Shipping
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Ecommerce shipping
For domestic US orders.
We ship via UPS Ground as our default carrier — reliable, traceable, and the right balance of cost and speed for what we sell. Tracking lands in your email automatically when your order ships.
A note on lead times. Most of what we sell is niche — Öhlins, Swift, specialty hardware. These aren't Amazon-warehouse products. We stock common items, but plenty of parts get ordered from our suppliers as orders come in, and our suppliers run the same low-volume specialty model we do. Order lead times reflect that supply chain — not the carrier's speed.
Expedited shipping isn't offered by default. If your situation is genuinely time-sensitive — track event next weekend, mid-install on the bench — reach out and we'll see what we can do. We don't promote rushed shipping as the standard option, because for most orders the bottleneck is parts availability, not UPS speed.
International shipping
We're a small specialty shop — preparing customs paperwork for individual international orders takes more bench time than we can dedicate to it without slowing down everything else. Rather than do it badly, we don't do it directly.
For international customers, we recommend a US package forwarder. It's the standard workflow for international buyers ordering from specialty US retailers, and it gives you better control over carrier choice, declared value, and customs clearance than we could provide.
How it works:
- Sign up with a US forwarder — they give you a US shipping address.
- Place your order with 3DM and ship to that US address.
- We ship UPS domestic to the forwarder.
- The forwarder receives your package, prepares your customs paperwork, and ships internationally to you.
- You pay the international shipping leg and any duties or import taxes through the forwarder.
Forwarders we've seen customers use:
- MyUS — long-established, large facility, broad service options
- Stackry — based in NH (no sales tax), popular for cost-sensitive shipments
- Shipito — Oregon location (no sales tax), wide international coverage
- Forward2Me — UK-based forwarder running both US and UK forwarding, convenient for EU/UK
Any of them will work — pick whichever fits your country and pricing.
One note on responsibility: once we drop your package at UPS for the forwarder, our role is complete. Customs paperwork, international transit, duties, and any in-transit issues from the forwarder onward are between you and the broker.
Service shipping
For sending your dampers in for service. We'll send the exact ship-to address with your Service Order # — it's also published on our Contact page. Please request a Service Order # before shipping so we can match your package to your job when it arrives. See How Service Works for the full process.
Packaging — please read before you ship.
The most common shipping issue we see is poor packaging. Loose dampers in a half-empty box bounce around in transit, and that's what destroys the box (and the dampers along with it). Take a few minutes to pack it right.
- Wrap each damper individually in bubble wrap or heavy foam.
- Remove springs and mounts unless they're part of the service we're doing.
- Fill empty space — foam, paper, packing peanuts, whatever you have. No air gaps. Parts that can't move can't damage themselves or the box.
- Heavy-duty box — single-wall boxes don't survive four dampers crossing the country.
Insurance. Strongly recommended. Declare whatever value you'd want covered if UPS loses or damages your shipment in transit — that's a call only you can make.
Return shipping — new packaging only. We ship dampers back in new packaging. Don't send anything you want returned — boxes, foam inserts, custom cases. The original packaging won't come back.
International service customers — use a broker. Same workflow as the International shipping section above: ship from your country to a US package forwarder, they relay your package to us. On the return leg, we ship to the forwarder, they relay back to you. We can't accept service shipments from outside the US directly — too much customs paperwork for the volume we run.