What are my options

Your only other option is buying used shocks that still work but good luck with that and their isn't anything aftermarket .

Um, i hate to be the bearer of bad news but your best bet is to find someone selling a low mileage set of adjustables and hope they're in
good condition.

From what i can tell from examining my old AE suspension (before i canned it), and reading on the forums:

In the front, he AE outer strut tubes were part of the reservoir and used a sealed gland nut (as opposed to the sealed cartridges that are available from aftermarket manufacturers.) If that leaked out the fluid, you may only need that one seal and top it off with fluid
(probably submerged to evacuate air bubbles),which leads to the fluid.
Nissan used some environmentally unfriendly fluid in these adjustable struts and it is NLA and nobody has (as far as i've seen)
successfully tried matching the fluid with another fluid of the same viscosity.

In the rear, it's a sealed unit.

From what i remember reading, there is an motor driven adjustable valving system inside, with a electric motor internal to the strut.
(I've got a broken set but haven't done a post-mortem on them yet.)

Infiniti M30's also had an adjustable suspension with a motor driven actuator that was external of the strut, located on top of the strut tower.

There are manually adjustable Tokico Illuminas that you can use without modifying anything, but i guess they're hard to find.

Personally, with my 84TGLL and my AE, I've gone/going with Illuminas and ST springs. This coming from a guy who likes every little damn detail to be original.

Yeah. I was planning to keep my adjustable suspension until I learned it would be next to impossible to get it rebuilt or replaced.

It just kills me that I can have everything else on the car work as designed by the factory but to replace the shocks it will cost me about what I paid for the car.
If I can not get the suspension to work like factory I think I will put coil overs on the car but that is a last ditch effort

DO NOT buy used OEM adjustable suspension and expect them to last very long because they could fail at any time as there are 30 years old. Used sets of working struts/shocks sell for as much as $500 with no guarantee they will last more than 30 days.

I agree with reddzx, I sold the working set out of my old car only because the car only had 93,000 miles on it and I still told the buyer no warranty or refund. I really didnt want to do it but he was very persistent on buying them. With that said, I am removing my working set out of my 86t, but will not sell them because they have 190,000 on them.

I MAY have a set for sale in the next few months. I bought a set of Stance coils and will be doing the swap sometime in the next few months. For the moment my shocks are in surprisingly good shape (100k miles, 161k KM) After my trans swap however my adjustment knob has stopped working. Probably a connector issue… But they're stuck in firm for now, and it is pretty stiff.

I agree with not buying used suspension components unless they were dirt cheap /almost free

I sold the set of working adjustable suspension off of my 85t for $50 last summer. I just wanted it out of my garage.

There is is always the inherent risk of buying used parts in similar condition and only lasting a short time. As Z_Karma stated there is not viable option for new factory adjustment suspension unless your paying big $$$ from Nissan.


Side note, loosing the adjustable portion but Tokico HP shocks matched with Eibach springs makes for a very nice z31. Comfortable yet very responsive. I would recommend that setup to anyone looking for OEM+ replacement/upgrade.

Turbo cars, no HP's are available. Illumina's fit, but would take about a month to get. Last I heard, Nissan did not offer replacements, as the fluid used in the dampers for the cool selectable feature was outlawed by the EPA…

KYB sells a replacement turbo car front non adjustable strut

Bilstein, and Tokico Illumina's drop right into Turbo housings.

Missed one.

I'm quite content with the Koni/ST setup at this point.

I will most likely do coilovers because I don't want to go thru the hassle of finding the oem stuff and definitely do not want to pay the price for them