Coilover question?
 

So far I've been looking around at different coilover setups that are available, and i guess I need some feedback from people with more suspension experience than me. Which to purchase?

There's lots of options, and i'm lost.

Megan Racing seems to be inexpensive, and appears to have lots of features, but i'm not sure about spring rates. seems like 12kg front and rear is a ton of spring.

There's multiple offerings from tein

HKS

Apexi

... i'm looking for something that's going to be liveable on the street, but will be excellent for autocross & lapping.

I'm currently on stock R1 suspension.

from what i gather, the only decent and cheap coilover is Stance
megan and apexi are crap, HKS and tein are not as cheap

As recommended by howard Coleman on the other forum, find something with spring rates close to 8/6. He tracks and streets his car and finds this to be the perfect compromise.

More important than spring rates are the dampers (shocks). You can change spring rates if they're not perfect, but if the dampers aren't very good, it'll never handle all that well.

Look into Ground Control coilover conversion. You supply the dampers, and add the adjustable sleeves/collars and upper springs seats, with whatever spring rates you want, in Eibach 2.5" racing springs.
The nice thing about this setup, almost any off the shelf strut can be used, and replacements aren't any higher than a stock-replacement unit. Plus, 2.5" ERS springs can be bought new for ~$60 each, so changing rates isn't too painful. The springs can even be found used, but the selection isn't quite as good.

off the shelf struts are not valved for 8/6 springs (or anything near that high)
any drop in shock must be revalved if you want it to handle properly.
after buying all the components, and revalving the shocks, it will probably be cheaper and easier to just have bought a complete coilover setup.

another advantage to coilovers is you get height adjustment on the shock body, instead of just the coilover sleeve. as you lower a car with the sleeve, you lose shock travel (no bueno).

i just checked out the offerings from tein and stance. All the spring rates are WAY above 8/6. most are 12/12 or 10/8. The others from Tein are 14/14 or 20/20 for their track suspensions. That's seems a little ridiculous. Is the only way to get something in a lower range to buy springs, and get dampers revalved?

10/8 is on the higher edge of what Howard said was acceptable/comfortable on the street. Zeals are coin but are noted as quality (Endless brand btw) and they have rates softer than 10/8. A lot of the heavier GT Cars (Supras, etc) enjoy Silk Road coilovers.

You can specify what spring rates you want when you order. Stances usually come with 9/7 rates, I opted for the 8/6 rates instead.

I assume they then revalve the dampers to match?

Typically if you're within +-1 kg (some will say 2) its considered alright to use them as is.

edited for being a retard

Hahaha, i love coilover threads. Its always people who have never had them that chime in with their two cents and scare off people from getting them.

When buying coilovers, real coilovers that is, not that ground control make believe crap, you can specify what spring rates you would like and they will valve everything and put on the springs you want.

Anyone that says x/x spring rate is bad for the street is dumb. You can fully adjust the dampening to whatever comfort level you want. I myself have 12/10.5k springs on my coilovers, and when I drive on the street every day I put it on the softest setting, which is very nice and rides smooth. When I go to the track, I adjust it up more to whatever setting I need for whatever track im at.

I have D2 coilovers, which are very nice and cheaply priced. I can get them for any FC or FD for 900 shipped. Same with Ksport too.

It's always people without winter always seem to chime in about how really stiff springs can be fine on the street. That may be true where you are, since I'd bet your roads are in MUCH better condition than the crap that lots of us have to drive on.

I don't know of any coilover that lets you specify a spring rate other than their standard rates without some extra cost, and very few will revalve them to suit and it will always be at an extra cost. If you're talking about really high end stuff that they build to suit, that won't be the case, but that's not exactly in the realm of what 99% of people will be considering.

I agree and disagree at the same time. When talking C/O's then yes, adjusting the shock body up and down and keeping the travel the same is a VERY nice thing. However, if you are going with a matched, revalved Koni or Bilstien with a hieght adjustable sleeve put together by a shop that REALLY knows their stuff, than loosing a bit of shock travel isn't going to be that bad of a thing. The key is to find a shop with the experience to do it properly. I can only think of two in the US

Not always. Generally when you order a set of C/O's the dampers are designed to be used with springs within one, sometimes two weight adjustments. So if you ordered an 8/6 (as I did with my FC) you can go 7/5 or 9/6 without worrying about revalving. Personally I'm running a 7/5 now and I'm happy on the street. Hopefully next year I'll see some more track time and actually be able to experiment a little more.

Depends, when I ordered my Stances through Rishie I called Stance and talked to them for quite some time about thier product. They tossed in a set of 7/5 to try with my 8/6's. This was also in thier infant stage so I'm sure that's changed slightly.

The roads in the NE REALLY suck. My city especially is under alot of construction right now and there are roads that litterally raise my blood pressure when I drive down them in my LIFTED JEEP! There are some that I won't even take my FC down but some dumb fuck in city planning decided to do construction on both the roads leaving the penisula that I live on. Can't escape it anywhere in the NE. Even the highways are all pretty nasty. So yeah, when trying to balance plush street driving with a good track suspension, you need to lean one way or the other.

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.

TN roads are very nice and well maintained. :icon_tup: