Coilover decisions help!
 

Im ready to purchase some coilovers for the TII thats good between street driving and ready for the Track. Although my initial thought was going to be Ksports Pros, i had looked at some Stance coilovers and they seem to be engineered towards drifting, with that really high 9k/7k spring rate and beefy coil. I have felt Teins and they are great even had them on my S14, but what about silk road coilovers or Zeal Functions? Any thoughts? I just need some input before i buy, search doesnt help much with my decisions.

- Josh

I bought TEIN flex's and from what I hear, they're pretty good for track as well as street. Still yet to install them, but once I do, I'll post the results here.

For street/track use, the majority on here seem to use tein Flex. It's probably what i'll end up with too seeing as how so many people applaud them on here.

There is no such thing as a C/O that will be good for street and track. Doesn't exist. Dampening and spring requirements are way to different.

I would say that Stance (who I've spoken with repeatedly) are more geared towards street and auto-x type stuff. Thier rates are much lower and while they wouldn't really go into detail about thier shock dampening, they impressed me compared to the other companies that I spoke with.

The problem with asking about suspension is that you are getting purely subjective answers and you have absolutely no idea how to take them. Tiens for example, while I've personally never driven in a Tien Prepped FC I've read everything from, "They are the best thing I ever did to my FC," to "These things suck worse than a $.5 whore!" It's going to differ from manufacturer to specific taste to overall car setup etc etc etc. How many people that have teins really did the research instead of just jumping the band wagan? What are they comparing them to? A real race suspension or blown 20yo shocks and springs?
EDIT***CASE & POINT IS THE POST ABOVE!

The best suggestion I could give you would be -
start hanging out at whatever track you expect to be playing at and start begging for rides. What you like is what you should duplicate.

according to everyone here, unless you are serriously tracking the car, and corner weighting the car, coils are usless.

So far +2 on the Teins
and plus +1 on the Stances

Gearing towards Track more than street..but not so much that its completly unstreetable.

I know what you mean TitaniumTT thanks for reminding me, Actually this past summer was my time to do some seat time, and i was able to do some runs in various other cars, which still doesnt give me a great idea of what to expect with the FC chassy. STIs will deffinatly react different with a set of coilovers as opposed with the same set on the FC. (im a retard stating the obvious) And i dont see many FCs at the track around here, so its hard to bumb a ride on a specific sort of car.

I am however getting information based of others personal experience good or bad, because they do contribute and both sides make great points as there is no perfect set of coilovers. Only perfect to my own driving style. The other reason why im asking is that i do not want to make the same mistake i did with other previous cars i own. Purchasing different coilovers to fit my needs without asking for help.

Drftwerks yeah i read some of your threads too, yes this is a track car, just tryin to put down some decent lap times. I hope to compete in the primedia timeattack 2wd limited in the near not so distant future.

yeah well the bandwagon isn't such a bad thing all the time :)
and I know tein flex's aren't the golden child do all coilover, but my car is a street car that may see a HPDE or autocross every once in a while, so you also have to be realistic about what you're using the car for. Whenever i see someone post about wanting a street/track coilover, i kind of disregard the track part because most aren't going to use them on the track, and the ones who do, go to the racing forum :)

prob best to get some coils and get them custom valved to your own spring rates

^ & ^^

That's why I was impressed with Stance
Here's my conversation with Stance - paraphrased of course/
What rate do you offer?
8/6 is standard.
What if I want something a little softer or stiffer?
we sell all different spring rates
What if I think the valving is too stiff?
Send them back and we can revalve them to your specs for a fee
What if I have a problem with the Pillowballs?
You won't, we've fixed that.
What if blah blah blah
We can take car of that

Here's my conversation with Tien and Meagan and one other- paraphrased of course/
What rate do you offer?
9/7 & up
What if I want something a little softer or stiffer?
You should buy a new C/O set from us as everything is matched
What if I think the valving is too stiff?
Everything is matched
What if I have a problem with the Pillowballs?
The wha?????
What if blah blah blah
SOL

& unless you are corner weighting your car, you've stiffened everything else up, replaced all the bushings, and are able to adjust the camber in the rear, C/O's really aren't needed. And if you want to get real serious and you really know your shit about shocks and springs and valving, Call Tony Woodford and find out where his nearest "distributor" is and give them a call. Most likely you will be talking to a professional race shop. Mention C/O's and they'll prob laugh at you and with good reason. Most C/O's are marginal at best - but can you affor $2,000+ for a real suspension? Would you know what to do with something like that?

I have the Stance's on my car and I am very happy with them. However this is a track only car but is driven to and from the track.

They are fine on smooth highways but horrible on bumpy roads. In my teen years I would have found them acceptable but now I would not want them on my daily driver.

I have driven Subaru WRX's and STi's with the TEIN Flex coilovers and thought it was a good product for street and track. I have driven a couple thousand miles to events with those on the car + 2 passengers, Gear and 4 Tires on a Tire Tail.

