Old Man Emu Suspension Review after 100,000km

Old Man Emu, or OME has been around for a very long time, distributed by ARB and sold all over Australia (and in fact the world!). Back in 2018, we fitted a Dmax GVM upgrade to our Isuzu Dmax, and used OME Suspension with their nitro charger shocks.

Since then, we’ve done about 100,000km of varied terrain, from the usual school drop offs and general commuting through to the Gibb River Road, lots of 4WD tracks in Australia and a huge number of corrugations.

Put simply, the suspension has been used extensively, and now its time to do a review on the Old Man Emu Suspension.

Prior to that, we also replaced the suspension on our 80 Series Land Cruiser with Old Man Emu, and had that for several years, giving it quite the flogging off road.

Now, the usual disclaimer here; this product in both cases was purchased with our own money, and we’ve received no kick backs from ARB.

This post was not initiated by ARB, and none of the opinions below have been influenced in any way by them, or anyone else. We did get trade pricing from them though, which was nice.

What’s good about Old Man Emu Suspension?

It just works

For me, what I care most about in a product is how it functions. I don’t care how it looks, or what others think about it, but it must work, and the old man emu gear does exactly that.

It gets used on a heap of 4WD’s all over the place, and for us, it just works. We’ve had no leaks, no cracking, nothing come loose, or anything else go wrong.

I’m sure there are far better products on the market, and we could have certainly purchased something else, but they didn’t fit the bill in terms of warranty, price, GVM upgrade capacity or lift amount.

It hasn’t sagged

I’ve seen some pretty shocking suspension kits that have been a decent height for a year or two, and then sagged considerably.

I haven’t measured our Dmax, but its still sitting up very high, and I have no doubt that the sag would be minimal, if any at all.

I have seen some other brands sag very quickly, and long term too. Given ours is about 6 years old and has had a pretty serious work out I’m pretty confident in it.

It’s cost effective

Our Dmax build was done with the idea of using products that would do the job, but not break the bank. Some of the ARB gear is extremely expensive, but their OME nitro charger shock absorber and springs GVM upgrade is pretty decently priced.

I compared it to a number of other brands and it was in the middle, with a warranty that was better than some of the other brands.

I don’t mind paying a bit more for a quality product, but paying more for something that doesn’t last like it should is not much fun at all.

If you want to know how much our build cost, check out What did our Isuzu Dmax build cost?

It’s available anywhere

You can get OME suspension replacement parts from all over the country. This is important when something goes wrong and you are miles away from home, or from the nearest major town.

Touch wood we haven’t needed to do this, but if it happens, there are distributors available.

What’s not so good

Squeaking

The only complaint that I have about the OME suspension is the fact that the rear leaf springs squeak terribly sometimes. I have no idea why, and even after greasing, they will just squeak.

You’ll hear it backing out of the driveway and going off the curb, or when you go around a sharp corner, but the most annoying is when you are off-road, and doing slow speed work.

Its not the end of the world, and hasn’t caused any issues, but it is certainly annoying. What is strange is that it comes and goes; sometimes you won’t hear it for months on ends, and other times it never stops.

Given how important suspension is, and our only gripe being the squeaking it hardly affects our OME suspension review.

Old Man Emu Suspension Review

We are really happy with the suspension so far. It’s now done close to 85,000km, and hasn’t really missed a beat. Would we get it again?

Yep, absolutely. If we had need of remote reservoir options I’d shop around to see what alternatives were about, but for this build the OME gear has been perfectly suited to our needs, and trouble free.

We’re currently running our Old Man Emu Suspension on our Big Lap of Australia 6 years after the vehicle build, and it hasn’t sagged, nothing has broken and I’m still very pleased with it.

Have you had experience with OME suspension? Do you rate it?

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