ep3_lol

iTrader: (1)

Hey all,

I've got an '84 SE that I am trying to turn into a track toy. Currently, I know the front shocks are blown. I don't know what else is messed up, so I am planning on replacing at least the springs and shocks and perhaps the swaybars as well. Where can I find some good information about shock/spring combos for this car? It seems to me the most prominent shock is the Tokico, but I'm under the impression that these are just rebranded Taiwanese bits in the same vein as the other cheap coilover packages out there. I am going to abuse this suspension, it needs to be competition grade stuff.

Does anyone know a good place to look up this type of information, or have any experience with track setups they could tell me about?

I have had good experience with Koni Reds on another FB, but I have no idea what springs were on the car and I would like to get something fully adjustable with the ability to go very stiff.

rwatson5651

iTrader: (5)

Visit this website:

http://www.gforceengineering.net/index.html

G Force engineering was ran by a man named Jim Susko. I say was because he recently went out of business. He has a reputation for willingly giving advice and information about suspensions. He is VERRY knowledgable. If you can get the contact info from the website and give him a call he may be helpfull.

Another good source of info / products is ReSpeed. Their upgrades are top notch and their customer support is as well, I have seen them go to extremes to help customers.

2cts.....

Rotospeed

iTrader: (8)

if you just want good springs /shocks/ sway bars you can race with, Racing beat has good stuff... if you want coilovers for adjustability you want Re-speed. if you go with RE-speed you will be glad you did.

ep3_lol

iTrader: (1)

Not looking to convert the rear to a coilover setup, I want something that will bolt right in. I poked around Tokico's website, and they specify that they make all their own OEM parts, but nothing about the sportier stuff. Can anyone confirm where they get the Blues and Illuminas?

dantheman

iTrader: (4)

Respeed and Racing Beat both sell either.

85rotarypower

I vote for RE-Speed, they are a really great company. Excellent quality products and amazing customer service. I dealt with Billy when he was still running things, but I understand its still just as good there. I had a bit of an issue with my camber plates mating to the tokico blue struts I had and Billy had an answer to all my questions and very quickly too.

As far as actually upgrading for track use, I would highly suggest the front coil over setup and just some standard rear springs and shocks, of course upgraded. Having the front coil overs gives you a decent amount of adjustability in the front end and you can get virtually any spring rate you want. Rear is a little harder but from my understanding, you want to keep the rear a little softer than you expect anyway to help with snap oversteer when using the stock watts linkage and 4 link style mounting. These are only suggestions though and I would take it pretty lightly as I never did run my 82 that had this equipment on it on the track, but it felt real good on the road. Very stable.

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

You obviously need to research more. If you aren't familiar with RE-speed you aren't trying because they basically own the market on quality FB suspension at a reasonable price and their products have been discussed to death. All of RE-speeds offerings bolt right in and they have "coilover style" adjustable rear springs.

As for the shocks, tokico are "real" shocks, but are very low in the world of performance shocks. As a matter of fact, a "serious" shock for the FB that is bolt-in does not exist.

Konis are generally considered a step above tokicos but koni does not make any of their nicer stuff for an FB, and even those nicer offerings are outclassed by bilstein, who does not make FB shocks anymore. Beyond that you get into the likes of ohlins and xida which were never offered.

Bottom line is, when you say you need SERIOUS competition grade stuff, my mind switches to $5000 coilover kits or at least revalved bilsteins which were never offered for our car.

The konis and tokicos DO perform well however.

ep3_lol

iTrader: (1)

This is really what I was looking for right here.

I saw "rear coil-over kit" on the Re-Speed site and assumed it was some sort of conversion, didn't bother to read the product's page. Now that I read the page, some of the replies in this thread are making more sense So, with that adjustability, could you theoretically dial the spring in to match a shock, or is there still an ideal shock that goes with them?

Forgive my new-ness here. The last car I researched suspensions on was a 986 Boxster. Much easier to find that info on a newer car and most of the product available for it was complete coilover kits. But the fact that I'd have to spend more on a decent coilover kit for that thing than I did on my FB led me to a more disposable track car haha.

ourxseven

iTrader: (1)

There are several track experiences written up on the forum for the Respeed setups

maybe have a search for Kenetsu ( or pm him) who has quite a few race comments to share

Kentetsu

Looks like I'm late to the party. Sorry, moved the car into the garage this weekend to start a winter teardown/refresh.

Gforce is an old name in this game, and made some great stuff. Currently going out of the fb business though from what I understand. No forum support.

www.re-speed.com is the place I support wholeheartedly. Billy held my hand through my entire build, and Sam (current owner) and I have raced together for a few years and assisted each other many times. Great guy. Everything they have is top notch, but most importantly Respeed is a forum member and listens to our needs and requests.

Racing Beat: good entry level stuff, but not for the serious. I bought their entire setup as my first upgrade, but was disappointed within weeks. A nice ride for the daily driver who likes to get slightly adventerous on the back roads. No forum support.

Since you are building a track car, rather than an autocrosser/daily driver like me, there will be a few differences between our setups, but not much. Mainly damping and spring rates, but all other equipment will apply. Forum member Mikerc (or something like that) has built up a great track car, so he may be able to advise on specific spring rates. There are several other highly active racing members around too, all of whom are happy to help. I would suggest you check out the racing section when you get a chance, and look for MustangHammer and the rest of the bunch.

