Currently i'm running on some Buddy Club racing spec coilovers on my 04's sti. I had changed to coilovers because the rears on my stock suspension had already blown twice, and reading around on the forums i was convinced that the stock struts just weren't gonna last long driving around on crappy bay area roads.

Everything was fine until a few months ago when it started clunking just like the stockers. A few tests found them to be behaving exactly as the stockers when they blew. It was then that i read a possible reason as to why the stockers go bad is due to their inverted design, which was great for track but required more maintainence than regular struts.

I sent my suspension in and for 2 months struggled with buddy club usa to have them rebuild it, but every time i brought it up the guy would tell me "i'll take another look at it and see if theres something wrong"........well in the end he ended up sending the coilovers back exactly the way they were, the bottom collars were stuck like when i had sent them in, so the only "looking" he did was probably just trying to compress the shock manually and finding nothing wrong because the binding only happens when the car has been under load and is fine for a while after being fully extended.

I'm now looking for a new set of coilovers, something non-inverted but just as adjustable. Alot of my friends run zero2's or zero2-r's and i was wondering how durable they are around the bay area, and if i need to rebuild where i can take them? The buddy club ones had to be sent to socal and it happened only around 10k miles of freeway driving as opposed to pot-holed streets.

The Zero 2R's are inverted too! It might be a better one compared to your Buddy Clubs, but what do i know?, that one is 2X the price of yours, I'm about to experiment with one of the budget priced CO's.

Yea the zero 2r's are indeed inverted, but i don't think zero 2's are =P

I have zero2's. they are not inverted. I have had them for ~30K miles and I live in the bay. As far as durability, they are still working. none have blown. I drive in SF and oakland pretty often so the car has seen many a crappy road.

I've heard both you can get Cuscos rebuilt somewhere in the US (I think they said TX area) but I've also heard that Cusco doesn't rebuild their suspension period. I'd call the U.S. office and confirm that they are rebuildable, because not being able to be rebuilt will be a pita in the future.

Oh, just as a recommendation for suspension, ever think of going with Ground Controls with Koni Yellows? Konis come with a lifetime warranty on their shocks, they're rebuildable and allow you to increase dapening if you want, and they're not inverted.