AST Suspension – USA is proud to announce the new AST 4150 Series Damper. The new design builds on the success with the AST 4100 series damper and the recent wins in GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, including new technology developed specifically for GRAND-AM racing teams.

DDP Technology Piston

Our latest digressive piston developed for GRAND-AM gives drivers and race engineers the best of both worlds. Drivers love the low speed damping response and body control, while race engineers love the “blow off” at high shaft velocities. When the rebound adjustment is soft, the damper curve looks similar to an OEM street shock profile. When the rebound adjustment is hard, the damper curve looks like a race shock!

This “Jekyll and Hyde” personality is exactly what AST 4000 Series customers want: soft street ride and race car track performance in ONE shock – all with the turn of a knob!

Lower Drag Seals

High performance seals are a challenge for any damper. They must balance friction and sealing ability while not impacting shock performance and not leaking; a difficult balancing act! While the seal was originally developed for GRAND-AM road racing, AST is taking our knowledge from the track to the street again. Newly redesigned seals decrease hysteresis in the damper and decrease seal drag over 50%.

Discontinuing Steel Shocks

In 2012, most AST 4150s will come with aluminum shock bodies. Strut bodies will continue to be built from steel, but all shocks will switch to aircraft grade aluminum. Economies of scale have allowed us to switch to aluminum without a large increase in cost of manufacture. For some models, this represents a 50% reduction in the weight of the damper (unsprung weight).

Structural Improvements

Several new designs proven in GRAND-AM racing will be added to various products on an “as needed” basis. All strut models will receive a new two piece top guide assembly that separates the dust seal assembly from the oil seal/bearing assembly. This two piece design is stronger in compression loading (bottoming out) and side loading (in the turn). Some models will receive weld-on stabilizer brackets which take the guesswork out of setting the stabilizer height and torque setting of the clamping ring.

Upgradeability

4150s will be upgradeable to 4250s! Using a modular build system, customers can send their shocks to AST at a later date and upgrade from a 1 Way shock to a 2 Way internal reservoir or remote reservoir system. Some models may only upgrade to remote reservoirs. An upgrade matrix will be published in early 2012.

Approximately 2 months ago, AST Suspension acquired Moton Suspension in European court. Since the initial announcement on May 26th, Moton USA headquarters have successfully moved from Atlanta, GA to Plano, TX. The integration of the two shops went very smoothly. Moton parts are self contained in their original cabinetry and will continue to stay separate. Moton Holland has begun production of key parts that were not available at the time of the transition.  Current orders are in production and will begin arriving Stateside in a matter of weeks.

Key milestones since the transition:

• Moton USA is fully functional and already providing rebuild and revalve service for customers
• Moton USA is taking and fulfilling dealer orders
• Moton certified rebuild centers across the U.S. and Canada are already ordering/ receiving parts and repairing dampers.
• An RMA process and online form has been created for rebuilds/revalving.
• New product development has already begun in Holland
• Professional teams are signing up for 2012
• Additional staff have been hired to meet demand
• Contingency programs are in place or will be soon for SCCA Solo, SCCA Runoffs, and NASA Pro Racing.

For product inquiries, please use sales (at) moton-usa.com for more information.

While I was at AST in The Netherlands this week I shot a short video of the new air jack with elephant’s foot.  While a normal air jack lifts the car enough to change tires during fast pit stops, the elephant’s foot allows the race car to be raised even higher for major work. No more floor jacks, simply extend the air jacks, lock them into the elephant’s foot, extend the air jack again and place the safety stand in place!

AST Suspension – USA is proud to announce new updates to the 4000 Series line of dampers. These updates were developed directly from customer and dealer feedback on the product and enhance the performance of the 4000 Series damper on the track and street. Some updates only relate to the 4000 Series struts while other improvements will be added to struts and shocks. produced. Customers with older 4000 Series dampers are welcome to contact an AST dealer for a quote on upgrading any current generation. Click here for more information!

We are currently testing the following new models:

• NA/NB and NC Miata MX-5 4100 coilovers
• 2005+ Mustang 4150 coilovers
• 2008+ Evo X coilovers
• C5/C6 coilovers
• VW Mark V GTI

More details here.

