Frequently Asked Questions

What application do these fit?

These are not made application specific in the sense they will simply bolt up to your vehicle with no modifications. Think of these as you would a 40” tall tire. 40” tires are not made vehicle specific. They will fit anything you want to put them on so long as you make all the other necessary supporting modifications. Like tires, we simply provide the coilovers. We provide the schematics of them to know the dimensions, etc. This way you will know what supporting mods you will need to make these work. We can custom valve these for various applications, weights, towing, etc. Just let us know what you plan to use these for.

Yes. The hydraulic portion of the coilover is rated to lift 18,000 pounds….PER COILOVER! So the hydraulic portion can handle it no problem. As for the coil portion…..As with any spring, leaf or coil, the spring rate is important in towing. Coils can have heavy or light spring rates, same as leaf springs. Just like you wouldn’t want to tow with a light/soft leaf, you wouldn’t want to tow with a very light/soft coil. So if you plan to tow, we’d recommend a slightly higher rear spring rate.

No. We’ve designed these for ease of operation and install so this system runs off the factory 12 volt system in your truck. No need to add batteries and deal with that.

That depends on how much pressure is in the air bag that you want to compare it to. An air bag is a spring. The spring rate of a bag changes as you add or remove air. Air bags have a sweet spot in the middle of their travel where you get a nice ride. But anything above or below that height and the ride is adversely affected. A bag “aired up” will not ride good at all. In fact, if it’s full of air, it has no more room to travel or absorb bumps. A bag aired down will not ride good as well because it will not have enough spring rate to ride on and it will not have enough travel left to absorb bumps or drive either. So a bag is very functional in the middle of it’s travel, but anything above or below that and it won’t have a good ride or enough travel to drive down the street. Many air bagged trucks air them up for shows to show their height, but that’s not a height you could drive at.

As with any coilover, one huge advantage to them is their ability to be fine tuned. So the “ride” can be dialed in with valving and spring rates. The valving can be adjusted to affect compression and rebound. Simply let us know what your intentions are for these and we can valve these specific to your needs. Anyone not happy with the ride is welcome to send them back and we will adjust the valving free of charge. We can also go over spring rates with you as well to ensure a spring matching your needs is selected.

That is not something many are not used to when dealing with adjustable suspension. The reason the ride is not affected is the spring rate and valving never change at various heights. As we mentioned earlier with air bags, their spring changes as the bag is inflated or deflated. So with a bag, you might get a height you like, but it’s not the ride you like. Or you may find the ride you like, but it’s not at the height you like. With SORD, however it rides at the low setting is how it will ride at the high setting. It does not change. So you could drive forever at the lowest setting and not hurt these at all, or forever at the high setting and not hurt these at all, and the ride is the same anywhere in between. The ride is coming from the coilover under the hydraulic cylinder. So picture the hydraulic cylinder as simply an adjustable bracket for your coilover that is giving you more or less height.

For those that don’t know, IFS is Independent Front Suspension. We do not recommend these for IFS applications at all. We know, you guys don’t want to hear that, but here’s why. If you have an IFS truck, put a jack under the front of the truck at the frame and jack it up until the tires start to come off the ground. Chances are that will only take about 3” of lifting before that happens. In some cases even less. That means you have about 3” of down travel until you are maxed out. If you were to get SORD’s to physically fit, you could only lift your truck 3”. But then once you did that, all your suspension components would be maxed out and screaming for mercy. You certainly couldn’t drive at that maxed height. So you could really only lift your truck 1 – 1.5” and still leave about 1.5” of travel left to drive on. That’s not much, and that’s certainly not worth putting SORDs on a vehicle that you could only lift that tiny amount and still keep functionality. For that reason, these are really suited for solid axle applications.

No, we simply provide the coilover system so that other builders and fabricators can give the suspension their unique look to them. We will never make a suspension kit with these as there are many builders we work with and that’s what they do. So if you have no expertise on how to make this work, feel free to email us and we’ll be happy to point you to several shops that can build a suspension around this feature.

That is more determined by your steering/track bar/4 link setup than anything. Keep in mind, the softer the angles and the longer they are on those things, the less movement there is as things cycle. So the longer and softer the angle on the track bar and steering, the better. Air bag suspensions would have the same things to address, so this applies to any suspension. So alignment and things like caster change can be greatly minimized with a properly designed suspension.