I'm trying to establish whether the inserts in the coilovers I recently got (second hand) are in good working shape or not, but am not that experienced in determining a properly working shock from a dodgy one (aside from the handling when it's actually on the car of course!).

The front two inserts can be easily compressed on the 'Soft' setting, and they then push themselves back out again when you let go of them. As you increase the hardness setting they get much harder to compress, and come back out more slowly - this is what I'd expect them to do if they work properly.

The problem is that the rear inserts don't behave in the same way - on the soft setting they do the exact same thing, but when you change the setting to hard, they don't seem any more difficult to compress, but the main difference is that they do not force themselve out again when set to hard, only when they're set on soft. Does this sound like they're knackered? Or are rear ones meant to behave differently like this?

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

Sounds blown to me, but it's odd that both rears would evince the same behavior. What kind of coilovers are they?

Kevin

 

That's exactly what I thought that it was odd they were so different between front & back but 'a bit of a coincidence' that both fronts were exactly the same as each other, and both rears were exactly the same as each other and they're all generally in pretty good nick as well.

They're Tanabe Sustec Pros, and I believe they go for about £1750 a set normally, so it'd be nice to get them singing!