He said it in post 5.
As near as I can find the Bilstein RCD is about 500ish a set. A set of Vikings are about 900ish if you shop around.
Is the 80% cost increase worth it. I say yes.
You are asking why so ill see if I can.
The way is a shock has to dampen both directions. I say bump and rebound because I grew up riding dirt bikes. You can say compression and extension if you want to talk with engineers.
Let’s say you smack a good sized bump. You want the shock to suck it up and not upset the car taking the hit. Thats bump or compression. Don’t forget you are using the shock to control the motion and energy of the spring…
So…now the shock just got nailed in bump (compression) and the spring is now loaded more than it was before the bump. So the spring is trying to force the suspension (and the shock) to go back to it’s normal position, where it was before the bump.
If you didn’t have a shock at all, the spring would move very fast and force the suspension and the body of the car back apart. And then the suspension would have the opposite reaction and it will try to compress the spring again and demos, but with less force (energy). And the cycle continues until all the energy in the spring is used up and the chassis settles down again until the next event.
With an adjustable shock you can control both bump and rebound to tailor the ride exactly how you want it. Or as close as the valving will let you.
A single adjustable shock is equally worthless. You can adjust it, but you are changing the bump and the rebound together. And who says you WANT to change both? Very rare are the cases when I’ve wanted to change the bump and rebound together in a fixed amount. It blows my mind that guys can’t grasp that bump and rebound need to be tuned as separate circuits.
Why does this matter on the street? Because you can easily tune the shock to do exactly what you want it to do. If you like going into corners hot and by hot I don’t mean canyon carving, balls out road race cornering. I’m just saying driving like you have a performance car.
You can control bump (compression) but stiffening the dampening so the chassis doesnt roll up on the outside tire.
You can adjust the rebound (extension) so one the spring is loaded it doesn’t push back with enough force to upset the chassis.
And you adjust them separately so one doesn’t affect the other. You can’t do that with a non adjustable or single adjustable shock.
Like I said, I grew up riding dirt bikes and I know when forks and shocks started coming with external adjustment on them.
It revolutionized riding. You could tailor the bike (chassis) to you weight, speed and riding skill like you never could before.
I would never suggest to anyone to buy a dirt bike without adjustable suspension. That would be caveman ****.
It’s not different with a car.
