Topic

Please check your shocker top mounts.

This is my OSR mount as I discovered it this afternoon






The reason I was looking is I was about to change from the standard Suplex shocks to GAZ.

Could I just say- SNAP! Exactly the same fracture as mine!

Is that just a TF problem or is it likely to happen on 'Fs too??





Sent from a cottage in Wales by dragons.

Not only a TF problem, but well known from MGF in case they have installed adjustable dampers and set them to stiff.
Mike Satur had *weld on* brackets available in earlier days.

Regards
Dieter

This problem on my car and Chris's is F related, where the top of the damper is located onto the inner wing. On the TF the top of the damper/coilover is into a turret attached to the subframe.(but this can also fracture but is not as likely as the F problem)

The difference here Dieter is that the dampers were neither stiff nor adjustable. I was about to fit adjustable dampers when I spotted this.

Just checked mine.

As good as the day they left the factory

THE PROBLEM WITH SUPLEX(one of many)
The Suplex supplied damper is a copy of the standard Monroe MGF damper.
MGF dampers only damp in extension(because of the damping of the hyragas unit.
Already you should be able to spot that there's a problem. Couple an MGF damper with a coil spring instead and you have a system that is undamped in one direction (compression)
Suplex got around this by using a hitech solution of inserting a wacking great bumpstop in the top half of the damper. This prevents virtually any compression. In fact in normal settings the car is sitting on this bumpstop.
When you hit the bottom of a dip in the road, instead of the suspension absorbing the compression force, what happens is that the spring in the suplex-can compresses a bit until it is prevented by the damper from compressing further.
At this point you feel the car 'hit the bumpstops' on the rear.
Now where is all that force going to go? The car is prevented from squatting by this damper bumpstop, so it is all transferred to the top and bottom fixing points of the damper.

Any body who has Suplex fitted can check this by pulling down the top outer sheath(black plastic) of the rear damper. They will find the bumpstop around the shaft. Check how much free movement the damper has in the fitted position!

If there was any doubt about what a poorly engineered system the Suplex system is, this bump stop inserted into the dampener is just the icing on the cake of a poorly engineered system.

The mount reinforcer kits are available again from Mike Satur.
SU5400 £39.90 inc vat and delivery.