Built to order
Posted by Flatout Suspension on Jan 16th 2025
Some important things to know before you order:
All of our suspensions are built to order. We don't keep inventory (usually) for a few reasons. The biggest reason is we can not keep anything in stock! We have so many orders coming in that we are constantly building the open orders. The other reason is, often times, someone wants to make some sort of small change. Another reason, we have so many variations of suspensions for one car. 15-21 Subaru WRX, for instance - we can't stock all of those options!. Another reason, we want to build these for you. Isn't that much cooler than knocking the dust off a box that's been sitting in a warehouse? These are literally for you. Lastly, it's impossible to know what's going to be popular in the coming weeks. If we were to stock up on 15-19 Subaru Outback , we'd get 20 orders for the 10-14 Subaru Outback. We would stock up on the GR Lite, and everyone would order the GR Plus. It's just how it seems to go. We do have some suspensions in stock - generally from someone making a change so late in production that we have to start from scratch on another suspension. You can check under shop by product > in stock to see what we have available.
Another thing to be aware of - our boxes are only so big, and some of these long travel suspensions are long! For shipping, we generally have to assemble everything and then adjust the perches so we can pre-compress the shocks and place a band on it to fit into the box. Or in other cases, some of our set ups use a long set of springs (more spring - more travel), so to make these as highly-functional as possible, fully assembled they are too long for the box, and too long to compress. In some instances, we will have the springs unloaded from the shocks. When you open the box, you'll see the springs placed in between the two boxes with the shocks. All you have to do is remove the top assembly nut (we leave it loose for you), drop the spring in place and torque the nut to spec (we cover this in the set up instructions). We get a lot of requests to set preload, or set for X height - we can't. 1, it wouldn't fit in the box, 2, cars have varying corner weights; you will have to adjust regardless. Our set up guide helps you through the process to do it yourself.
November to March is our absolute busiest time of the year, so lead times are usually in the 8-10 week time frame. Sometimes it's faster - especially if we have several orders for the same application. It just makes sense to do a batch at once. But, sometimes it's slower. If you have a weird order, like if we are building a lift suspension for an Audi R8 for you, expect it to be a little longer. Those "out of the ordinary" builds require a bit more research to get things right. We see Subaru Outback suspensions go through here every day, we could build them in our sleep. But an Audi R8 requires us to get OEM suspension parts, run the shocks and springs on a dyno so we can make it offroad ready. It's not a fast process. Besides, do you really want us to rush just because, or do you want it perfect? If you only want to do the labor once because everything has been done correctly - sit back and relax and let us do it correctly.
We know you are excited to get your order, we are just as excited to send it to you. I can promise you that we love getting the "I just got my suspension today and I am absolutely blown away by how awesome these are" emails. Trust me, we want to get these out of the door as fast as possible. One thing we have started doing is updating order status. We don't have a status for every step of the way, but "awaiting fulfillment" is somewhere in-between "order received and parts arriving back from plating". If your status is "awaiting fulfillment" wheels are in motion, and they set in motion usually about 2-3 business days after your order. The next phase is "preparing for final assembly." That means your parts are back and plated and we are getting the springs and other bits ordered or set aside. Once someone has your pile on the work bench, it changes to "final assembly/ packing." Once it's in this phase the status change to "shipped" happens very quickly - usually same day. I know the longest phase is "awaiting fulfillment" - it's the phase that urges you to send an email to check in. If it's been more than 2-3 business days since you ordered, rest assured that your parts are being built. Remember, our lead times are 8-10 weeks, if you're checking in at week 3, we won't have much to report.
TLDR; We have an extended lead time due to work load and you can't rush perfection.
That's all for now, I hope this helps!