By the time you are noticing these effects, your shocks have been toast for a LONG time.

Shock wear is noticed first in uneven tire wear, lowered brake performance as you mentioned, but it's not noticable. By the time it IS noticable your shocks are dangerously worn out. When components like sway bar end links, tie rods, ball joints, strut bearings, wheel bearings, etc start wearing out, you know your struts are worn.
The sway bar end links are 9/10 the first sign that your suspension is wearing due to worn components. It's a domino effect.

And I already told you. 100k miles is what most shocks live for before they start showing signs of wear. If you're waiting until your car drives like a worn out 1992 Buick Century as you described, that's just ridiculous.

There's no exact number for how long they last. All suspensions differ, car weight differs, so on and so on. Know that 200k miles is a pipe dream for any application, 150k miles they're almost certainly worn, and 100k miles depending on application they're showing signs of wear and could be replaced as preventative maintenence. Replacing shocks early lengthens the life span of EVERYTHING on that car. A worthy investment even when you don't consider the safety factor.

 

I floored it the other day passing someone for the first time in almost two months!

 

I try to stay under 2k rpms as the gas goes too fast man. But with Borla and JWT, I can't help to get on it at least 1-2 a day. But I don't like to red line often so I shift around 4500-5000k. Is it just me or does the pop charger sound like turbo when it whistles.

 

Yup that was one of the two reasons why I got my JWT lol

 

Haha! Good. I wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one who thought that. Plenum spacer on today @ 3. Can't wait. I hope I feel the difference.

 

Are you gonna dyno it before and after?

 

I can't afford it =( I should not even be doing this as I am getting married in June LOL She would kill me. Eventually, I also want to have cats, headers, pulley system and MAYBE gears. Then a UpRev tune. From there I will definitely dyno it =)

 

Congrats on getting married bro.....but pampering two ladies wont be easy lol

 

Hey thx man. I know man. I got a full Borla cat back for $130 on Craigslist. She complained about that lol but then I was like ok, after the marriage I will get it new for $900. She was ok with it then haha. We're getting her a G too right after marriage

 

I wonder if any of the higher mileage cars have been driven hard. Every time I drive my hard for a few days I feel like it ages 20,000 miles.

 

I drive it like gas is $0.25/gallon.

 

How high do you rev it on average acceleration?

 

No higher than 5 usually.

I swapped out my lower plenum for the non revup so im getting ok low range torque

 

5,000rpm every time you accelerate? What does your commute look like?

 

5g's is nothing.

But I've found that reving much past 4800/5000 is pointless on the stock 03/04 anyways, there's nothing past that anyways. Everytime I rev past 4800 I want to supercharge because the car feels bloody gutless, so I try to shift more often and roll into the throttle to feel the torque. That keeps me somewhat subdued, at least for now.



I'm sure that a worn clutch has a great deal to do with the drastic drop off too, but it's obvious that these are low-RPM torque warrior engines stock. I need to make me a wider powerband and more HP......
And pop that Stg. 1 clutch in ssoon too. Damn weather.