you need to lower your ride Rochester!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



B

 

Well done, man! Your drop looks very subtle, which is fine in my book. I'm looking forward to hearing more about your ride. Nice neighborhood, btw.

Um, no, I don't, NissanMan97!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (These exclamation points seem to be an inside joke of late. Funny.)

 

BTW, tomorrow is the day. I have a few important repairs that have accelerated my schedule a few weeks. My trunk is filled with stuff.

Here's the list:

• Tokico HP Blue Struts
• Moog Front Strut Mounts
• Moog Front Sway Bar End-Links
• Energy Suspension FSB frame bushings
• Centric Rotors
• Hawk HPS Brake Pads
• Front Airbag Impact Sensor
• Lower Coolant System connector pipe
• Front Valve Cover and Gasket (2004)

Needless to say, I'm pretty psyched. Not so much for this annoyingly expensive airbag sensor, but you get the point.

 

its does doesnt it? LOL

Like youve said its not for everyone. Me on the other hand im getting some Vogtland and GR-2's.

 

good luck. let us know how the it feels i bet i need to replace some of the parts on that list as well

B

 

I just now brought the car home from the shop... all very casual highway driving, with one of my girls in the back seat. So a more contemplative analysis is certainly warranted. All I have at the moment is a first impression when going from 7 year old, OEM, SE Struts w/57K miles to brand new Tokico HP Blues and MOOG front mounts:

The ride is virtually identical.

That said, there are subtle differences. Little bumps are softer, and the highway is strangely smoother. Oh, and slightly more quiet, too. But big sweeping off-ramps? Don't know yet (rush hour). Aggressive lane changes? Aggressive launches and stops? Rebound on dips? Again... I don't know yet.

What else I can say is that the suspension feel is best described as a "thunk" rather than a "clunk". An analogy would be like the difference between a ball peen hammer and a rubber mallet.

I'll certainly give it more thought over the next few days. But for now, I'm not unhappy, just as I'm not super excited either.

 

Rochester, I am not suprise to see that respond. I heard most people say OEM struts are similar to hp blues. Since your oem struts are in good condition, its even harder to compare imo. On the other hand, I think springs also play a major role of it as well. Personally, this is my first lowered car and I can feel alot differences vs oem springs/struts. I chose to get H&R springs is because of handling and it doesn't drop too low. Right now, I feel like I can turn sharper and handles better. But its only 2 weeks of testing it, I hope they will keep me impress.

 

I'm sure to form more opinions with more nuance as the days roll by with familiar roads and varying driving conditions. However, after dinner this evening, I slipped out of the house and thoroughly thrashed the car into my local highways, on ramps and off ramps. Numerous times, I hit the same ramps with increasingly aggressive driving. It must have looked a little crazy from an objective POV, and not at all how I drive all the time. But fun? Yeah, lots of fun.

First up, and off-topic: I'm loving the Centric Rotors and Hawk HPS pads. Braking is shorter, with much more control, and totally glass-smooth. I am very, very happy with the new brakes.

Second up and also OT: my steering is much more solid with the ES frame bushings on the front sway bar, and 2 new MOOG end-links. The steering feels new again.

Third up: suspension. What I said earlier about it feeling identical to the OEM struts was mostly true, based on casual, slow, rush-hour driving. But that opinion changes completely when driving aggressively.

When I hit a dip in the road at speed, there is much less bounce, less vertical play. What's the right word - less rebound? I believe that behavior is what helps keep the car planted on hard, sweeping turns, because it's not lifting as much as before. This gives me more control, and let's me hit turns at greater speeds. I'm going to be very sensitive to this dynamic over the next few days, to try and get a better understanding of what's going on. But that's my best guess: less rebound = car planted = faster turns.

Of course, it's not all in the struts. I have a RSB, and I'm riding on Eagle F1 summer tires. The ES torque mount bushings probably come into play as well, keeping the engine weight in place on these turns.

We all know that most mods are incremental; (except for juice). In this case, the HP Blues are a nice complement to a modified, daily driver setup. Smooth and soft for normal driving. Stiff and responsive when letting loose.

More later. But for tonight's assessment, I'm doing the Happy Dance.

 

Good Stuff Rochester!

Thanks for the updates, and keep 'em coming!!

gr

 

Thanks for the magnificent review

 

Great review, Rochester! Looking forward to your future posts in the weeks ahead. I'm also considering replacing my OEM struts (104K miles) with Tokico HP blues, but I'm not sure whether or not I should keep my stock springs. The car is bone stock, so this would be my first "upgrade". Do you guys think I would be better off replacing the stock springs also---given the number of miles I have on them?

