gearheadE30
I'm Awesome
I totally get what you are all saying about RideTech being $$$. I rationalized it because I have gone through so many different setups on the Tahoe that all sucked in one way or another that I wanted to be done with it and stop spending money. 3 different sets of coil springs, 4 different pairs of shocks, drop spindles, a few kinds of bushings that were either too soft or too squeaky, etc. Now I have a setup that rides and handles the way I want and is totally silent and unobtrusive doing it, so I can stop spending money testing different combinations of parts and spending hours swapping parts just to be disappointed in a new way. The stock setup has compromises that I don't like, and the RideTech system fixes almost all of them in ways that the others do not.
The other benefit RideTech has is their customer service has been amazing, at least to me. My Tahoe is a little bit of an odd setup, and RideTech will revalve their coilovers for a very reasonable fee. My fronts are great stock, but I'm going with some custom shim stacks in the rear. The other companies I talked to wanted nothing to do with that stuff. At the end of the day, I'm happy to pay a little more for all the time they spent on the phone with me.
- Delrin bushings. They last a long time and they don't squeak, and have even less deflection than poly. Energy suspension poly stuff is good, but needs regular greasing (I drive 20k miles a year in the Tahoe) and I don't have time for that. I have also had problems cracking and slotting their bushings over time, though not on a GMT400. I could not find anyone else that did a Delrin setup for the GMT400.
- Ball mount upper coilover support. I don't really care about coilovers vs. a spring and shock, but the stock shocks are spindle mount which deflects, and the lower rubber mount also has a lot of deflection. All of that adds up to uncontrolled body motion when you have stiff springs and limited suspension travel. It's a fine setup for stock or off road because there is so much more suspension travel and it's a lot softer.
- More caster. Many tubular arms do this, but it's still an improvement over trying to make stock arms work with different springs and shocks.
- Ability to run the drop I want with stock spindles. This preserves the scrub radius vs. drop spindles, which helps prevent tramlining and instability with very wide tires like what I'm running.
The other benefit RideTech has is their customer service has been amazing, at least to me. My Tahoe is a little bit of an odd setup, and RideTech will revalve their coilovers for a very reasonable fee. My fronts are great stock, but I'm going with some custom shim stacks in the rear. The other companies I talked to wanted nothing to do with that stuff. At the end of the day, I'm happy to pay a little more for all the time they spent on the phone with me.
