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ohlins are the best of the best as far as i know, if funds were not an issue its quite easy to spend 10k on suspension settin up a race car using their stuff. my sisters b/f works with tasman motorsports (greg murphy and jason richards) and they use ohlins stuff in their cars.

Nothinng wrong with Ohlins. But jsut remember, you can buy $800 a corner Dunlops, and you can buy $65 a corner Dunlops. You can buy $35 tennis rackets and you can buy $415 tennis rackets.

You can buy $2500 Ohlins and you can buy $15000 Ohlins, just like you can buy $800 Koni and $15000 Koni shocks. Just because Tasmna motorsport use them, doesnt mean these used shocks are going to be out of this world great

top of the range my arse.

to make them usable - you'll need ligher springs ~$500 (cheapest) for a set

so they're now a $1800 proposition.

The SK bilstien kit is looking increasingly better... and will ride heaps better on th street

Hye, Yamaha race bikes, design heads for other ppl. Have designed F1 engines, Yamaha are nto idiots and would surely still do a good enough job of contract manufacturing???? Wouldnt they?

Yamaha owns Ohlins, they bought them some years back to get their GP bike shock technology, Ohlins first came to fame via their brilliant race bike shocks. Yamaha has a shock factory in Japan that builds their road bike shocks and a small range of car shocks and they use the Ohlins name on the road car shocks. All of Yamaha's race bike shocks are still made by Ohlins in Sweden, plus a few of their top end road bikes also have Ohlins. The Ohlins factory in Sweden only makes high end race shocks for cars and bikes, they don't make volume parts numbers. There is obviously some technology transfer between the 2 factories, but having pulled them appart and run them on the shock dyno I can tell you the internals and function are not at all similar. The leads to some problems;

The first problem is the price, you can't make and sell an "Ohlins" quality shock for less than $2K each, the materials, it's piston and valving sophistication and machining quality and tolerances simply wouldn't allow it.

The second problem is the Japanese philosophy in regards to springs and shocks, the Yamaha engineers and factory follow that philosophy, there is no engineering input from Sweden in regards to what rates should be used on a particular car.

The third problem, like 99.9% of the Japanese shock manufacturers, Yamaha doesn't provide spare parts support or service manuals, so you can't repair, service or revalve their shocks. When they wear out you chuck them and buy new ones. I have tried, without any success at all, to get the Australian and New Zealand Ohlins agents to provide spare parts a number of times for the Yamaha made models. In comparison we have obsolutely no problem obtaining genuine Ohlins parts and manuals for the race applications from them, the range of spares and options is almost at Bilstein level, which is very high.

The bottom line, don't think you are getting $10K worth of Ohlins at bargain price.

Cheers

Gary

Good read, thanks for clarifying. But ok they are not brilliant, but are they bad?

I still think a very telling thing about Japanese tuning and approach to car setup is what happens to cars like the EVO 8, R34 GTR M-Spec etc. They go to Europe, European Mitsu and Nissan engineers get their hands on them and throw in Bilsteins etc valved to suit and the cars are a hit in their intended market.

When Japan get their hands on them they often find their way onto local cars with things like the EVO 8 MR etc etc

Good read, thanks for clarifying. But ok they are not brilliant, but are they bad?

I still think a very telling thing about Japanese tuning and approach to car setup is what happens to cars like the EVO 8, R34 GTR M-Spec etc. They go to Europe, European Mitsu and Nissan engineers get their hands on them and throw in Bilsteins etc valved to suit and the cars are a hit in their intended market.

When Japan get their hands on them they often find their way onto local cars with things like the EVO 8 MR etc etc

Add the TRD Supras and of course R35GTR to the Bilstein equiped list list.

Bad, no, they're not bad. They are a bit better than the average Japanese kit, in that they will allow lower spring rates. Many of the others show little or no improvement in ride comfort and/or handling as the valving simply won't tolerate the more sensible rates. The main problem is you can't fix them, I have had at least 10 sets through my hands and I have had to tell the guys the bad news every time.

Cheers

Gary

So how would the yamaha ohlins compare to something like tein monoflex and hks hypermax 3's?

These specific ohlins:

http://www.greenline.jp/catalogue/fullimag...;name=Aluminium (Separate Tank) Complete Kit&car=Nissan Skyline GT-R BNR32 (RB26DETT)

$3900 + shiping

or

http://www.greenline.jp/catalogue/fullimag...32%20(RB26DETT)

$6100 + shiping

So how would the yamaha ohlins compare to something like tein monoflex and hks hypermax 3's?

These specific ohlins:

http://www.greenline.jp/catalogue/fullimag...;name=Aluminium (Separate Tank) Complete Kit&car=Nissan Skyline GT-R BNR32 (RB26DETT)

$3900 + shiping

or

http://www.greenline.jp/catalogue/fullimag...32%20(RB26DETT)

$6100 + shiping

1. Swedish Ohlins

2. Daylght

3. Yamahas (like those), the spring rates are too high on the ones I have seen, there are options so it would pay to check them first.

4. Daylight

5. Tein Monoflex

6. HKS Hypermax

Cheers

Gary

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