 

One of the most telling comparisons would be the highway on-ramp when I leave my office. It gently pulls away from the main road, banking uphill and gradually to the right before merging. It's a long, wide ramp, with just enough curve to be dicey at WOT. Over the years and various mods, I've gauged what I can and can't do against this ramp.

I just went out for a few slices of pizza, and hit this on-ramp for the first time with the new struts. Even with my mods before the struts, I really couldn't go WOT all the way up, for fear of hanging on to the pavement. I could get close to full-out acceleration, but never with confidence. That's changed now. With the Blues, I don't think I could push the car hard enough to lose it.

Interesting, huh?

 

Nah, new struts always make the car feel like new.

New tires, new struts, new brakes.. These things always make people love their cars again.

Glad you're happy

 

Do you find the rears to be softer than OEM. I felt HP with stock springs ride quality was much different from stock. Just made the car feel wierd... Too soft for my liking.

 

True enough. Can't argue with that, I suppose.

No. There is an overall softness compared to the originals, but that's a very, very subtle impression. As stated, the ride is virtually identical to SE stock... until you throw the car into a bend, at which point the reduced rebound helps to keep it planted. Remember, I'm on OEM springs, so my only suspension change yesterday was 7-year old NISSAN-branded Tokico's for brand new Tokico HP Blues.

 

I felt that the fronts had the same overall feeling as stock, but I just couldnt get past how lose the rear end felt. I felt light and not as controlled. Maybe the age of your stock units has something to do with your impression. I installed brand new OEM units and man are they stiff like I remember.

 

That's very possible, boondox. I was considering keeping the old struts and selling them here to someone who needed to de-mod, but they were really, really crappy looking. Junkyard quality, after 7 northeast winters.

Day 3 now, still grinning from ear to ear as I drive.

 

5 days now, and it's become the new normal. There are still moments where I say to myself, "Whoa, that's new, and I like it!", and I hope there are more like that with future mods. But right around now, the crush is over, and it is what it is.

But that's not what spurred me into writing. I was messing in the garage, and looking at the car, when I realized the struts are blue. I mean, "Duh", the struts are the color blue... Sherlock Holmes I'm not. But up until now it didn't occur to me that I could see blue through the wheel-well. (Hmm, and kind of wishing it were yellow.)



Which leads me into the rabbit hole of "drop your car" comments. However, you can't deny that having a gap in the wheel well allows for the color of your struts to peek through. We'll lamely put that in the win column.

 

A but shipping is free I bought two sets of springs and struts the blues and Eibach's one set for a 00' sold and now for 03' still rolling till the wheels fall off and he will match price and you can call them if you got a problem and on ebay send me a e mail and I will get back to you same with a return

 

This is what I was looking for. Awesome write up.

 

Glad you're happy with the set up, Rochester. Did you end up changing the boots? Hard to believe that they were still o.k. My fronts are toast. I'm going to order new shocks/struts and all the mounts, boots, etc. in the next couple of weeks. I think I'll go with GR2's though. Same price, but of course being in Canada, it's an extra $100 for shipping.

 

Try CarQuest... They carry KYB.. I bought the struts for my Saturn from CQ. The price wasn't too bad for those ones, but I haven't priced for the Max.

 

i can get you a full set of blues for around 440 plus tax CDN. and can meet you in toronto so there won't be any shipping charges.

 

Thanks Knight. That's very generous of you to meet in TO. I'll have to think about it as I was kinda set on the GR2's. Do you also have access to mounts and boots? Sorry to go OT.

 

Research and advice here on the forum recommends using OEM dust boots, which run around $50+ USD for a full set. It's not a lot of money, but all those little things add up quickly. And if the original boots were OK, I was content to pass on new ones.

So I was very surprised to see that they were fine. No cracks, tears, holes... nothing. We washed them, wiped them dry, then sprayed them down inside & out with a can of silicon spray.

And good as new again. (knock on wood)


Spock, unless you know for sure otherwise, only plan on replacing front mounts.

 

Thank you!

 

Rochester -

I never did feel that Nissan got the 5th Gen strut damping right. From the get-go my 20AE would perform a little corkscrew of a dance going over a particular smooth but uneven and curved stretch of road. At 25 mph. My suspicion here is that the amount of low speed rebound damping wasn't ever fully sorted.

