D2 & K-Sport Tear Down and Comparison

[shift_rook]

Had the opportunity to tear down some K-Sport and D2 dampers and have found some very interesting but also concerning results.
According to K-Sport they're supposed to be far superior to D2 in quality which reflects highly in the price difference, to my surprise we have found that both dampers share the same internals, even the same D2 stamping on the piston for both.
The overall quality is far less than i would have expected with the tooling of the piston and other components to be very poor.
Due to the severe lack of tunability you either end up with the soft setting being a floater and the hard setting knocking out teeth.
i have attached photos of comparisons of D2 and K-Sport piston aswell as several reputable manufacturers being Sachs, Bilstein and De Carbon.
We will measure the performance of the damper in the next couple of days and post results

[sundee]

always wondered about the K sport stuff, i knew D2 was rubbish.
it comes out of the same china factory , just painted a different colour and different stickers etc.
nice article to open the buyers eyes.

[Xauterus]

Wow isnt it amazing. You buy a set of complete coilovers for less than a set of four shock absorbers by themselves and it turns out they are actually pretty average. I never would have guessed.

Would be interesting to see if you could make a few parts needed to bring these up to brand name specs. I know some parts may not last forever but copying bilstein internals would be interesting.

Corey

[Sam-Q]

this is great information, I won't pretend to know how the valving jigger works but it sure looks different than the brand name models. I will put a link to this thread in the tech index.

[Konakid]

You are awesome.

Keep posting!

[shift_rook]

not possible, firstly i wouldn't recommend running a monotube damper as a strut unless it's inverted, that why you see pictures of the d2 rods snapping, purely cause it's to much side load for such a thin rod, for an example check out the first picture, you'll noticer the k-sport rod is infact snapped, hence why they were donated. there's not a lot you would keep to make them better, even the bottom mounts are made of an aluminium, feels similar grade to what i use on my rc car, i'll attach a pic to show what happens when you use this grade of alloy.



this shit is dangerous and if you own a set i'd advise you to chuck them in the scrap metal bin.

[blair]

Best thread <3

[lolwat]

good work man , good someone actually having proof of them being shit compared to allegations that people make

[Dish]

A mate's sil was bought with k sports in it. Lasted a little while, jacked his car up the other day and the strut pretty much fell out.

Glad to finally see some comparisons.

[assassin10000]

Makes me wonder what's inside the Trust/Greddy's...

Andrew