Chimaera Suspension/shock absorbers
Discussion
I've done it; I have endured 7 years of hell, living with my gaz shockers as supplied by a well known North London TVR Indy and despite their verbal and the alsatian I want to come out and ask for advice. What nasty people they were! I have even had the offending shockers modified by gaz to improve the valving however I and 400 other owners know that they are crap and uncomfortable and probably unsafe as even on 3 clicks the car pitches all over the road.
The shocker oil is now leaking out and the mot is failed thank ****. What joy, perhaps if I am lucky I might get a driveable car again. Are there any members with integrity to recommend suitable replacement shockers/spring combos and a garage to set the car up. I want a road car for windy twisty bends all under the speed limit. I don't want a race car or a track car and if I want to make a wine run to France I will hire a Van.
Can I please have a solution to have a comfortable and driveable car and although price matters the rubbish that we have had to endure from gaz is a sad indictment of the length that con men will go to to make a profit. 400 customers at £600 is a quarter of a million pounds and all 400 people know the truth. Just shows what manipulation can achieve!
Whom should I go for a drivable car, I live in Bedfordshire, Do I go to High Wycombe? Silverstone or what? Are there any reputable TVR Indy's around. Should I have Nitrons or Avo's or what. I will certainly not be having gaz as 7 years is a long time to have a crippled choppy Chimaera! What should be the spring/damper spec really be? All the bushes have been replaced by these rock hard blue plastic things. The tyres are Toyo. Whom should do the work of fitting and seting the car up? What should my instruction be? How much should I pay?
Is there any one with integrity with a recommendation? In these situations TVR drivers hope for a workable solution rather than a politically correct solution. Light car, powerful 4.3 engine, requires an technical/engineering solution.
The shocker oil is now leaking out and the mot is failed thank ****. What joy, perhaps if I am lucky I might get a driveable car again. Are there any members with integrity to recommend suitable replacement shockers/spring combos and a garage to set the car up. I want a road car for windy twisty bends all under the speed limit. I don't want a race car or a track car and if I want to make a wine run to France I will hire a Van.
Can I please have a solution to have a comfortable and driveable car and although price matters the rubbish that we have had to endure from gaz is a sad indictment of the length that con men will go to to make a profit. 400 customers at £600 is a quarter of a million pounds and all 400 people know the truth. Just shows what manipulation can achieve!
Whom should I go for a drivable car, I live in Bedfordshire, Do I go to High Wycombe? Silverstone or what? Are there any reputable TVR Indy's around. Should I have Nitrons or Avo's or what. I will certainly not be having gaz as 7 years is a long time to have a crippled choppy Chimaera! What should be the spring/damper spec really be? All the bushes have been replaced by these rock hard blue plastic things. The tyres are Toyo. Whom should do the work of fitting and seting the car up? What should my instruction be? How much should I pay?
Is there any one with integrity with a recommendation? In these situations TVR drivers hope for a workable solution rather than a politically correct solution. Light car, powerful 4.3 engine, requires an technical/engineering solution.
chris547 said:
I've done it; I have endured 7 years of hell, living with my gaz shockers as supplied by a well known North London TVR Indy and despite their verbal and the alsatian I want to come out and ask for advice. What nasty people they were! I have even had the offending shockers modified by gaz to improve the valving however I and 400 other owners know that they are crap and uncomfortable and probably unsafe as even on 3 clicks the car pitches all over the road.
The shocker oil is now leaking out and the mot is failed thank ****. What joy, perhaps if I am lucky I might get a driveable car again. Are there any members with integrity to recommend suitable replacement shockers/spring combos and a garage to set the car up. I want a road car for windy twisty bends all under the speed limit. I don't want a race car or a track car and if I want to make a wine run to France I will hire a Van.
Can I please have a solution to have a comfortable and driveable car and although price matters the rubbish that we have had to endure from gaz is a sad indictment of the length that con men will go to to make a profit. 400 customers at £600 is a quarter of a million pounds and all 400 people know the truth. Just shows what manipulation can achieve!
Whom should I go for a drivable car, I live in Bedfordshire, Do I go to High Wycombe? Silverstone or what? Are there any reputable TVR Indy's around. Should I have Nitrons or Avo's or what. I will certainly not be having gaz as 7 years is a long time to have a crippled choppy Chimaera! What should be the spring/damper spec really be? All the bushes have been replaced by these rock hard blue plastic things. The tyres are Toyo. Whom should do the work of fitting and seting the car up? What should my instruction be? How much should I pay?
