Ok well haven spoken to various people regarding the rebuild/refurb of the AST's, below is the various replies i received.
Black Art Designs
- spoke to john, brilliant chap. nothing but helpful and pleasant. certainly knows his suspension
- regarding the refurb a standard cost of £75 + VAT per shock with a 1 week turnaround, this obviously is if there are no new parts needed.
- New parts would of course incur an additional cost
JtechAutomotive
- again they were helpful but flat out refused to give a cost or even an estimated cost for a standard strip and rebuild of the coilover units. stated they would not an will not give any cost information unitl they had the shocks and had split them down. currently cant take any work on at all for 2 weeks
- must point out though they seemed very knowledgeable and were very helpful with options to re-valving etc to suit my cars uses
Powerstation
- not as helpful, seemed like they didn't have time to chat about the proposed work.
- price wise they were £100 + VAT per shock, with a 10/14 day turnaround
- Again new parts would incur additional cost
AST UK (Curtis)
- Called numerous times but never got an answer, emailed an as yet have had no response (didn't expect much more tbh)
- I then called AST in holland, and was quoted £75 + VAT for a strip and rebuild 2 week lead time from them receiving the shocks to me having them back
all of the above were carrying out the following, Change oil, Teflon strips, o-rings, shims, gas plugs as per AST instructions. Check operation, regas
So after all of the above i will be removing the AST's from the car and sending to john at Black art designs, mainly due to the lead time being more in keeping with trackdays etc i have planned. Being 100% honest i would gladly have used all of the above, with the exception of curtis due to lack of response and previous exoerinces