Feel free to let me know if I can help in any way.






.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

i just had mine out at the track, and it would go thru turns faster that i thought! its easy to drive too.

my setup is the old Pro7 kit, which is really similar to Kenetsu has.

springs are 350f/175r, the "race" or Mr2 tokico in front, rx7 ones in the rear. big ground control front sway bar, no rear bar. camber plates and that's basically it....

eprx799

iTrader: (8)

I am using Ground control camberplates and coilovers with 400# fr and 200# rear Eibach springs and a RE-Speed front bar. Also I am using Advance Design adjustable shocks fr/rr. The rear end is swaped out for G-Force Eng. Tri link and Panhard bar . This gives the car lots of adjustablity. I autox on this set up for 8-10 years and am now doing HPDE's with NASA and am going to move into TT this season. The car is very predictable with a slight bit of over steer. The autox set up runs on Goodyear slicks and the track setup is on Yokohoma Advan Neova AD08's.

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

It's just easier to really talk about your options if you're familiar with the de-facto standard of what's available. Not a big deal, just a question that us old "heads" see asked every week and we get tired of answering.

Now for something a bit more discussion worthy: The adjust-ability of the "coilover" kit has nothing to do with the relationship between your spring and shock (Ok so it may preload some, but work with me here guys). You are simply adjusting how high the spring rides on the collar which changes the ride height. That is it, monster truck, or low rider. Up or down. Where this helps the racer is in corner weighting. You get your car on a 4 wheel scale and you can dial in your coilovers till all 4 tires share equal weight.

The relation of the shock to the spring is in the valving. Adjustable shocks change the internal valving within a certain range and thus can accommodate for spring changes or general tweaking.

Personally I'm a fan of getting a nice quality damper like bilstein and having it custom valved to whatever spring I plan on running. My plan for my 7 is to swap to an FC front subframe, run FC bilsteins up front, and some how cheat and steal to find some rears, and have the whole set re-valved.

I have NO idea if that would conform to any race rules however.

Kentetsu

Another benefit to coilover adjustment is ride height and its effect on handling. If you get to the right height, then the car becomes very nuetral and balanced, and the suspension hardly has to move much at all. The car is perfectly flat through the corners.

The rear end of these cars are well known for binding at extreme movement ranges, causing "snap oversteer". I addressed this through ride height, swaybars, etc. In my opinion, I have been very successful with this approach.

The other option is the Trilink/panhard. Most will swear that this is the only way to go, and most true racers have this. I might get around to installing mine someday, but first I want to see what's possible with the stock Watts Link setup. So far, so good.

ep3_lol

iTrader: (1)

I see, this makes sense. I'm no engineer, for some reason I was thinking shorter spring = harder to compress. But it really just makes for less travel, correct?

Kentetsu

lol, sort of...

Two separate equations here to deal with:

1. Spring length
2. Spring rate

Spring length is obvious. Spring rate simply means that a 12" spring can have any rate, whether 100 Lb. per inch of travel or 400 Lbs. So it's not really a simple equation. Things like spring diameter and the thickness or even type of wire used to make the spring will effect the spring rate. Spring rates are determined by how many pounds of force it takes to compress the spring one inch.

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

While I seem to remember physics having something to do with a shorter spring being stiffer, when you buy your suspension pieces you're not messing with that. If you buy a 100 inch long 400lb spring, vs a 5 inch long 400lb spring, they will both be the same stiffness, the manufacturer does whatever needs to be done to equalize strength vs. length.

^that's the idea at least. You buy springs based on how long of a spring you physically need, then buy poundage for how you need your suspension to behave. GENERALLY if you can control it, longer springs are better because you can get more suspension travel before coil bind (touching each other). On my turbo miata some kits came with 6 inch springs, but the real gangsta's put 8 inch springs in and fixed one of the worst things about miata suspension: short travel.

mustanghammer

iTrader: (3)

A couple of thoughts on shocks and struts for first gen rx7's.

First you have allot of choices for the rear if you are willing to think out of the box. For example, you can use 79-93 Mustang shocks on the back of an RX7 with no issues - they bolt on. And trust me, they make a shyt ton of shock options for Mustangs.

For the front the limiting factor is the diameter of the OE strut tube. But you can fix this if you have access to a lathe. The trick is to replace the stock tubes with 2" diameter tubes. This gives you the ability to run Koni race struts that come in single and double adjustable options.

Here are the struts I run in my RX7 racecar. Will post up more this weekend.



All that said, tokico Illumina's are pretty damn good in an RX7. I had a set on my racecar and they were very good.

High_Carb_Diet

AE86 Coil overs are an option.
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generation-specific-1979-1985-18/front-rear-coilovers-possible-975939/

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

yes, but the rear is easy, its just a normal shock, and 5" spring (i think). the 5" spring is circle track/nascar stuff, and bilstein/koni/etc makes normal sized shocks, so its simple and cheap if you're looking in the right catalog.....

Slammed_GSL

iTrader: (14)

G Force is going out of bussiness....fyi.