low cost coilovers
 

ok well i have not roadraced before but i am looking to get into it with an FC. i have quite a bit of experience with autox though.

any way looking for a coilover set up in the 1000-1500 dollar range and im wondering what you guys have heard or experience with coilovers such as Kport, Stance, and the Tein HE/SS/Flex coilovers? or any other ones i dont know about.

or is this just a waste of my time and i should go with the GC/koni setup?

thanks-
carlos

i have the gc/koni setup on my ITS car, honostly, they dont have as much as all the high end stuff and i have to push much harder than the other guys, but they are still competative, and for the price you cant go wrong. However, for the street, there is no way i would run them, one city bump and your going to the chiropractor. Very, very stiff.

im not worried about city driving at all its going to be a full race car.

did you have to go with custom valving for the konis and what springrates do you run?

As with everything, it depends. The really sophisticated guys are running different spring rates for different tracks, along with multi-way adjustable dampers, etc. For the more budget limited (as well as skill limited in my case) it seems that a fairly common "basic" setup is running the GC kit with 400/275 f/r spring rates, the RB front sway bar, no bar in the rear and the Konis.

The Koni's work with the stock valving. The KYB AGX shocks/struts (which is what I run) are a cheaper alternative to the Koni's but won't handle too much more in terms of higher spring rates.

Suspension tuning is such a black art (and so driver dependent) that really the best way to approach it is to set some sort of baseline config (like the GC/koni/RB setup) and then get out on the track and see what work for you. Make some small changes and see how it impacts your times. Lather, rinse, repeat. ;)

Do you have a specific class/group that you are looking at running with? SCCA ITS is the obvious candidate, or one of the NASA groups.

Good luck,

-bill

if you price out the GC/koni with all the other little bits that go along with it, you'll find you come only a $100 or so away from a low end coil over kit; and the coil over kit is going to come with matched shocks and springs and probably be a whole lot better then putting something together yourself.
BTW, i dont think tein makes the HE anymore, its replaced by the SS damper.

I would recommend stance coilover system over GC with koni or kyb or tokico shocks setup.

ok yeah i dont know what tein makes and doesnt make any more. i have only heard good things about stance but they have only come from drag racers and thats a far cry from road racing. maybe ill just go with those any way.

im not sure what class i want to run, what ever the car qualifies for i guess. i just wana go fast :D. suggestions?

good to hear about the AGXs though because a car im looking at right now has those already.

Do a search of this forum and http://www.improvedtouring.com/ . This has been discussed quite often. One of the concerns with some of the lower end kits is that the dampers just don't last the duration of a race - their response changes as they heat up and they just can't take the abuse.

I am not familiar enough with the Stance products to comment on them. Some folks have commented that some of the Tein kits aren't up to the task of hard racing.

That's simple.

First spend your money on making sure the car is absolutely reliable and safe. Then spend your money on the driver. More seat time will get you faster, quicker than a lot of go-fast bolt on parts. As you get better, you can start realizing the limits of the car (this will take a while) and make incremental changes as you move forward.

True. Use what you got.

-bill

we ran an fc for years in nasa ps1, now ptd(ish)

the original setup was 300/225ish springs on agx shocks

and later we stepped up to the 450/300ish and koni setup that everyone else runs.

we thought then, and still think now, that the "jdm" coilover sets, like the tein, and the jic's are no good for an actual race car, as they cant be fixed, or rebuilt, and if you're seriously racing you'll need to do both

in addition theres no documentation on the japanese stuff, shock dyno? koni has em, and will revalve stuff for ya.

sounds like the koni/GC setup is what im going to be going with then... after i blow the AGXs that is. now i just need to find a place to get the GCs nice and cheap.

oh yeah the only heavy modification i plan to do on the car is a Vmount, which i am perfectly capable of building myself.

i do have a E8, t67, and meth injection sitting around from my last car but i think i need to learn to drive a low powered car before i step up to 400+ hp.

so im just going to get the GC/konis, all the little adjustible suspention tid bits the FC needs, and some enkei rpf1s with nice tires. i will leave the horsepower for later, although it is going to be hard resisting that turbo...

looks like i wont be getting real coil overs until i have the skills and money for em :D.

wait i just went though the ITS rules... sooo i have to use 16" wheels then huh?

new plan... get suspension stuff, get Rtek 2.0, and find a cheapo 16" wheel to race on. oh and the cage.