Is there any one with integrity with a recommendation? In these situations TVR drivers hope for a workable solution rather than a politically correct solution. Light car, powerful 4.3 engine, requires an technical/engineering solution.
Wow that's some rant Chris, respect The shocker oil is now leaking out and the mot is failed thank ****. What joy, perhaps if I am lucky I might get a driveable car again. Are there any members with integrity to recommend suitable replacement shockers/spring combos and a garage to set the car up. I want a road car for windy twisty bends all under the speed limit. I don't want a race car or a track car and if I want to make a wine run to France I will hire a Van.
Can I please have a solution to have a comfortable and driveable car and although price matters the rubbish that we have had to endure from gaz is a sad indictment of the length that con men will go to to make a profit. 400 customers at £600 is a quarter of a million pounds and all 400 people know the truth. Just shows what manipulation can achieve!
Whom should I go for a drivable car, I live in Bedfordshire, Do I go to High Wycombe? Silverstone or what? Are there any reputable TVR Indy's around. Should I have Nitrons or Avo's or what. I will certainly not be having gaz as 7 years is a long time to have a crippled choppy Chimaera! What should be the spring/damper spec really be? All the bushes have been replaced by these rock hard blue plastic things. The tyres are Toyo. Whom should do the work of fitting and seting the car up? What should my instruction be? How much should I pay?
Is there any one with integrity with a recommendation? In these situations TVR drivers hope for a workable solution rather than a politically correct solution. Light car, powerful 4.3 engine, requires an technical/engineering solution.
Are you feeling better now?
Have you considered the new mono-tubes from Gaz?
I hear they are great
Chimpafrolic said:
Wow that's some rant Chris, respect
Are you feeling better now?
Have you considered the new mono-tubes from Gaz?
I hear they are great
Ha, I run these and they have been and are excellent!Are you feeling better now?
Have you considered the new mono-tubes from Gaz?
I hear they are great
Mind you, if they start leaking, you guys will be the first to know.
In fairness to Gaz, your problems may be nothing but poor setup.
It makes a world of differance experimenting on the same bit of twisty, undulating road untill you find the right settings for you.
Having said that, a good indy should know the approx settings and tweak from there.
For instance, 7TVR's Gaz Golds were set up by an indy and when we did Castle Coombe he expressed dissatisfaction with them. I put them back to base setting + a best guess, we then repeated this a further 2 times untill he was satisfied with the result, stating the car had never felt so good.
So a little patience and know how was all that was needed.
As for the dampers leaking, in my experience they do , (all makes) occasionly but most manufacturers will repair/rebuild either FOC or for a very reasonable amount, nuff said!
As an alternative for a road car, I found my Pro-Techs very good and service second to none.
I set my standard GAZ shock absorbers and standard spec springs 17 clicks front 19 clicks rear and the car drove spot on around the track.i have them set 16 18 on the road with no complaints but never experienced top quality Nitrons..
Is there rearly anything wrong with Gaz shock absorbers..?
Is there rearly anything wrong with Gaz shock absorbers..?
Thanks gentlemen, I need to research the ideas you have come up with however the new units will not be from gaz. I do acknowlege they tried to help me by revalving them FOC and huge thanks to Euphoria racing for resetting the suspension to try and make the best of a bad job. They did say that my car was the worst TVR they had ever driven so there you go North London TVR Indie and I am not referring to the TVR Centre who were quite a good company and treated the old TVR's with some leniency when it came to billing. No just avoid any TVR specialist garages in North London with Alsatians and managers that go on about their holidays to Thailand and give you a warning about saying anything on here. I've moved now so I am safe to speak out.
Haircutmike
I did go to the experts to have the car set up and it was a nightmare of being given what they wanted. At least Euphoria realised I was a customer and reset the geometry and settings to return some degree of predictable control however when ever you took a big undulation the car unweights and control is lost. The constant jiggling makes the car uncomfortable and never would I have gaz again sorry.
Chimpo
You can put gaz shockers where the sun doesn't shine sorry but they are in my experience just awful!
