Just to start this post off, i want to say that these are very good questions and I do not feel negative in any way towards your comments and opinions.
First I wanted to start by saying that you have it backwards. Quality control in Korea can be just as questioned if not worse than Taiwan and China. I can show tons of examples. but here is one
JIC Magic suspension is made in Korea,
I Broke My JIC Not So Magic Strut - NASIOC
Now this is the only brand that I have ever seen this happen to.
Not even cheap megans or BC.
JIC is made in Korea, however ARK still produce at our manufacturing facility. Also, in any case whether it be JDM or NOT, defects are bound to happen. In any company no matter how reputable, we calculate the chances of defects in each batch.
No point in generalizing the way you are about Taiwan and China. I own a tool import export and manufacturing. I have tried to relocate our manufacturing facility to asia, I started with korea, but even with our management and business plan with only labor being done for some reason the products would come out skewed. Now I have it in Taiwan, this was several years back but then again. Again this judgement can be offensive to people. Not that I care much Im as white and redneck as can be. LOL.
Understood and a reasonable generalization.
ARK Coilover?? - Page 7 - MY350Z.COM Forums
It doesn't seem like you know much about suspension in general. And how do you revalve and rebuild in house without a shock dyno. It doesn't make sense.
I'm sure it will take you a while to come up with dyno sheets as well.
The dyno sheet is on page 5 on the same post.
I can tell you this, just looking up shim specs and gas specs and rebuilding never will give consistent numbers. I can bet that all four corners of your coilover system has different dyno numbers.
This is true with all gas compression shocks. There are too many variables for each shock will produce the same #'s. That is why we have to pay attention to other variables that we can control. Springs rates, Build quality, and materials uses so that it can be as consistent as possible.
As for quality- If you think just because they are not going to snap on us while we are driving means that they are quality, then your definition and ours are completely different. In fact everything you stated over in your description explains exactly what your coilovers are.... generic.
Everything you claim is just blind statements.
You can see the difference in build quality. this is for the S2000 coilovers, Megan also can be bought for 800 dollars and they have a one piece aluminum bracket, and Yours on the other hand is a helded bracket, which part of this is higher quality.
Finally this improvement in handling without sacrificing comfort. What does that even mean?
We take KW as a good benchmark of a successful coilover company. They did an excellent job creating a good set of shocks that improves handling without having them too stiff.
I remember back just 2 years ago when people thought stiffer was better. Then consumers started to educate themselves by doing some research. The ideal coilover is to have the tires planted to the track at all times. This is where the compression and rebound comes into play. If the shocks are too stiff, it will start to skip around.
I do thank you for your input on this and hope that we will be able to show you and the community just how well our units perform.
Alex