It's hard to say if you're better off with the blues or would have been with Illuminas, as I think that depends on your own preferences in ride quality vs handling performance. Eventually, I swapped in a set of Illuminas, still with the stock springs. I think I left them set at 3 front and 4 rear, or slightly to moderately stiffer damping than blues. Great handling, no more corkscrewing on that little stretch of road . . . and a lot more harshness over sharp little bumps like railroad grade crossings where the rails aren't quite flush with the pavement surface. That's a high speed bump damping issue, and adding stiffer springs really would only make that situation worse. Even if the rest of the ride, handling and rebound feel was improved.

The car was my wife's DD, and for a number of reasons swapping in either shorter or stiffer springs was not a consideration here either.

BTW, high and low speed as used here has relatively little to do with vehicle speed. It's the velocity of the internal shock or strut piston being referenced. Low speed here is a body inertia motion thing, such as when you turn in to a corner (roll), exit it (damping here going mostly unnoticed unless you're hustling more than just a little or the struts really are about dead), brake (nose dive, tail lift), accelerate (nose rise, tail squat), or go over small smooth heaves in the road. High speed is generally suspension response to sudden displacement of the wheel, which is most noticeable in the "wheel upward" direction. While it's OK to have quite a bit of low speed damping to control inertia motions and avoid "overshooting" the suspension final position, it's difficult to do so without running the high speed damping unreasonably high, particularly with shocks/struts built to a consumer price point. So you usually end up with something compromised off the one end of the spectrum to suit behavior at the other end.


Norm

 

Part of me doesn't want to over-analyze these struts, because they're just Blues on stock springs. I'm starting to get self-conscious about all this discussion, because it's by no means an aggressive or expensive suspension setup.

So here it is, distilled to as few words as possible: the ride is nearly identical to SE-stock, except now it "ramps" far better than it ever did.

And for the us daily drivers, "ramping" is about as close as we ever get to course racing.

 

 

I wish I could add more comments about the hp blues, but you covered most of them already. I only have the car almost 9 months vs you have your Maxima since day 1 (8 years).

Also this is my DD as well, I drive to work 90% highway and overall I am pleased with them. I also like the HR spring set up as well. Oh yea, I don't feel the car "rolling" anymore when I am going 75mph on a sharp turn though.

 

i have one listing for used oem shocks of 03 maxima
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/02-03...Q5fAccessories

 

^^^
Opportunism has a close alliance to rudeness.

I considered selling my 2003 OEM struts, until I saw them in my hands after 8 years of use, and realized they were worthless.

Fail.

 

Rochester where did you get your moog front strut mounts from? I need a set.

 

Here: http://www.energysuspensionparts.com...an+Maxima+2003

But I don't see them offering parts categorized for a 2001 Infiniti I30, so you should probably contact them.

 

They should work with my car too, since the suspension components are the same. Does it come with pairs or just a single one?

 

It came as a pair, front left and right side. With the plastic collar and 3 shiny new nuts... which was nice, because my OEM strut tower nuts were kind of crunchy.

To be honest, I really don't know whether or not the originals were deserving of replacement. My mechanic and I didn't discuss that detail. But research here on the forum was 100% conclusive: replace the front mounts. So that's what I did.

Good thing the forum didn't advise me to jump off a bridge, huh? jk

 

this forum can be very persuasive sometimes! Mine makes horrible crunching/clicking noises, i just got a pair of Monroe mounts and hopefully they will last longer then the stocks, i have 43k original miles on the car and they're dead. I am also going to keep the original springs most probably but instead of blues I went for the Illuminas (just wanted a stiffer ride but not harsh).

 

I have recently bought tokico hp blues for under 300 shipped to home. I will update with the contact info once i confirm it with the dealer.

 

Might want to think about the rear shock mounts & seals. I, too lept from that bridge and ordered new front mounts & bearings. The originals, by visual inspection, were fine. Since I ordered new, I replaced them. I did not, however order new rear mounts. The spot marked on the bridge from where to jump said it was not usually necessary to replace the rear mounts - only the front. That info, in my case, was incorrect.

 

Thanks for posting all your comments on the H&R and Blues. I'm in the same boat and just ordered the H&Rs today. I ordered the blues a couple weeks ago and planned on installing them today with OEM springs, but my trusted mechanic called and suggested I get better springs (he knows how I like my car set up).

So hopefully the H&Rs get here in a few days and I get them installed next week. I do a lot of driving so I'm looking for handling, comfort and better pothole protection.