Anyone with the revision 1 factory suspension feel that it is bouncy and unstable in turns at high speeds when the road surface isn't perfectly flat? In fact I think it behaves the same when the road surface is flat. It feels like the rear of the car wants to hop around, like the bouncy rear suspension issue is amplified (not sure if this was only the early years that had this). This is even worse at speeds over 100 mph.

 

How many miles on your car? Sounds like your dampeners are starting to get soft.

 

Zrated, what year is your 350 & does it have/had any issues with holding a wheel alignment?

 

The car is an 03 pre order with 46000 miles. I am the original owner. The car has always had trouble holding alignments. Probably needs alignment every 6000 miles. I just had an excellent alignment done, but have had the problem for a while. It seems like it has been getting worse with time.

 

I'm not really seeing a correlation between alignment generated issues and dampning generated issues here.

03/04 cars are known for having issues related to how the shocks were tuned. Nissan revised the suspension midway into 2004 production for very valid reason's to address the issue. We had a ton of owner comments in 2003 and into 2004 related to bounce and freeway porposing, again for very valid reasons. I can also add that in 2003 I purchased a 2003 oem Z suspension with 150 miles on it, dampning issues had zero to do with wear and tear on the shocks, a lot of compression dampning and too little rebound.

In addition here's some insite on the issue, a responce to a comment written to Hotchkis by a 350Z owner here.

09-01-2004 06:34 AM

VandyZ
Human Consult-2
Nashville, TN
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Here is an email I got from John Whatley of Hotchkis:
quote:


There is no error on the spring ratings. The rear spring is in fact softer than the stock. The reasoning behind this is that: during testing we found that the rear end likes to bounce under hard cornering. By reducing the spring rate in the rear we were able to get more MPH in slalom testing and stopped the bouncing that occurred. These springs in conjunction with our swaybars will be matched with each other to provide a neutral feel under hard cornering.

 

I agree that the problem I have is a dampening issue. I remember reading posts about porposing on the highway, and always noticed that problem. I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying as much attention during hard cornering. It’s disturbing me to the point that I really am considering swapping out the whole suspension. So do I understand that the Hotchkis springs are designed for stock damper valving?

 

Stupid question here: Have you noticed any differences with different fuel levels?

On low fuel, that car's rear end comes alive!

 

The fuel level is something I have thought about, but have not paid attention enough to say one way or another. I am going to pay more attention before and after the next fill up.

 

Yes the Hotckis springs were setup for the valving in your 03 shocks. However, while less spring will help things in the rear, it's still a bandaid measure and one that doesn't do anything to help the front shocks behave any better. Even when I tried out rear springs that are softer then the Hotchkis rear springs, I still had issues with 03 oem shocks on the car. Granted other spring companies have done their own thing(s) to try and dial in the car, even they still have issues. Your best bet is to replace shocks with something that is plainly better. D-spec, Koni sports, Bilstein or Tokico HP come to mind. You might want to go with D-spec since they are double adjustable.

 

Thanks. Also, after reading a bunch of posts using search, I agree it's definately worth replacing the dampers as well. The Hotchkis - D Spec combo sounds like a winner. I hadn't planned on spending the bread to do suspension work until I really started to notice this issue. I guess this gives me an excuse, but I think the outcome will be well worth it. Nissan should pick up the tab It's flat out scary at high speeds!