I have a 95 GXE with 135,000 miles. The car's suspension is as follows:

Front tokico blue shocks(about 50,000mi), rear shocks original. No other upgrades.

The ride quality isn't very good right now, I think because of shocks being so worn. I want to increase handling but not sacrifice much ride quality, and I don't want to lower my max because I drive on alot of unpaved roads and need the ground clearance.

My solution is this: Rear sway bar, kyb gr2's all around. Does anyone have a gxe with only gr2's and a rsb? Is this the right way to go? Will the handling increase be noticable? Will ride quality still be good? Cost is an issue, and this was the best bang for the buck I could think of. Any information is appreciated.

Thanks

 

You are on the right track if cost is an issue. GR2 is good for the lower price range. The ride will be better than stock OEM. The rear sway bar will improve the handling on the Maxima also. Throw in a FSTB and you will have better handling.

 

Yeah I am in same situation.
How much does a garage charge to change all four shocks?

 

Since your car has a good amount of miles you will probably need to replace a few other suspension components. Here is a link with a list of the suspension parts for our cars:

http://staff.jccc.net/dlee/maxima/suspension/

The main things you will want to replace are the bumpstops/dustboots (the ones that say Bumper Assy), strut bearings for the front, and I would recommend new strut mounts as well. Some may say that you should not replace the strut mounts unless they are bad, but mine were already on their way out at little over 100k. I chose to keep them on and within a week I had to pay to get the front suspension taken apart to put in the new strut mounts.

 

Thanks 96blackmax, I will have those other parts replaced as well.

 

No problem .

 

I know njmaxseltd liked the ride with KYB AGX/stock springs http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=77978, so I'm guessing the GR-2s might be a good upgrade. He's since gone to H&Rs, Illuminas up front, and AGX in the rear http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=240608. Maybe some other combo now, I'm not sure! If I weren't so concerned with the wheel gap, I probably would have stayed with stock springs. I ended up with H&R/Illuminas. While I'm happy with my decision, it definitely is a lot stiffer and you'd want to make sure you want that. I'd like to ride in a stock spring/firmer shock setup. You'll probably like it.

Are you going to work on your car yourself, or have someone else do it? If you're not doing it yourself, it might be exspensive to have to do things more than once. You'd definitely want to make sure you replaced all the worn components at once. I did the work myself, and replaced a few things at different times. I've got about the same mileage as you and needed strut bearings, endlinks, lower ball joints (the boots were shredded), front strut boots (one was shredded), sway bar bushings (one was shredded). You might even want to consider a complete set of bushings http://www.courtesyparts.com/energys...on/maxima.html, but this could get expensive in the labor department if you're not doing it yourself.

As far as the RSB, I enjoyed it on stock suspension. Unlike some people, I didn't notice any difference as far as body roll. There was a big reduction in the amount of understeer, but you have to be driving pretty hard to notice this (I noticed it quite often!). Let us know what you go with and how you like it.