Well more like 3 or 4 times the price.

Though I haven't tried them I've been doing a lot of research the last few months on the subject of fixed perch struts. The consensus seems to be as follows...

KYB AGX's...good
D-Specs...better
Koni strut inserts...best
Ohlins struts... out'friggin'standing!


I think it really depends on what you want to do with the car. The way I understand it the dampening range of the Ohlins struts is greater than other fixed perch struts meaning you can go from a soft spring to a very stiff spring and still get proper dampening. It's also nice they can be adjusted from the bottom meaning no rear seat removal for adjustments (although this is possible with D-spec's extenders as well). Not to mention build quality is second to none.

With that said I'll be installing D-Specs next month. I'd like Ohlins, but the cost is just too much and are over kill for what I want to do with my car. At this point I have no plans to put on super stiff springs and the grippiest tires the car will see are 245 UHP summer tires. D-Specs should be able to handle that.

 

I'm just worried about the D-spec clunk... I have an 04 STi part of the reason I'm swapping shocks is to get rid of the damned clunk

 

Yea I know about the clunk. I've given it some thought.

I thought on the STI the cause was not enough grease in the inverted strut. That or the tophats were too soft allowing too much deflection. Since I don't have an STI I'm not sure though. I was reading about that on IWSTI.com.

OK logically the clunk can really only come from one spot on D-Specs. I've heard that the stem on the D-Spec strut is slightly smaller than the OE strut. Worse comes to worse I'll have the machine shop I use make a spacer. It'll probably cost $30 or so for both sides so I'm not worried about that.

My struts are going to the machine shop anyway. I'm going to have the holes in the struts relocated so I can get negative camber without camber plates.

Using group N tophats all around I'm going for a max of -3º in the front and a static -1º in the rear. To clarify using the OE camber bolts in front I should have a range of about 2º meaning camber from -1 to -3º. Perfect for street and track

This will cost $175 for all four corners which is less than half the cost of $499 RCE's which are the only plates that work with D-Specs. The other option is Whitelines with TIC deepnuts. About $400 for that option.