SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1525626
RAISING THE STANDARD ADS Shocks Is Committed To High Standards And Racer Support By Dan Sanchez For more than 30 years, ADS shocks have been known for solving problems and supporting individual racers. “Our founder/owner, who raced in Class 1, was consistently experiencing shock failures,” says ADS Director, Bryan Grigsby. “He owned a machine shop and would solve the problems he was having, like protruding Schrader valves on the shock reservoirs, or the decision to utilize threaded mid and res caps instead of snap rings.” Along with thinking of better solutions, ADS began making its own shocks and did not compromise on the quality of materials. “We’ve always improved upon the design and components that are out there,” adds Grigsby. “We’re small and lean enough to know where we need to position ourselves in the market and provide our customers with the highest quality shocks out there. We don’t have a race series, performance series, pre-runner series, etc. You get the same high-quality shock for your race vehicle or street vehicle. No difference.” Grigsby explains that the company offers its “ADS Advantage” which is the fact that any customer can pick up the phone and call, and someone will answer. “We build and machine everything in-house and that puts us in a position to not have extremely long back orders because we’re waiting for outside components to come in,” says Grigsby. “We do everything from our Arizona facility, including quality control checks in which our shocks stay under pressure for 24 hours. Then they go under post QC checks and this ensures our customers are getting what they paid for.” For racers, ADS offers full support, going to races to help racers at events like SCORE and King of The Hammers. “We also help off-road enthusiasts with their pre-runners and vehicles they use off-road on the weekends,” says Grigsby. “We don’t turn them away. Most of the time, we’re fixing other brands of shocks that people use.” ADS manufactures everything from full-race bypass shocks to reservoir shocks for late-model vehicles. Their latest growth area has been with Ford Bronco enthusiasts. “The Bronco customers love us,” says Grigsby. “They go out and abuse their Broncos and report back how well they run with our components on them.” ADS also has products for popular Overlanding vehicles and Toyota Tacoma customers. “We have lots of products for Tacoma, ranging from 3.0 direct fit race coil overs and bypasses to IFP shocks front and rear.” ADS also utilizes SDI e-controllers for customers who want that type of product on their system. “Right now there seems to be more customers who are using full race shocks, internal and external bypass, big coil overs etc.” says Grigsby. “There’s a lot of hardcore mid-sized and pre-runners with LS V8 swapped engines and tube chassis builds.” ADS is also working on coming out with products for the Ford Raptor and other popular vehicles with systems that retrofit onto factory mounts. The parent company of ADS is Holley Performance, which Grigsby and the company can relate to. “Our parent company is into products that have been tried and tested,” says Grigsby. “ADS feels the same way as we want to take a known product design but make it better so our customers can trust in it and know they are not going to have mechanical issues with them.” SJ