Haircutmike
I did go to the experts to have the car set up and it was a nightmare of being given what they wanted. At least Euphoria realised I was a customer and reset the geometry and settings to return some degree of predictable control however when ever you took a big undulation the car unweights and control is lost. The constant jiggling makes the car uncomfortable and never would I have gaz again sorry.
Chimpo
You can put gaz shockers where the sun doesn't shine sorry but they are in my experience just awful!
Gaz are an OK replacement shock (don't get me started about Avo, Leda and whatnot - there's a reason they're about 28p each for mainstream applications!) but the only reason they are being recommended as an upgrade is that there's a fair bit of TVR-specific experience in the valving of them. For component quality you'd be hard pressed to recommend them over standard issue Bilsteins and ever since the latter were re-specced based on development drives with the same test engineer that was involved in tuning the springs/dampers on the Tuscan Mk2 et al, I don't really see the point any more.
That said, I fully agree that set up is everything. A perfect set up with decent shocks will give decent results while an awfully set up stack of top notch suspension will still be awful. A well set up car on non-leaky Gaz Golds should behave perfectly decently (if a a bit short on subtlety). Thing is, beyond 'decent' you will need better shocks to start with.
Just like one would want people who shop for a hi fi system to try and audition the best available systems in proper surroundings (so you know what is achievable, and in what sort of direction you'd be looking to get what you want) before deciding on a budget level, I'd urge people looking to 'upgrade' the suspension on TVRs to try and drive a car on Ohlins or top-level Intrax set up by someone that you know delivers the goods...
That said, I fully agree that set up is everything. A perfect set up with decent shocks will give decent results while an awfully set up stack of top notch suspension will still be awful. A well set up car on non-leaky Gaz Golds should behave perfectly decently (if a a bit short on subtlety). Thing is, beyond 'decent' you will need better shocks to start with.
Just like one would want people who shop for a hi fi system to try and audition the best available systems in proper surroundings (so you know what is achievable, and in what sort of direction you'd be looking to get what you want) before deciding on a budget level, I'd urge people looking to 'upgrade' the suspension on TVRs to try and drive a car on Ohlins or top-level Intrax set up by someone that you know delivers the goods...
chris547 said:
Thanks gentlemen, I need to research the ideas you have come up with however the new units will not be from gaz. I do acknowlege they tried to help me by revalving them FOC and huge thanks to Euphoria racing for resetting the suspension to try and make the best of a bad job. They did say that my car was the worst TVR they had ever driven so there you go North London TVR Indie and I am not referring to the TVR Centre who were quite a good company and treated the old TVR's with some leniency when it came to billing. No just avoid any TVR specialist garages in North London with Alsatians and managers that go on about their holidays to Thailand and give you a warning about saying anything on here. I've moved now so I am safe to speak out.
Haircutmike
I did go to the experts to have the car set up and it was a nightmare of being given what they wanted. At least Euphoria realised I was a customer and reset the geometry and settings to return some degree of predictable control however when ever you took a big undulation the car unweights and control is lost. The constant jiggling makes the car uncomfortable and never would I have gaz again sorry.
Chimpo
You can put gaz shockers where the sun doesn't shine sorry but they are in my experience just awful!
And you should've faced down the bully - Appreciate it might feel risky at the time, but honestly, what would he have done ? - Once you've done it once it will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life - which would be about 30 secs, until the dog is wrapped round your neck - just kidding Haircutmike
I did go to the experts to have the car set up and it was a nightmare of being given what they wanted. At least Euphoria realised I was a customer and reset the geometry and settings to return some degree of predictable control however when ever you took a big undulation the car unweights and control is lost. The constant jiggling makes the car uncomfortable and never would I have gaz again sorry.
Chimpo
You can put gaz shockers where the sun doesn't shine sorry but they are in my experience just awful!
Gut reaction ? Anyone, in business or not, who needs to play intimidator backed up by a snarling alsation and who boasts about his conquests in Thailand is almost certainly a cringeing wet fart with no self-esteem, and likely impotent to boot. You should have told him so and watched him crumble !
900T-R said:
If I'm not barking up the wrong tree, their name conveniently produces an acronym which is the same as the name of a not unheard of British sports car brand, and when hyphenated followed with 'services' into a browser might produce their old website. 
nope, dunce hat for me, tried the obvious one and no result...
Gassing Station | Chimaera | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff