K9Cop said:
What was wrong with Rusty's shocks? I just ordered one of his lifts and his shocks w/ it so I guess its too late to be asking, but just curious. I had heard they rode smooth and were real soft off-road.
Well, here is the story:
When I got his lift back in October '02, I also got his shocks. During installation, I noticed that if you grab the shock near the top of its body (where the shaft enters the body) and shake it back and forth, there was movement, as if the shaft is not properly mounted inside the body. Obviously I noticed that on one shock and of course I checked all of them. That first one had much more play than the rest.
Judging this to be "not good", I called Rusty and reported my findings. He send me one new shock, as a guarantee item.
During the next months, one by one, the shocks developped that same play at the place where the shaft enters into the body. Around last May, I noticed that sometimes my right front shock could be seen as not being in line. I mean that you could see the shaft not being in line with the body, but at an angle, like below:
/ <-- shaft
| <-- body
Judging this to also be bad, and given the fact that my other front one was also leaking a bit (and had play at the junction area), I called Rusty and complained. No matter what I said, he insisted that all shocks do that and that this play is normal. When I mentionned that I never had such a problem with the Bilsteins I use on my other truck, he said that this is a different technology.
By now, I knew that my initial lift selection was a big mistake, so I didn't want to argue about the damn shocks. I wanted them replaced by something decent, so I asked him to send me four new Bilsteins. Mind you, my truck sits at almost 6" and Greece is not the most 4x4-oriented country, so finding shocks locally was out of the question.
So Rusty sends me the Bilsteins (together with some nuts for his adjustable upper control arms which have developped some play also, and some friction pads for the rear springs, which have broken), only they never arrived. I spend one and a half month waiting for the Bilsteins, which never arrived, and I could do nothing about it, because Rusty had elected to use a non-traceable shipment method, so we had no idea where the package were.
After one and a half month, I got fed up so I ordered a set of OldMan EMU. When they arrived, and we removed the old shocks, you could push their shafts down, by just laying your finger on them.
Keep in mind that in those months (October 2002 until June 2003) my XJ has seen very limited off-road use, due to family reasons.
I sincerely hope that you have better luck with Rusty's products than I had. No one who pays his good money for a product should receive the hasle I had with his lift kit.
Rgds
P.S. If you want more details about the problems I had with his lift kit, check the site at my signature.
), using BPE's and those nifty shaf killing devices up front.
