Will having the struts less compressed while at rest, and having the struts have more travel during action allow them to last longer, versus regular rear mounts?

Obviously, I am referring to the use of motivational rears on a lowered max.

 

You're over analyzing this before your purchase...

Depends... if it keeps you from bottoming out your strut, then definitely yes (as well as less stress on the rest of your suspension).

Flip side could be more (normal) piston travel for additional wear.

 

Excellent question!

It shouldn't effect the life of the shock.

 

I was hoping that it would lengthern the life by reducing the chances (or the number of incidents) of bottoming out.

The piston travel point could be valid as well

I am not really analyizing i the purchase, I am trying to JUSTIFY it in my mind. I paid $125 for tokico struts w/ 12K on them. To spend $115 on strut mounts to PUT them in seems like a lot. I am not saying that it is not worth the money, but the numbers are so close together. Of course, if I had bought the tokicos NEW, it would no tbe such a strange situation.

Now all I have to do is scrape up the money for the mounts. Between these, the strut bearings, dustboots, and random assorted small parts, this is adding up QUICK!

 

Your right to try to justify the price of these mounts! Because in reality they are just circular 1/4" steel with two holes to bolt onto the body of the car! My friend purchased these and said that he regreted it immediately after he did. He said that they do not really improve the ride quality and the bouncyness associated with lowering the maxima and the reduced amount of suspension travel therein. If I were you I would save my money for something else. The guy at Motivational needs to rethink his pricing strategy for these pieces of metal. I mean really man, you gotta come down on your prices, the piece is of good quality but its deffinately not worth $115 + shipping. Get with the program and start manufacturing some affordable mounts and people will start buying more of them from ya. My two cents.

 

Can you post a link to this Motivational mount? I can't picture what it is?

 

I have a gd going for $115 shipped...normally they are definately more than that...

 

Since you are running the Group Deal, can you either answer this for us or call the manufacturer and find out the answer for us?

 

Ok, here's my thinking. Say you drop the car 1" and the strut shaft is 6" long. You're getting 5" of travel without the mounts, that part of the shaft going up & down say 10,000 times a year.

Changing the mount gives you back that 1" and now the shaft is moving 6" total. The shaft is still moving that same 10,000 times up & down, just with longer travel. I don't see how that translates into more piston wear necessarily. I'd think lowering and NOT getting the mounts or shortened struts would increase wear as the shaft is no longer centered in the middle of the housing with equal travel up & down.

http://www.nissanperformancemag.com/...r02/me_mounts/

http://www.nissanperformancemag.com/...vational.shtml

Aside from the one post saying "a friend" didn't like them, I know 5+ Nissan owners who have installed and swear by them.

 

I personally have the motivational shock mounts, and I for one believe it was a good deal. I personally went a picked them up from the guy who makes them. He's actually a pretty nice guy for one. And two, he's actually not making a "huge profit" off these things as you may think. In fact, he's selling these things right out of his house, and with any of these that don't sell, he will be personally taking a monetary hit on.

I had a chance to talk to him a bit about how he makes them. He created the design himself, mostly for use in his personal car (nissan 200sx lowered 4") and decided he wanted to do the world a favor by selling them to car enthusiasts. To actually ensure that they would fit on a maxima, he went to a dealership and ordered a stock rear strut mount with his own money, and waited the backorder time to find out that it was the exact same piece he had made for his 200sx. In addition, he doesn't own his own CNC milling machine, and therefore has to send the design out to get these created. To get a cheap enough rate on the CNC work, he had to order them in big lots. At any given time, he's probably got quite a few of these sitting around his house all paid for by his own money.

These are very high quality, very strong pieces, formed with the exact same cutouts as stock, and anodized black to match the stock piece. He also includes a hard urathane bottom bushing and washer. I don't think $125 is all that much to pay.

Furthermore, I'm not friends with the guy, I only met him once when I picked mine up, so I'm not writing this as any kind of promotion to him.