Unless you are very serious about Track or AutoX then coilovers are not worth the expense. I drove for a long time with Koni / Tokico struts and Racing Beat progressive rate springs. Excellent setup for the street and still alot of fun at the track. The KSport or Megan Racing Coilovers will be about the same cost as Progressive Springs and Koni's but are not going to ride near as well on the street and will not be much faster on the track.

There's no such thing as engineered for drifting. Yes, there are good products that aim to that market, but a good drift setup is nearly the same as a good grip setup, and if the track is immaculate that's going to be along the lines of a rock-hard spring rate. People that intentionally try to set up their car to drift on its own make a stiff rear end and a soft front, but a car like that handles like crap and is practically impossible to control, putting a lot of Fast&Furious3 lovers into guardrails and light poles.

oh yeah forgot to mention..i am able to pay up to 2k on coilovers on top of rear camber kit, 10pt rollbar, completed with all bushings and collars replaced including subframe

optional to poly foam fill chassy and or seam weild

some guys on ZT are talking with KW for some coils for FC

and since when is anything dealing with our cars WORTH the expense, its a fucking hobby, cmon guys stop bieng so serious

oh nice, about the coils

some people do need to loosen up, yet at the same time i would require a level of seriousness in this thread, as this is dealing with a lot of money, and getting good advice is of great importance. Its almost an investment by the goals i am trying to achieve. So far i havent read anything wrong or misleading in this thread.

You sound determined for a track car that is only streetable for the drive over. If you're getting that serious, you should consider stripping out your interior, drop the rear tank and replace it with a fuel cell so you can reliably run less gas, replace the rear window with acrylic, and anything else you can do to lighten the load. You'll be mostly just offsetting everything you've added on to stiffen the frame, but weight reduction is the single best upgrade you can perform.

Icemark did a nice writeup on foam-filling the chassis and errors to watch out for.
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generation-specific-1986-1992-17/those-think-i-dont-make-mistakes-those-know-better-foaming-frame-329353/

Stance.

If you're really serious, custom Koni/GC is the cheapest way to a race coilover. That is, custom revalved independent double adjustable Koni shocks mated to matching springs from the Ground Control Coilovers. Cheapest I got that setup down to was $2900. If you just want to revalve and don't care for compression adjustment, it runs $1900.

I'll chime in to cheer for the Tein Flex's. I use them on my FC, my dad uses them on his Miata and about half of all those with aftermarket suspensions in the local autocross club use them. I've got copies of a number of shock dynos of them and they test really quite well, expecially considering the cost. They're proven to be durable with many, many street miles driven on them by many owners. So I based my purchase decision on others experiances, my experiance in other cars, testing data, proven reliability and a decent price.

As a correction to what TitaniumTT said, they do sell lots of different springs of different rates ($100/pair) and they will revalve your dampers to any specs you want at their North American facility. Personally I upped the front spring rates by 1kg/mm to give rates of 7/5 to give better stability for track events. This is plenty stiff for track use and is still decently civil on the street. This is about where most ITS racers are in terms of spring rates.

I've driven on them for a summer including 3 days at the track and some ~8 hour drives and I'm very pleased with them. At the track day our instructor friend used my car to show another friend what good handling feels like and was quite complimentary of them.

Remember stiffer doesn't equal better. Sometimes it is, but not always, at 7/5 the rates are already more than 3x as stiff in front and just under 3x as stiff in the rear compared to stock, that's a huge jump up in stiffness.

Also, many companies don't have North American facilities and if you want a re-valve (if it's even available) or even just a rebuild then you may have to ship them overseas at much greater expense and with a much longer turnaround time.

Not necessarily a correction - you can't really correct the conversation that I had with Tein. Maybe your experience was different, I hope it was. Same thing happened to me when I called Haltech - I ended up with an $85 phonecall to AU because the guy in NA was incompetent; this was before Matt's time in NA before anyone starts a flame war (infact most of the $85 was spent talking directly with Matt). I'm glad that your experience with Tien was different, trully I am becuase you have thier product. Personally I wouldn't deal with them ever again. I'm going to go with the Stance and will purchase a few different spring rates right off the bat.

I looked into the revalved Bilstiens/Koni's, AWR tubes, coils & plates, & Eibach springs. would run me about $1700 w/o any dampening adjustability. I outgrew the stock, I outgrew the Tockico/Eibach setup - the next LOGICAL choice to me is an entry level c/o - Stance. After I outgrow the Stance (assuming I can) I'll go with an adjustable race shock and C/O setup which will probably cost me well into the $2,000 range. I don't expect this to happen for some time though even @ 400WHP levels.

I am pretty excited about the "powered by max" coil overs. I am waiting for the winter season to finish, and I think I am going to snag a pair of those. From what I hear though, they are a little too stiff but, I will be using it for drifting so I dont think I will mind.

Well a correction to the incorrect information that was posted. It doesn't really matter who said what, the fact is that they do rebuilds, revalves and they sell other springs, it's all up on their website.

what's best for drifting?

ohhhh noooo heeee didnt!

ohhhhhh yesssss heeee did!!!!!

I highly recommend Silkroad.
A bit pricey but the quality is superb.
Driftfactory.com can get these shipped from Japan
to your door in less than a week!
Custom spring rates at no additional charge.