FB rear coilover conversion?
 

Anyone have any experience with the rear Coilover conversion kit from techno toy tuning, or should I just buy springs and struts from racing beat and call it a day?

What are you running in the front?

The options I have looked at are a spring and shock setup, a spring with adjustable perches (to be able to adjust ride height) and shock, and something like the T3 design.

I am going to try a adjustable shock and spring setup. Ground Control offers some rear springs that are 200lb spring rate and have dead coils on it, So the spring can be cut to desired ride height.

https://groundcontrolstore.com/colle...-spring-200-lb

Right now I am running some cut rear RB springs and AGX adjustable shocks. But want to change it to Koni adjustable shocks and the Ground Control Eibach springs with all new OEM lower and upper trailing arms.

I seen people piece and build a coilover setup just like the T3 for less money.

I've been rebuilding my suspension with T3 parts but chose the GC Eibachs and Konis for the rear (replaced the new RB springs). The T3 rear coilovers look trick but the lower spring perch is just held onto the shock body with a "pinch" collar setup, not welded like a front strut assembly. And the shock makers (I think they use KYB) never intended for the shock body to bear that stress and weight. I like most of their products but I dont trust the rear coilovers they offer.

Everything’s stock atm just looking and planning for now

I personally wouldn’t go with t3 because it’s super expensive and BC coilovers makes a full coil over kit for the FB and is about 1k less

I wouldnt trust T3 either. Obvious zero r&d or forethought on some of their products.

I would just buy the kit from bc racing for 1k instead of paying 800 just for the back

Keep in mind the kits from BC and Ground Control require you to cut the bottom / spindle off your struts and weld it onto their front assembly. The T3 front parts are very expensive. But they are direct bolt on parts, not cut-n-weld pieces like BC or Ground Control. I guess it depends on how much you trust your local welder and powder coat companies. Remember to add those costs onto the parts prices.

Going off topic here by referring to front parts, but Ground Control and T3 front parts are installed the same way by cutting off the stock spring seat and welding theirs on. T3's look a little cleaner by having the spring seat hidden inside the threaded sleeve. Depending on the tools at hand the amount of work is almost as much as the BC setup.

The defunct RE-Speed is the only one I'm aware of that had a bolt on solution by having the threaded sleeve cut to match the stock spring seat, but I think 1 or 2 people had trouble with theirs sitting straight.

With T3 (SA/FB strut assemblies) you mail your struts to them and they cut the bottoms off and put them on wider tubes that take modern 2" (?) Strut cartridges. The difference is that they make the cuts and welds, and final powder coating. With BC or GC YOU have to weld the parts. I dont weld, and have gotten some bad welding and/or high prices lately, so I thought I'd throw it out there.

I forgot about those, but they also offer a weld on kit that's comparable in price to Ground Control's. T3's camber plates were less expensive so I went with their front set up.

Bear in mind the front stub axles on the FB are a weak point, regardless of the strut tubes you weld into them. Mazda used to sell a competition version with thicker stub and hubs with larger bearings no longer available.

The TCA ball joint and the steering rod end ball joint on the FB and the AE86 Corolla have the same tapers.

The AE86 stub axles etc. have been proven in competition.

The Ae86 steering arms are shorter than the FB and will therefore create a higher steering ratio with similar Ackerman.

AE86 competition struts are widely available for 40mm Bilstein inserts of various damping rates.

Are all of these just a plug and play type deal or do I need to weld for these too?

Also, this is a street car in my case, so would the RB suspension kit get me along just as well?

No fabrication needed. Instant upgrade to FB bits with easily-available Toyota Corolla AE86 bits. Read through my post again carefully.

Also, Corolla AE86 rear shocks fit the FB as well. Again, I use Bilsteins.

Alrighty thank you very much I will definitely look into that

This is interesting.

Do the AE86 components work just as well on SA's too? I know there's some suspension height difference between SA's and FB's although I don't recall what it is (maybe the front strut height?). Would whatever that difference is affect the swap in a significant way?

I'd do some research before trying to put Toyota parts on your car. I looked this up yesterday and all the info I could find was from RX7club, over the past 10 years, saying it wont work and isn't worth trying. Yes, the top of the AE86 ball joint will attach to our struts and is a better design. But it isn't a direct fit into our lower control arms, so you have to modify or get aftermarket. The AE86 struts are notably longer than either SA or FB struts, our dust shields and calipers aren't a direct bolt-on to the Toy struts, and they use a different bolt pattern on the strut top.

So, to make this work you basically would need to install a mostly Toyota front suspension on your RX7. Why? Also, our front stub axle looks identical to the AE86's and is attached/constructed the same way, so I'm not sure how the Toy's is any stronger. But parts are hard to find and the aftermarket is disappearing, so if any RX7 owners have swapped in parts and pieces, as direct swaps, I would love to see pics for my own learning.

Call Techno Toy Tuning - they make front suspensions for our early RX's and the AE86 Corollas. They could tell you exactly what will and wont fit/swap.

I know this is about rear but there is a lot here about using AE86 parts. I was looking through T3 today and noticed that T3 is apparently making AE86 front strut cases. https://technotoytuning.com/toyota/a...n-ae86-corolla

So, if these parts are more or less swappable this is exciting either as is or perhaps they would be the necessary changes to fit our cars.

T3 makes the same part for our SA's and FB's, with the correct dimensions and brake mounting points. Why would you buy their Corolla parts when they make RX7 parts?

They do? Would you mind posting the link? I didn't see the offering on their website; only the offering where you need to provide your old strut casings.

This is all I can find: https://technotoytuning.com/mazda/fb...-sa-and-fb-rx7

I appologize yeti, I didnt see that your link was for T3's new "evolved" AE86 coilovers. I was only familiar with their standard ones, that need you to send in your OE casings. I've gotten a lot of parts from them, including some custom links, and I bet they'd work with you on making "evolved" struts for your RX7. They seem to make everything to order (for FB's at least).

No problem. I was hoping you were correct, ha. I have emailed them after triple looking again for the "evolved" coilovers. I'll likely make a new post upon their response, if positive so I'm not longer stepping all over this one. Thank you.