Shock absorber opinion

-
Kendog 170

Kendog 170

Let the boy go !
Joined
Mar 10, 2016
Messages
4,607
Reaction score
4,038
Location
Reading Ma.
I'm getting ready to purchase some shocks for the 68 Dart Ragtop. I was looking at the KYB Gas adjust. I came across these Monroe coil overs for the rear and was curious about them. My springs aren't great but not bad either could use a little more height in the back. Anyone using them or is this just overkill and better for a truck?
More Information for MONROE 58496
 
Spring loaded shocks for the back is like putting lipstick on a pig. Will it work- yes. But not for the long haul.
New springs are needed. They wear out even just sitting there. Bushings, wearplates, and height.

As for shocks- name brand and new are best. eBay shocks- not so much. lol!
 
I just replaced my KYB Gas Adjust shocks. They were sufficient for a cruiser but I wanted a high performance shock son I put some Hotchkis Fox shocks on. I will be upgrading the factory sway bar and getting new leafs when I do my 8-3/4 soon.

Here’s my take on shocks after having used all of these:
-Hotchkis if you want premium performance at a premium price (I bought mine NIB from here!). Most expensive.
-Bilstein is the second best and second most expensive.
-KYB. Really a decent shock for a cruiser and you can’t go wrong if you aren’t cornering aggressively.
-Gabriel/Monroe. Low budget but they will keep you Mopar on the road. Lowest price, lowest performance.
There’s another red and white one I’ve used but it doesn’t stand out in my memory.
You see how performance and quality correlate with price?

It does sound like you need new springs like myself. I’ve been looking at General Spring (cheap/made in USA), Rock Auto’s Dayton springs (2nd cheapest), and Eaton.
I am after the 1968 Dart 383 spring that is 130 lbs/in rate. They have them in 120 too. If your cruiser doesn’t tow or carry a full load of fat people that is a good spring rate for performance cornering. General Spring out of KC has these in stock and can arch into a +1” or whatever you want before they ship. Seems like the best most customizable option and they are the cheapest!
1964 - 1976 Dart, Valiant / 1964 - 1969 Barracuda rear leaf spring with 5/8" front eye bolt, 6 leaf

Good luck!
 
I recently bought some KYB shocks for the rear of my Barracuda. The gas charge was so great that I couldn’t get even close to compressing them by hand. It looks like they bumped up my ride height about an inch or something like that. They might be just what you want.
 
Kendog 170 said:
I'm getting ready to purchase some shocks for the 68 Dart Ragtop. I was looking at the KYB Gas adjust. I came across these Monroe coil overs for the rear and was curious about them. My springs aren't great but not bad either could use a little more height in the back. Anyone using them or is this just overkill and better for a truck?
More Information for MONROE 58496
Click to expand...

i guess the question is what is the desired outcome of the car? get the springs right first.
 
abodyjoe said:
get the springs right first.
Click to expand...
Torsion and leaf. I forgot to mention I upgraded to the 1.03 from PST and would consider them the baseline of TB’s for modern radial tires. If you are using a 14” wheel or a skinny front tire (drag or cruiser) then sub-1” bars would be sufficient but if you have a 15” wheel with say, 225/60-15 and take cloverleafs aggressively or like your car to handle then 1.03’s would be my choice. Get a sway bar too.

Of course, cars are made of components that fit within systems. A car is a multitude of components within systems that are dependent on each other. Even if your budget calls for high or low quality you should approach purchases of these components in that mindset. How will it work with where I want to go? Will this work toward my goals?

The foundation of your suspension is springs (tb and leaf) Start there unless you have leaking blown out shocks. Shocks I consider secondary. Finally, sway bars and other traction aids. Plan it out and build ground up. Springs, shocks, aides.
 
Last edited:
What is the expectation and intended use? I have The Hotchkis and love them, but my car has larger torsion bars, HD rear leafs, front and rear sways and is lowered. I expect it to handle and it does. Like a lot of car parts, these need to match your suspension. I liked Bilstein's too.

Know what your buying, the Gas-A-Just can be up to 25% stiffer then OE, so who knows what you're getting for damping to match them up.

https://www.kyb.com/products/gas-a-just/
 
I had a set of those coil over shocks on my '68 Road Runner. I bought it from the original owner in late 1980, and they were already on it. That was car my only car for almost two years. I walked-hitched-bummed rides-took the bus in the winter. Those shocks were still on the car when I sold it almost twenty years later. (Somebody please take me back in a time machine and stop me from selling it!). The shocks worked. The car had a nice stance and handled well enough for my purposes at the time.
 
Just a cruiser. Too much on my plate right now for Springs, Larger T-bars. I do have a 1 1/8 Sway bar I need to install.Just bought all ne w tires and want to get rid of the old shocks.
Thanks for all the replies.
 
Kyb’s are great for anything stockish and torsion bars under 1”. I run them and I like them. But they are wayyy too stiff for anything built to handle.

If you plan to go big in the future, you should just upgrade shocks now. Quality shocks like Koni or Bilstein will last for decades and are usually rebuildable in the event of a failure. The last shocks you will have to buy,so to speak.

