I should've taken a ride in your frankenwankel Brian, I'm in the market for suspension now due to age of my current stuff, and am talking to Rishie about a set of stance with 7/5k springs......i'm a huge non fan of coilovers for street use from the past experiences I had with tein, hks and a few cheapie-sheepie's like the ground control sluts.

I'm hopeful that the lightest springs available from stance will satisfy my needs. My needs being:

Tolerable ride ie. no tossing the car around on groovey pavement or able to feel the DNA of the ants you run over
Improved handling/less body roll over the tockio blue and eibach combo i've rocked for half a decade.

That's not true at all. If you had ever bought coilovers, you would know that you can specify your spring rates if you want, and yes, get this, for free.

With the Stances you can specify a rate between 5/5 and 12/12 and any combination in between, so it helps to take a ride in the same model car with the same spring rates that you are currrently considering. In Joe's case, that would be my car as I have the Stance GR+Pro's with the 7/5 spring combo on it. Just for giggles, I bought them from Rishie as well.

I'll tell you these few little bits of information, Joe,

I rocked the same Tockico/Eibach setup for 8-9 years maybe and towards the end, started to hate it. The dampening wasn't the greatest and they did tend to jar you around on some of the shittier roads. The spring rates in the rear were way too damn light even under N/A power. I could slam the gas, lift the nose to the point of understeer. I had to then quickly stab the brake to get the nose to bite, turn and ease onto the gas. I was also running a modified S4 clutch type diff.

Roen, who is a practicing suspension guru, tried valantly to talk me out of "C/O"'s and into a set of AWR C/O's with a set of cutom valved Koni's or Bilstiens. Yes there is a difference between the two. When I drove him through NYC on our way to the dyno, he was pleasantly surprised by the ride quality with the shocks set pretty much in the middle.

Personally, I like them but there are some roads that I just refuse to drive on locally. I also believe that my city has the absolute WORST roads that I have EVER driven on. Worse than some parts of NYC. The cobblestone roads in NYC's meat packing district sent my blood pressure through the roof and the world started turning red, that was just plain torture. All in all I'm very pleased though and I'm debating bumping them up to the 8/6's. I really don't have enough track time to warrant the change yet. I started with what a bunch of FC track junkies run who have changed spring rates a few times. They all have ended at the same rate. I'm making slightly more power so I thought about changing out to a 7/6, but just haven't yet

Joe, if you can hold out till after DGRR to make your purchase, I'll let you take FrankenWankel for a little blast so you can really get an idea of what they're like. By the time I get there the car will be aligned and cornerweighted and more than likely zipping around on RA1's for the weekend :reddevil: From what I remember though, the roads down there were damn nice compared to what I'm used to here in CT

I've got plenty of miles and auto-x's on mine, and they've been nothing but good to me! I've stopped DD'ing the car since the city decided to start road widening projects all around me.

That's not true for most, they just sell you what's in the box and if you want different springs, you have to buy them seperately. Yes I've bought coilovers before. I gather Stance is different and GC will sell you anything, but that's not quite what we're talking about here.

Does anyone know the spring rates for a '93 R1? I've seen rates posted around for the base / touring model, but I haven't seen results from anyone that's dyno'd an R1 spring/damper setup. This is just for reference, so I can have an idea of how much harder i'm going to be going.

wow, i haven't checked in for a while, but i'm glad I did.. good to see the coilover debate still going. I'm looking at replacing mine in the spring, so i'm looking around now at prices. First thing's first though... all bushings and pillowballs. I'm getting tired of the clunks!

I thought the R1 difference was in the shocks and the springs were the same? I could be wrong though, but Mazdatrix only lists the one stock spring choice for the 93.

Since you have an fd, you might as well buy a proper damper/spring setup. A koni/bilstein & ground control setup is cheaper than any decent jdmtyte coilover, and far superior. Mac struts drive the price up for us fc people, with the camber plates and strut housings, but you fd people have it easy.

When I got STANCE for my FD, they were a brand new company (OR just started making stuff for the FD) and they only had the one type of coilover, and they came with 12/12. I had them put 12/10 springs on there. I really wanted something like 10/8 but I was told that you can only safely use 2kg + or - what the strut is valved for without messing it up. That's what the company told me anyway. I would have loved to have them revalve them for 10/8, but I was getting them for a deal in order to test them and report results since they were brand new, and they wouldn't revalve them for me. I've still thought about getting Swift springs in 10/8 and trying it. 12/10 is a little stiff for some streets, but it handles like it's on rails! One time I went around a 90* corner (on the street) with my Dad in the car without even slowing down and we were both amazed that it had almost no roll whatsoever. I have RB sway bars front and rear too though.

Eh, even if I adjust my STANCE coilovers to the softest setting, it's still a little harsh on alot of my streets, in Colorado AND in North Carolina. And Illinois and Missouri.

It still handles like it's on rails though, so I can live with a little rattling I guess haha.

stance is a great product and they are inexpensive i got them for my 8 for 1245 shipped

i'll look into stance prices up here north of the border. .the problem i run into is the roads are good, but they get beat up a ton with our winters... city streets can be particularly brutal, especially when i go to visit my folks in Hamilton. Those roads are brutal. I don't' even bother driving it downtown.

I've sort of softened on my old position of GC coilovers with the following caveat:

The idea popped into my head since another member is doing this.

Cost estimation:
IF you know exactly the valving you want, this is how much a Bilstein setup will cost you:

$400 for a set of 4 struts/shocks
$420 for the ground control sleeves
$300 for a set of front caster / camber plates
$260 for the revalve

$1380 + misc shipping expenses for a set of non-dampening adjustable but height adjustable coilovers. One should only go this route after verifying the valving needed for the shocks via a method such as this: http://www.farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets6.html
Suspension Speed Histogram section.

This is what I intend to do with my car later on, but as this member pointed out to me is that you first need to invest in good quality adjustable struts for the FC like Koni or Ohlins. After you get the valving just right for your car, detach them, send them off to Bilstein, have them copy the valving and sell off your older, more expensive shocks.

Now you have a solution that is optimised and when it fails, can be cheaply replaced.

Very high initial cost (1 Set of Expensive Coilovers + 1 Set of GC / Bistein - 1 Set of Used Expensive Coilovers) but pays off in the long run.

My current suspension problem involves trying to stuff as much tire as possible into the front and rear wheel wells with out using overfenders. I'm trying to find out which coilovers provide both reliable shock valving as well as extra wheel / tire clearance. Maybe I'll give Stance a call if I can verify that both their valving and their adjusters work well and meet certain criteria.

ive heard that you can get custom valved stances, but i dont know anyone thats actually done it. probably dont wanna use their off the shelf valving, as its designed for drifters (too much compression).

if they'll valve to your liking, that would be awesome. i've only heard good things about stance.

AWR's strut tubes have shitty inner clearance. found that out the hard way... they are designed around EP cars with use very low offset 15" wheels. i had to make new brackets and weld them to the tubes to fit my wheels.
if you do use AWR's housings, you can probably call Anthony and have him make the brackets differently. simply copy a stance/tein/jic/whatever lower bracket.

I think I was told when I got mine from STANCE that they would valve them according to the springs but it would cost more, and since I was getting them for a bargain because they were a new company, I didn't see the point in upping the cost when I didn't even know how they performed yet haha. Although in hindsight I might have gotten them to ride a little softer. They do make it handle like it's on rails though, that's for sure.