About Us
RedShift Motorsports opened in 2002 as a small speed shop in northeast Pennsylvania. RedShift founder, Chris Shenefield, is a car and race enthusiast with race experience in fwd, rwd, awd, and formula cars. For years, RedShift worked at the retail level and became well-known for race and performance suspension setup expertise.
In 2017, we started to look for a way to produce affordable motorsport dampers and coilovers. Koni, the originator of the adjustable shock, makes great street shocks, but their motorsport offering is limited. The premium motorsport damper companies (like MCS, Moton, JRZ, Ohlins, and Penske) have some amazing products, but anyone who has looked into them knows they are very expensive. Bilstein is the originator of the monotube shock and makes great products, but their road car applications are limited, and their race shocks are tailored more for tube frame race cars.
What did not exist, and therefore what was needed, was the combination of 1) adjustability of the Koni Sport "yellows", 2) superior monotube design of the Bilstein, and 3) real motorsport valving similar to JRZ/Moton/MCS. In the past, if you were a car enthusiast on a budget and wanted to get into competitive road racing, time trials, track events, or autocrossing, you would inevitably have to decide between the Koni and sleeve coilover setup or a bevy of coilover kits with wide ranging performance and quality (none that would compete favorably with the MCS/Moton/JRZ/Penske cars). Obviously, you probably would think about some of those very expensive motorsport shocks for a moment, and if you had the funds, they are exceptional... but for most people, the price tag puts them out of reach.
So then what to do? Through thousands of hours of dyno testing a huge range of products at every price point, we discovered some important things:
1) All street dampers and street coilovers are valved similarly, with low compression damping forces and high rebound damping forces. This includes Konis, Bilsteins, stock shocks, or any of the zillion off-the-shelf coilovers we tested from BC Racing, D2, Tein, Skunk2, Fortune Auto, Bilstein, Megan, Buddy Club, and on and on. There is good reason for this, and that is because low compression and high rebound is most comfortable in most situations; so we don't knock those companies for designing them like that. They are street shocks and street coilovers.
2) And related to number 1 above, adjustable damping street shocks and coilovers only have increased rebound-heavy damping as you stiffen the shock. The stiffer you adjust the shock, the more rebound-heavy the damping becomes. While this can make the car "feel" under control and inspire confidence for the driver, it is NOT the best way to valve a motorsport damper for grip and fast lap times.
3) The very best motorsport damper companies (MCS/Moton/JRZ/Penske) have a more compression-heavy balance to their dampers and relatively less rebound than street shocks.... and the damping curves are different too. Shaft sizes too are different.
The result of our R&D effort and now many years of building our own motorsport dampers/coilovers is our line of RedShift Street Custom and Competition Coilovers. They are affordable, high-quality monotube design, damping adjustable, and with true motorsport/race damping profiles. Finally you can purchase affordable dampers and coilovers that will allow you run up front!
Yours in motorsport!
Chris Shenefield
RedShift Motorsports, Inc.
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