Ohlins USA Your Killing Me!
 

*Full honesty, I ordered my sent in late January and they’re still not available and there’s no estimated time of arrival. So while they may be an amazing suspension at an amazing price as of now they’re unavailable.

Yes I know they been available overseas for years. But that meant trusting some overseas vendor with your credit card, sucking up the ridiculous value added tax, and paying the overseas shipping fees.

Ohlins has decided to feel out the U.S market for its 370Z road and track suspension. If our community shows enough interest we will have a truly superior coil over available for an amazing price point. There are some downsides which I will explain below, but the upside are more than worth it in my opinion.

Just so you know, I do not work for them. However, I did order the first set based from Ohlins USA!

There really are two levels of suspensions. With the first ranging from Tein, Koni (nonrace), BC Racing, KW V, etc... And then there is the second level consisting of AST, Moton, and Penske’s. The Ohlins fall into the second level.

If you do any type of competition ( auto cross, racing, time trails, etc.), with all things being equal between cars, you will be at an advantage ( or your competition will be at a disadvantage) if you are on Ohlins and they are on a first level suspension.

And the Ohlins cost only 2.5K. AST or Moton will set you back more than 5K. Don’t even ask about Penske.

Now the downsides.

1. Since they are testing out the waters in the United States they do not have them in stock. That means they’re coming by slow boat from Sweden. However, with enough interest they will start stocking them in the United States.

2. They’re only have two settings, soft and hard (although rebound and compression are both adjusted).

3. Spring rates are a little soft for track duty. However, custom Swift springs are available for a couple hundred bucks.

So if you’re willing to put up with the downsides, want the upper hand on your competition, or just want the best available suspension in the sub $3000 range give or Ohlins a look.

Always nice to have more quality parts more readily available for our platform :yum:

$2.5K is a pretty good price for that it comes with springs and aluminum top-hat. At that price, aluminum top hats are often extras (for such brand).

Would love to have independent adjustments for compression and rebound, but can't have it all for the price.

I've had Ohlins on most of my street bikes. My VFR has Ohlins forks and shock on it now. :tup: Top shelf suspension.

I just wish the coilovers for the Z was a true 2 way adjustable. :( Separate compression and rebound dampening. I really like that the spring preload is separate from ride height. :tup:

Glad you brought up that the DFV isn't a 2-way adjustable set. I'd been assuming they were 2 way for a while now.

It’s cool that Ohlins is finally entering the scene, I was hoping they would have when I was shopping. I do wonder how much better is any they are vs some of the other options out now. Not saying Ohlins can’t be the best but at the same time just because it’s Ohlins doesn’t automatically mean this is their best tech/effort (DFV is some of their older tech and not like others can’t catch up) and even ohlins can make mistakes (their MTB stuff was way overdamped vs competition at first and has now been revised to prevent packing up and harshness). Sadly there isn’t anywhere (mags etc) that will compare multiple brands vs each other on same vehicle for an apples to apples compare and pretty sure most us on here don’t have the money to buy 4-5 different brands of coil overs to give an honest result.

Ohlins are a quality brand, I would love to have a custom Ohlins coilover, but I don't think this will happen.

Now this may be a dumb question but these would be true type of course, right?

Interesting video.



https://youtu.be/uFl72NDCQY0

I don’t believe so. I think they were actually released sometime last year (I think vivid had them) and they are like most others and used a 11k front spring and 10k rear non true type (after converting in lbs to k rating).

You’re right. I fixed the original post.

Well Ohlins website does advertise it as compression and rebound adjustable, just cannot be adjusted independently. I guess it’s a “2-way”, just not a “true 2-way” as Rusty put it.

Some of my research has showed me that on some. When you adjust the dampening. It will change both the compression and rebound. On others. The rebound will not change but the compression will. So........when looking. Read the fine print.

Wish there was a top shelf OE strut / shock setup. Not fond of Koni.

Yep, it depends on the quality $$$ of damper, cheaper ones tend to be all over the place when making adjustments while better one's like this one I am sure are consistent and predictable.

I think you have this backwards. Typically a 1 adjuster is the low speed rebound is the major change and you may see a slight change in compression but it is minimal at best (some even put in a one way valve to ensure there is no crosstalk). For some reason the car world continues to call it a soft-firm adjuster when in reality is should be a slow-fast adjuster, if you have non true type coilovers just pull your rear shock and test it yourself and you’ll find the difference in effort to compress the shock at full soft is essentially unnoticeable vs firm yet the difference the shock returns will be instantly apparent. The reason behind this is rebound ports are smaller than compression ports as the rebound actually needs to be more restrictive than compression (may sound odd but look at any damper piston and the smaller ports are the rebound). That said the single adjuster adjust the size of the free bleed port and since that port cannot be too large otherwise you would not have enough rebound damping (all oil would flow through the main port and not the piston) so the port must be small enough to restrict on rebound which then makes it too small to flow on compression and the compression shims will lift before any major amount of oil is flowing through the bleed port.

Hopefully that makes sense

You guys can watch this guys videos for a ton of information (he does mtb suspension but has an extensive background in others)

https://youtu.be/LsxWVhpc3II

https://youtu.be/cKd5RqLBECc