Also, to your friend who doesn't seem to like his. I'd say the big problem is his shocks. If you run tokicos or stock shocks, of course the ride will be bouncy. Nothing short of buying real high damping shocks can fix it, not even motivational mounts. It has been said many times that tokicos are "not designed for aftermarket spring use." But yet people still run them with aftermarket shocks.

I've personally got Eibachs with Koni Yellows and have absolutely no bounce, even with 4 people in the back of my car. It is extremely controlled, and now since I have the motivational mounts in there, I don't bottom out against the bumpstops after 1 inch of travel like before. So the final lesson is "you get what you pay for." Have your friend go out and buy some AGXs or Koni Yellows, and you'll instantly see the difference in what a high damping shock can do. Or even better, at the next maxima meet, ask for a ride in someone's car who has Konis, it's quite an expierence.

 

Nice explaination. I appreciate your attempt to add unbiased input to the situation. I am not inclned to think that he is making a bundle off of these, for exactly the reasons that you specified.

My only point of disagreement was the remarks about Tokicos. Many people have liked them with a drop. I have heard mixed reviews, btu one resident suspension guru highly recommended them, so for what I paid it is worth a shot.

My only limitation regarding purchasing the mounts is that after spending the $ on struts and springs, plus the "maintainence" parts that i need to change when re-doing suspension, there is very little cash left for strut mounts. I may have to go with those later this summer...

 

Thanks for the info - same setup here. End of this month is my first autocross this season and if I can install in time I'll know how they improve/hurt for sure.

 

I've got them and I love them. They work and prinicipal by which they work is simple.


Dave

 

The shocks for the back of the Max are not position sensative (unless they are Monroe Sens-a-tracs and I hope no one here has done that) so they could care less where in their stroke range they operate as long as they are not physically topping or bottoming out. Therefore, there is no normal wear reduction going to happen (nor is any claimed) with these parts to lengthen the normal life of the shocks. On the otherhand, they should greatly reduce the chances of bottoming the shock out internally or externally which can be a good way to prematurely kill a shock. Some people cut or remove their bump rubber to eliminate hitting them but they leave the shock susceptible to damage in case they hit something hard and the bump rubber is not thre for protection.

I have only seen the pic listed in the above link so I cannot vouch for the quality or strength of this part although it looks okay from what I can see. What you are doing with this part is removing some of the fixed dead (non-working stroke length) length associated with the suspension and therefore giving back some working length for cars that are lowered. It also lets you run a longer and better bump stop to reduce the chances of bottoming in case you do overstroke it to far. This general idea of altering mounts to regain working length by reducing dead length is getting more common as camber plates and other thing show up on the scene. Ground Control has a similar but different part for Hondas now available. Much better to trade dead length for more bump rubber length and free length.

My I30t is lowered with Eibachs and with a family-trip load in the trunk, it will bounce on the rear bump rubbers and give a harsher ride while saving the rear shocks from damage. This at first look appears to be a good idea to remove that tendency and return some lost stroke length.

 

First off, if someone is going to be in buisness selling manufactured parts for Maximas then they have to incur an initial expendature to start up. Duhh, you have to use your own money to invest in any buisness venture! I understand that these mounts are CNC machined, which requires a design and a program to acomplish. I actually went to sevearal machine shops in an attempt to get these peices made and found it was cost prohibitive to only make two mounts. The only way to bring the price down was to have like 100+ manufactured at once, due to the programing time and drafting time required to make the pieces from scratch. I also know that it is not necessary to use CNC equipment to produce these mounts! Manual machine tools can be used which is much cheaper, maybe not at precise. But these are just strut mounts after all. I was actually tossing the idea of inverting the original mounts and re-installing them backwards, there by extending the shaft about 2". I think this would be possible with a little work. Like the studs would have to be taped out and re-welded in the opposite direction. If any body has tried this with any success please let me know? Thanx