November will be a big month for AST testing. AST Holland will be coming over to test new kits for MX-5 (NA, NB, and NC models), Corvette (C5, C6), Mustang (S197), Evo X as well as some fine tuning for BMW models. Initial releases of the products will be 4100 kits with the latest internal updates going into all new models. Stay tuned for more information.

Going to Performance Racing Industries tradeshow?
Come by our booth and visit! We’ll have some new prototypes and production models on display. Booth #973.

Vorshlag completed the final testing for the SCCA Solo2 Nationals this weekend. All systems are “go” including the AST 4300s keeping the suspension stuck to the ground. Good luck Vorshlag!

We asked ourselves, are we crazy? Surely this can’t be done? But what if it could? What if you could daily drive your autocross car, your track day/time trial car, AND have it be spouse and family friendly? No, that is definitely crazy!

Sure, most of us can get by. We can make sacrifices. Heck, I drove a ’07 STI around town with a side pipe and no muffler all for the “sake of winning”. The downside? Well, no one would drive with me, but sometimes that’s good. Hey, it was light! We’ve all driven cars with 750 lb/in springs and twin tube shocks on the street because we couldn’t afford a truck and trailer. No it doesn’t ride THAT bad…does it? We’ve pulled the A/C out of cars in Texas to drop 30 pounds before a big event. The list goes on and on. You know who you are.

In this time of high fuel costs and tightening spending, we believe the trend of multipurpose cars will become more and more important. With gas over $4 per gallon in some places, you begin to feel the crunch when you tow a car 1400 miles to an event. When the pump shuts off at $100 and you haven’t finished filling up you begin to ponder, is there a better way? I don’t think as “car guys” we’re about to roll over and pick a new hobby. Sure, basket weaving is relaxing, but nothing compares to wide open throttle acceleration or making yourself keep your foot down through a 100 mph corner hoping it sticks this time. No, not many hobbies compare to cars. We want to have our cake and eat it too.

So, if we could find this “car nirvana”, what would it be? What would it look like and what classes could it run in? What are some nice to haves? Lists are subjective, but we had some ideas. It needs to be a smaller displacement motor so probably turbocharged. It needs to have 4 doors, gotta carry people too. All wheel drive could be nice, how many times do you lose in the rain? It happens when you bring a two wheel drive car to the event ask me. One problem though, we LIKE the way rear wheel drive cars handle. Of course we want to make parts for it so it has to have a little “left on the table” from the factory to improve on. It needs to run on street tires. Forget towing a tire trailer and changing tires at the track. We’re lazy and 18″ race tires have gone from pricey to astronomically pricey!

That starts the conversation and narrows it quickly in our minds. Street tires – SCCA autocross has some very nice street tire based classsing structures. We’re familiar with that. NASA TT has some nice classing as well that accounts for treadwear. A plan wouldn’t be complete without hoping to run One Lap of America and a return trip to the GRM Ultimate Track Car Challenge to boot! Don’t forget Redline Time Attack and Super Lap Battle. All possibilities.

Again, this may be subjective, but we think we’ve found a car that can check all our boxes. Friday we headed over to Don Herring Mitsubishi in Irving, TX and test drove some Evos. By Tuesday the next week, we picked up our 2008 Mitsubishi Evolution X MR in Wicked White as they say. You might say, “yikes, but you didn’t factor in price tag?” Yes, the price of entry into the Evo is a little steep, bordering BMW levels. But if you step back and look at the package (and magazine articles) the Evo is a relative bargin to the cars it gets compared against. All the major magazines have done “track car” articles and the Evo is coming close to cars that start at $25,000 MORE than the Evo. It has brakes, power, suspension, and again, checks off our wants and desires. Better yet, it leaves room for improvement on suspension and power! But what about fuel mileage? More on that later. We plan to improve the abysmal mileage the Evo eeks out.

In short, we’ll be combining the strength of Vorshlag and AST along with a few key partners to build what we feel is the Ultimate Dual Purpose Car, Project UDP. Short term planned mods include Vorshlag camber plates, AST 4200 coilovers, turbo back exhaust, and ECU tuning by Cobb Tuning. Stayed tuned for more!

Ready for stickers….

Testing on the new 4200 series shock is complete! We have completed testing of the new 4200 series shock using our TPDA technology. This double adjustable monotube with no external reservoir will be rolled out throughout our product line throughout the year. Subaru and BMW applications are ready now.