring finally to "escape" from the top collet and the bang was it hitting the inner wing as extended to its unloaded length. Spyder say they have never heard of this happening before and asked to have a look at both spring damper units.

The upshot was that not only was the offending unit damaged but the nearside one was found to be operationally shot - leaking and hardly damping at all.

I was wondering what other experience is out there on life expectancy, rugedness etc. of dampers on these cars. I must sayI was hoping for better than 22K miles out of my suspension rebuild when I did it! Do any other makes of dampers last longer than this?

:(

Roy
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PostPost by: steveww » Fri Sep 10, 2004 10:33 am

Rebuilt the front suspension on my S4 last winter and will be doing the rear this winter. I used GAZ dampers from TTR who now only use GAZ as they have found the quality of SPAX to be suspect.
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PostPost by: markb » Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:08 pm

I agree, the TTR dampers work well. I believe they have been race proven too.
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PostPost by: elans3 » Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:22 pm

I personally wouldn't use Spax, I find them too hard and not keen on the quality, even going back to the pre-gas days. Can't speak for TTR, but I've used Bilstein and Koni since the early 70's, and have never had any problems whatsoever. Wonderful quality too.
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