Shock Absorber Advise

Howdie guys,

I'm looking for some advice on shock absorbers for my old Jimny (2000). There's quite a few available and the ones I am looking at are the Rough Country ones from Llama 4x4 or the TrailMaster ones from here.

Now the rough country ones are pretty cheap and I could go out and get them, or is it worth me saving my pennies and buying the Trailmasters?

I mainly do highway driving so comfort is more of the driving factor here, but it does get thrown off road or on pretty appalling country roads fairly often (The potholes round here are deeper than most craters!). The car itself has the General Grabber AT2 tires on it, that said I'm not really looking for a lift yet due to ye old insurance people being a little picky.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Knoxy

Thanks to Dave at Llama, I also can get the Rough Country shocks as well as TrailMaster, just have been updating the shop products to reflect postage price increase and have not got all the items on display at present.

Reading your post, you don't have a lift yet. I know from speaking to Llama that he does not recommed Rough Country shocks on standard Jimnys due to the possibility of the slightly fatter rear shocks contacting the rear springs. Also, I have not had any Trailmaster shocks fitted to a standard Jimny so I don't know if these have a similar issue. Certainly at the rear there is little room between the springs and the Panhard rod so the diameter of the shocks is important.

Sorry to not be able to give you a definitive answer but I try to be honest with items I sell.

Why are you wanting to change your shocks ? Have the old ones had it ? If not and you are thinking about a lift in the future you would be best to swap them at the time and save some money.

As for whats best, tricky as so much depends on what components you have fitted and most people will have only had original shocks and the ones fitted with their lift. Then as Martin says you need to be carefull with the larger diameter shocks fouling on the rear.

I have just lifted mine 3" and can say in my opinion if you are staying at standard height just get some std replacement shocks they give about the best ride I think is possible from a Jimny. The reason I say that is that I have tried quite a few different shock set ups on mine and found some way to hard it was like being in my old leaf sprung SJ.

Cheers for that, I was looking into changing them as the car gives me a very painful ride. It's improved a fair amount now that I have a really thick cushion on my seat and my larger tires. My guess is due to the large amount of rust going on under my car, that the shocks are seizing up possibility.

That said I know very little abouts cars in general, I'm just swavy with the wrench. I kind of have a list of things to do to it and the shocks felt like a nice thing to do at the same time.

The list is like this:

- Replace the rusted, currently welded patched exhaust
- Find out why my car now can drink half a tank in 60miles where it did not previously.
- Find out why when I turn on the heater (non aircon car) I get a tiny amount of heat, and it takes about 15miles for the car to start warming up.
- Find out why the car can skid like a b*tch when you put on the breaks even at 20mph.
- Install some pretty lights
- Install some boot storage

I just put Monroe gas shocks on mine, they work fine, the roads round here could give Eastern Europe a run for their money

They were fairly cheap from a motorfactors.