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| The rear suspension in place. The KW shock uses the stock rubber upper isolator for quietness. This is important for a daily driver. |
Since the front shock on the G35 is a coilover, KW addresses some of the issues that coilovers usually have on street cars. Many times the threaded body of the shock corrodes as it’s hard to keep cut threads from rusting, especially where the spring collars are turned on the threads even with rust resisting platings and coatings. Typically the spring seat is made of a different metal than the shock body. This causes galvanic corrosion. The shocks on a street car are exposed to the elements and receive very little maintenance. These issues cause the threaded body to corrode to the spring seat making a frozen mess. KW addresses this issue by using stainless steel for the shock body. The spring seat is made of a corrosion proof engineering super plastic. This makes for a coilover body that that is always silky smooth in adjustment and will never corrode, even in salty east coast winters!
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| Having a stock rubber isolator keeps things quiet. Pillow balls are better for the ultimate in damper control but they are noisy and for a daily driver, can be irritating. |
The rear G35 shocks have an independent spring separate from the shock. KW has a unique rear spring seat that is adjustable for ride height even though the system is not a coil over. This allows the car to be corner balanced as well. The KW suspension has 10k front and 8k rear springs, about twice as stiff as stock. The VIII’s are street oriented so they are designed to work with the stock upper isolators and spring seats to keep things quiet without a lot of the noise typically associated with coilovers and performance street shocks with pillow ball mounts and camber plates. Another cool feature of these dampers is that the damper body is shortened so the car can be lowered without losing bump travel. This is a highly important feature allowing a low car that will still stay off the bumpstops in a corner while maintaining reasonable spring rates. Bottoming under roll when cornering is the #1 cause of ill handling in modified cars so it’s critical not to give up bump travel in a lowered car. We adjusted the G35 1.5” lower in the front and 1” lower in the rear for now. This gave the car an even stance.
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| The front shock also uses the stock isolator. The KW spring is conical so the top can fit the stock upper spring seat and the bottom fits the universal 2.5″ coilover perch on the shock body. |
With our wheels, tires and suspension in place, the G35 has greatly improved. We were amazed at the Nitto NT05 tire’s capabilities. Turn in was ultra crisp with excellent transient response with excellent grip and a progressive smooth breakaway at the limit. The tires were so good compared to the stock rubber that we had to look to make sure Nitto hadn’t shipped us some race compound NT01’s by mistake!
