PaganEgyptian

Crew, I thought it was time to do some deep investigating to applications for our 3rd and 4th Gen F-Body cars with the common aftermarket/parts store Shocks. The results were interesting to say the least.

Gabriel G Force
Gabriel Ultra
Monroe Sense-A-Trac

These shocks have dual valving technology, which is very elementry in design. This design is good for the person that doesnt want a high degree of wheel or sway control. Which is good for Buicks and such where a high amount of vehicle bounce is considered "comfortable and smooth" with a "Cadillac Ride Quality". That kind of control on our cars are known to be disasterous. Try doing a burnout in the bleach box at the dragstrip and getting cataclismic wheel hop, or while running 120+ MPH and your rear end pushed down against the Bump Stops due to low pressure valving.
In short, This double valving method allows the first hard "hit" on the shock to be a dead hit, essentially it acts as a "Dead Shock" for ride comfort, and for the valving to function the second hard "hit" must occur immediately after the first, then it stiffens and performs like a regular shock absorber, in which in our application, should be the first rule, not the second, also with this so called soft technology, it puts the entire cars suspension out of sync and is not tuned with the other components from the factory. Beware of this product.

One good note though. We can utilize the cheaper end shocks of each company as they are OE design and do not have this valving technology. These Shocks that are acceptable OE replacements, They are a full time shock, not a part time shock absorber.... LOL

Monroe-Matic Plus
Gabriel - Guardian

I hope this will better inform our fellow F-Body owners about making a better choice and advise them on products out there that are not tuned for our vehicles. -Tim

Sam Strano

Great in theory...... But there are a lot of holes in it.

First, the notion that they try to sell these shocks because they have some technology that other don't is funny. Pretty much any shock has shim stacks, bypasses and bleeds that allow the shock to change the amount of damping a bit depending on the piston speed.

Second you don't want the shock to do nothing, or as you put it act "dead" when you hit bumps. That doesn't help your ride anymore than having a shock that way too stiff. That's why folks often notice their ride quality degrading with time. The shocks have damp the small, sharp impacts to keep them from progressing through the car. It's much better to have all the oil go through the piston so it can be precisely controlled depening on shock piston speed than it is to bypass the piston at small shock piston displacements regardless of shock speed (which is what shocks like the Sensa-trac do).

I agree that you should steer clear of those shocks. But I also advise you to stay clear of really cheap shocks in general. You get what you pay for. And frankly, lets be real. We know that a tire isn't a tire, and a shock is no different. Lesser shocks are less expensive. That pretty much is always the case. The one example I can think of where a lot of money does not get you a good shock is HAL's. That money goes to the coil-overs, springs, aluminum body. It does not go to really good damping internals or design. They aren't even gas-charged to resist cavitation (foaming of the oil) and the resulting shock fade.