GAB shocks are expensive. ~$180 for front struts and ~$140 for rear shocks! These shocks offer 8 settings. 5 for the compression, and 3 for the rebound. These shocks are also very hard to find because GAB does not make these shocks in the USA. They are imported from Japan as required!!! This means that you usually have to order them and you can wait up to three months for delivery.

Tokico shocks are reasonable. ~$150 for the front struts and ~$100 for the rears for the 5-way Illumina series and $120/$80 for the non-adjustable series. The 5-way Illumina shocks offer the 5 settings on the compression like the GAB’s do, but they are not adjustable for the rebound. Is this an important feature? Maybe to someone who really likes to tweak things. From talking to other RX-7 owners, the Tokico 5-ways are the most commonly found shock on RX-7’s.

As for springs… I actually bought new factory springs for a Turbo II from Roebuck Mazda. (I love those guys!) The spring rates for the Turbo II rear are stiffer than the Stock SE/GXL versions, plus installing them didn’t result in lowering the car! The performance springs that you find available from Racing Beat, Tokico, etc… All lower the car anywhere from ¾" to 1". These performance springs are also a lot stiffer that the stock and I’ve felt how hard these springs can ride. For daily driving, stock was the answer for me. Since I was doing this to restore my original ride height and fix my camber problem, I figured the Turbo II springs were my best bet.

As a final note, There are other ways to adjust the camber on the rear wheels, but you have to buy/make the part to do it. Mazdatrix sells an adjustable bar that replaces a solid one in the rear suspension. I did not choose this route because I did not feel that changing the suspension geometry in the rear was the proper way to fix the problem.

After all my research, my final set up: Tokico Illumina 5-way shock/struts and four new Turbo II springs.

Installation is pretty simple, but very time consuming. Basically you get the car off the ground, and remove the outer nuts from the top of the shock/strut. Don’t remove the nut from the center of the shock assembly or the spring will fly out! Then remove the nut the attaches the bottom of the shock. You pull the shock and spring assembly out and then get to work taking it apart…. First you compress the old spring to remove the tension, and then you can take the center nut off the top of the shock piston. That allows you to pull the whole thing apart. Finally you have to compress the new spring and put the assembly together… Repeat four times… Simple right? The instructions you get with the Tokico shocks are very good and they give the torque specs for putting the thing back together. Once you get everything back you together, you will need an alignment.

All of my original shocks were completely DEAD! I pushed the pistons in on all four of them and they never came out again… This really needed to be done! I also compared the original springs with the new ones: The new ones were about an inch taller, and that definitely explained my camber problem.

I took the car to get aligned, and the guy had no problem getting the car back to within specs! This made me happy knowing that the job was done right.

As for the handling? Well, it took me a while to get the settings the way I liked for a slight understeer. The combination that worked for me was setting the front on 4 and the rear on 3. This allowed me to drive it pretty hard into a corner and have the back end swing out while the front end just pointed in the direction I wanted to go.