IMG_6515.jpeg
 
I have six mopars and not one has power steering. I don't expect any of them to "handle".
The only one that I know what shocks it has is the 62: competition engineering drag shocks.
Three of my mopars don't even HAVE tube shocks. Or torsion bars.
 
I did a write up on KYBs over on the corner-carvers forum about 15 years ago, AFAIK nothing has changed since then, I do not like them:
'Good' Shock Tech

Copy paste of the original text:
"As promised.
smile.gif
<RANT> Back when I was much younger (25 or so
biggrin.gif
) I bought a set of KYB shocks for my ’66 Mustang thinking they would help my car handle and ride better… Not so much.
mad.gif
What I got was a car that would shake the fillings out of your teeth and tended to snap sideways when it wasn’t pushing the front end. At one point the driver’s side front KYB actually snapped the upper mounting bolts popping to hood open at about 30 MPH (a quick foot on the brakes saved the hood, but almost got me creamed from behind). This got much worse when I installed stiffer springs. Now, many years later (24 or so
frown.gif
) I have the benefit of hind (and seat of the pants) sight through many iterations of the setup on the Mustang, My Barracuda, my Dart, and of talking to other people about their experiences with KYBs.

My analysis of what KYB has packaged (foisted?
rolleyes.gif
) as a performance shock is that they’ve dialed in a LOT of compression damping to prop the corners up in hard cornering/transitions and placed the knee (if there even is one) in the compression damping curve quite high to provide a “performance ride”, while at the same time they’ve only provided enough (barely) rebound damping to handle some levels of “stock” springs. The result is a car that feels quick and responsive initially, but tends to skitter and dance its way towards the ditch or guardrail when being driven at even 7/10ths on any surface that isnt glass smooth; forget about trying to balance the car on the limit of the tires at an autocross, the chassis will tend to wind up to certain point, then “sproing” right on past the limit without so much a “how-do-you-do?”.
eek.gif


I can’t help wondering, based on my own experience, and that of others (mostly MOPAR A, B and E-body guys) I’ve discussed this with, just how many kids have spat themselves off of the road because they expected a shock being sold (and hyped in all the popular rags) as a “performance” shock to actually work like a performance shock?
mad.gif
</RANT>

All IMNSHO, YMMV, BYOB. "
biggrin.gif
 
shock mounts weren't designed to actually carry vehicle load full time. when we bought my duster in 1991, it had 50k miles and I can't remember now if it was those coil over shocks or air shocks on it. both shock mounts were completely ripped out of the unibody.you want to get the butt in the air a little more? either new springs, re-arched springs, add a leaf or even go with longer shackles to get a little more height.
 
@CPDave has it right, KYB's are hot garbage.

I've run Monroe's, I've run KYB's, I've run RCD Bilsteins and I've run the Hotchkis Fox's on one or another of my Mopars. The KYB's are the the worst of the lot, you can't make a legitimate comparison on performance or ride quality to the Bilstein or Hotchkis shocks. I ran KYB's on my Challenger for quite a while, tens of thousands of miles with 1.12" torsion bars. When I took the KYB's off my Challenger and replaced them with the Bilsteins it was like I completely changed the entire suspension- it was a night and day, massive improvement in both ride quality AND handling. On my Duster I ran the Monroe Classics a PO had put on there and ran 1" torsion bars for a bit before I upgraded to 1.12's and Hotchkis Fox's. The Monroe's weren't great by any means, they were too soft but they kept the suspension from oscillating so they did their job. They could have been a decade old too. If cheap is the only thing that matters I'd run them or Gabriels a thousand times before I looked at KYB's.

I have no idea why there's this fascination with the KYB's unless it's just marketing because they run ads in all the car magazines. They're horrific on torsion bars with larger than 1", the digressive valving will rattle your eyeballs loose in their sockets over minor bumps and mildly rough roads. And then they completely give up when there's any kind of actual suspension travel and the bars just dominate, there's no control at all from the KYB's with any significant travel with larger bars.

Even on factory sized bars they're too stiff with minor inputs and absent with larger movements. The "stiff off the mark" masks the too soft wheel rate at first, but when things actually move they quit. So you get what seems like a "band aid" for the soft torsion bars with regard to ride, but in reality they've made your handling worse.
 
72bluNblu said:
I have no idea why there's this fascination with the KYB's unless it's just marketing because they run ads in all the car magazines.
Click to expand...

thats exactly the reason. plus mopar magazines pushed them years ago when they got them for free to put on their project cars.
 
72bluNblu said:
Monroe's weren't great by any means, they were too soft but they kept the suspension from oscillating so they did their job. They could have been a decade old too.
Click to expand...
Thats what's in it now. Old ones. They stood the test of time. I'll just buy them again for now. Too many irons in the fire right now.
Found another interesting suspension issue I'm going to start a new post on now. I will stay clear of KYB's thanks for all the replys.
 
Kendog 170 said:
I'm getting ready to purchase some shocks for the 68 Dart Ragtop. I was looking at the KYB Gas adjust. I came across these Monroe coil overs for the rear and was curious about them. My springs aren't great but not bad either could use a little more height in the back. Anyone using them or is this just overkill and better for a truck?
More Information for MONROE 58496
Click to expand...
What are you doing with the car? Just a street car? I would look for some NOS Monroe heavy duty hydraulic shocks. That's what they came with and they rode just fine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top