ADS Off-Road Racing Shocks - Information, Pictures, & BS Thread

I gotta be honest, hard to be optimistic about this... Marie's communication was so on point. I read this thread so closely before deciding on ADS and she was always so active and helpful. Good ol Trail Gear eating up all the smaller companies...

 

ADS itself just got bought out by Holley so who knows if they're even following the same practice anymore. Could be one of their first corners cut under new corporate-bean-counter ownership.... fuckin hope not

 

Ah man, the disappointment is compounding at an alarming rate!

 

Any idea where Marie went? Did she retire and ride off into the sunset?

 

It's very odd to see those being shipped without a charge. We don't deal with ADS, but King also ships shocks that are not charged, but those are mainly the universal fit shocks NOT the OEM fit shocks that you guys are looking at. Main reason for the no charge, is fitting them in the box. Thats likely not an issue for these OEM shocks so thats really odd they don't charge them.

 

I don't think this has "always" been the standard practice. It must be related to recent developments mentioned in this thread. I have no reason to think my shocks were not charged from the factory and they perform as expected. I hope we get a definitive answer here as to why, though!

 

Interesting that it’s due to packaging.
off topic a bit but why do bump stops come without nitrogen? I’ve seen King bumps get listed this way from retailers.

 

Not sure where you saw that, but they come to us charged and get shipped out charged.
Air bumps, although they do have valving, are "tuned" with different amounts of nitrogen pressure. So either way they should be adjusted for the specific setup

 

good to know yours ship out charge.
For reference, it was Filthy MS: Note 1: Product ships uncharged. Nitrogen charging is available free to local customers.

 

any word?

 

Nope.

 

Bought ADS 700lb coilovers with clickers from headstrong last week. They emailed me a few days later saying they were in the middle of changing the price of the coilovers on the website when I ordered them and the new price was $2484 and I needed to pay the difference Just my luck, still hoping its worth it. They gave me an estimate of 10-12 weeks and said it could be sooner, which I am doubtful about.

 

Wow, that’s quite a markup from when I bought them…and I bought directly from ADS which was more than Headstrong at the time. Did you get normal 13” or ext 14” travel coils?

 

You paid the advertised price, they should honor that price. It does not matter when they decided to make the price change. What matters is when it got posted onto the product webpage.

Was the transaction already completed when they came at you with that BS? Did you make the purchase on their website with a bank issued credit card?

@HeadStrong Off-Road This is bad for business. It sends the wrong message. Do the right thing here.

 

I bought the extended travel. Was $2070 for the last two years I’ve been eyeballing these, then when I finally pull the trigger they pulled this.

Yes they received $2070 through paypal, they even sent me their PayPal notification confirming they received payment. In the same email confirming payment they stated that these shocks are now retailing at $2700 and that they are selling them for $2484 and just had not changed the price on the website yet. They did give me a $100 discount for the trouble, however I still had to dish more money out of pocket for a product that I had already paid in full for at the time.

I called around to a few other shops and they were saying lead times were 5-6 months for ADS. If Headstrong’s estimation of 10-12 weeks is true, I would look at this as just paying for expedited shipping. If it does land in the 5-6 month timeframe I won’t be a happy camper.

 

Annnnnnnnd there goes my disappointment increasing again.

 

unfortunately, this isn’t the same Headstrong most of us loved, since the business was sold to Trailgear as indicated in a previous post.

The bait and switch pricing is bullshit, but I guess they could’ve just cancelled the order if they didn’t get the price they wanted.

 

That’s why I didn’t raise too much of a stink. I bought my previous suspension setup from Headstrong about 4 years ago and they were amazing. Doubting that they will get my business in the future when it’s time for the rear suspension upgrade.
Meanwhile I’m just hoping they ship with nitrogen charged in them after reading previous posts on here

 

The shocks ended up being filled with nitrogen, ads made a mistake on their stickers. Not sure why the communication failed between Nicole and ADS when she said she called them. I ended up eating $35 shop rate when I brought them in to tell me they are already charged.. Life goes on, not worth burning a bridge with ADS or headstrong over a dumb 35$ mistake.