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Originally Posted by Tejas@perioimpl reasons i finally chose Ironman:
- Local dealer with years of goodwill and i've never heard of any complaint against him
- Warrantee honoured in India
- And the clincher was that a buddy on mine has done 1 lakh kms on his Pajero GLX on this suspension and the vehicle is as good as new. |
Good upgrade Tejas. Having used Ironman setup on my Fortuner for long enough, I can vouch for the advantages of this setup Vs the OEM.
However, will share my recent experience with Ironman (a proper post regarding this incident will be up on my ownership thread soon).
On my car, one of the Ironman shocks from the rear broke during a road trip to Shimla, this was in mid-August. Went through a big ordeal because I was with family during this trip.
Utter surprise and response from Zac wasn't really heart warming either.
A couple of facts about the setup:
1. Ironman Nitrogas Shocks all around; Load rated springs in front (due to bar and winch) and medium rate springs in rear. 90,000 kms of total mileage on this setup.
2. Rubber bushes on the shock absorbers wear out, a very common issue with Ironman shocks. I was in touch with Zac, discussing rubber bush replacement, even before the shock broke.
3. The setup was installed in early 2013 and came with 2 years/40,000 kms warranty. So when the shock absorber broke, they were out of warranty.
4. Zac's response to breakage incident was inadequate and he seemed to blame it on off-roading. Even more surprising to be honest. I can understand a shock absorber seal weeping, but breakage is completely unacceptable.
No seal leaking in my case!
We have multiple cars in our off-roading circle which have done similar mileage under similar usage on OEM shocks, the worst they have seen is faded shock damping and leaky seals. No breakage still!
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Originally Posted by Tejas@perioimpl Next point why the Nitrogas shocks.
They also have foam cell shocks which are much better.
Two reasons:
Nitrogas shocks will fade a bit on sustained long hard drives and need a bit of cooling down. Ofcourse they are better than stock shocks but this fade is caused by cavitation (reduced to a high extend by N2) and is unavoidable in any brand. There are many Youtube videos explaining this phenomenon.
The foam cell ones are designed to overcome the above issue.
However, the ride is hard on an unloaded vehicle and the dealer himself said if you are not going to be towing a trailer and carrying more than 200kgs at the rear he would not recommend them to me in interest of better ride quality.
Plus the price is also much higher.
Thus, the choice of nitrogas shocks and medium load springs. |
Haha, in my case, when I was in discussion with him for shock absorber replacement (before breakage incident), he kept pushing my towards Foamcell, and kept mentioning 'you have already tried Nitrogas, try Foamcell this time'. I had done my research on this thoroughly and I would have gone for nitrogas for myself again, if the replacement would have been Ironman. Zac's quoted prices to me were quite steep in India, I got the quotation from Ironman South Africa and Australia as well, the price difference there between Nitrogas and Foamcell lies between 11% to 15%. With Zac, I am still unsure why the price difference between these two becomes 45% to 50%, surprising because the commodity remains the same and I am sure even with higher price at origin and added taxes, it doesn't justify so much price increase at destination. Better margins for him, may be, but then why hide things from customers!
I am glad he was honest with you in your case. BTW, as per him, his ratio of sales of Nitrogas Vs FoamCell is 98:2.
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Originally Posted by Tejas@perioimpl I have no special obligation to promote Ironman in return for any favour. I value my integrity more and this is an honest opinion. |
Same for me, nothing against Ironman for that matter. I have said it many times and saying it again, Ironman setup is a super nice and worthy upgrade over OEM setup (more so, in case of Fortuner where OEM is just too bumpy and jittery). However, this incident of shock absorber breaking simply left a bad taste and Zac's inability to provide any sort of support in this case was unjustified IMHO. The worst thing in my case was the super-fast deterioration of suspension within a month period!
Hence I decided to move ARB Old Man Emu Nitrocharger this time, loving the new setup even more than Ironman and warranty is at par with Ironman as well (3 years/60,000 kms). We have a local ARB dealer in Delhi NCR now and this should facilitate any warranty related issues, if any. Funny thing is, OME shock absorber's quoted price were at least 10% lower than Ironman! World over, they are priced at higher premium compared to Ironman.
Anyway, back to your thread, I just wanted to post my experience for putting things in better perspective for others.