You'll want to read the IT rules slowly, read them again and then read them again. Seriously, read them 3 times with a highlighter in hand. You'll find new things each time you read them. I have read them several times as well as most other racers probably have. The rules specifically state a 16" wheel is not allowed for the 2nd Gen. You'll need to run a 15" wheel with 7" max width. Before you start wasting money on parts you can't legally run, read, read, read and ask questions.

I don't know much about the Rtek 2.0 but unless the ECU mods are done within the original OEM ECU housing it's not legal. There is a legal ECU mod from cludwig for the S5, he recently released it.

If you don't like the rules and want to build away, NASA is the way to go. You get points for your mods, total points determine class - Performance Touring A-F. Build to IT rules, run SCCA and you can also run NASA. Build away or build to NASA and you won't be running SCCA ITS.

yeah i read that about ECUs. the Rtek is still in the stock housing. damn 15"s....

yeah dont worry i will read though the rules quite a few more times before spending a single dollar. im used to it from fsae ;).

like i said i just want to race so i might as well go the cheap route in line with scca rules and get out there before worrying about any thing else.

I run 440 fronts and 300 rears with Tokico Illumina's and they hold pretty nice, haven't had a problem out of them, but you're right, they are WAY stiff for street driving (although that hasn't stopped me). :D

That is a nice thing about the Ground Control setup though, once you've got the kit installed, the Eibach ERS springs that they use are available in all kinds of strengths and lengths, so if you find you want your car a little more tail happy, you can bump up your rear spring rate - if you want less, you can bring it down.

One thing I will say, I don't know if they've changed it yet, but you DO want 2 inches of difference between the front springs and the rears, or the height adjustment aspect of the coilover is almost worthless. I think they ship with a 6" front spring and a 7" rear spring. To level the car out, I'm at the bottom of the fronts and at the top of the rears, otherwise the front will sit higher than the rear. So go with 6" front and 8" rears for a little shorter than stock ride height, or 5" front and 7" rears for even more of a drop, but keep 2" of difference in them so you can fine tune the front and rear heights the way you like it.

I just did a 3 day track weekend last month with Tein Flex's and they were very good. I got 7kg/mm front springs to replace the stock 6kg/mm ones, so I was running about 390/280 for spring rates, RB front bar and stock rear bar. The car pushed just a little, but with no rear bar I'd be having problems with understeer for sure. I've seen shock dynos of them and they're really quite good, at least as good as Konis, and they are rebuildable and revalveable in the US. They've also got adjustable shock bodies for going really low which is good. Lots and lots of guys with Miatas run them as dual a purpose coilover with great results.

They're good enough that a seasoned racer and instructor used my car to show a novice what good handling should feel like.

Sure they're not a racing coilover, but AGX's Illumina's and Yellows aren't racing shocks, so why does everyone think that the Teins must be crap and those must be great?

JIC, stance or silk road are way to go. getting a setup that is not engineered together is not very sophisticated in my opinion. my friend had a pair of tien's on his supra and they went to shit real quick. then again, i do have thier springs and i am fairly happy with them. just my 2 cents

You mentioned a V-mount - you do realize that there are no turobcharged cars allowed in SCCA IT Racing - NA only.

Still good for time trials or auto-x, just not door-2-door.

-bill

My opinion would be that getting a setup that allowed for changing springs to suit conditions would be MORE sophisticated than a setup that forces you to use only the springs that came with it.
There's nothing wrong with a nice matched coilover setup though, it definitely would make clearance less of an issue, and are apparently awesome for use with camber kits. If I could have gotten a brand new matched coilover setup for the same $650 I spent on my new Illumina/GC/Eibach ERS package and not something like DOUBLE that, I would have been all over it.

aww poop. o well nasa and auto-x it is then...

Time to buy a rule book. Any kind of racing will have rules regarding suspension upgrades, just as they do with turbo charging.

yeah i know i try and go though the rules posted online quite a few times before spending any more money.

uh the replacement springs for coilovers are avail through alot of aftermarket companies

Sweet, now all you've got to do is compensate for the $600 difference in price. :D

True, except with konis, you get the added comfort of knowing you have a damper with decent valving. For a race application, I would stick with koni, bilstein, ohlins, etc.

There's an excellent thread on the miata.net forum where there's tons of shock dynos of the Tein Flex, and while I'm no expert, they look pretty darned good to me, and they'll revalve them to suit your application. New springs are available for $50 each and are available in tons of rates and lengths, so you can customise it to your heart's content. Some of the members over there have well in excess of 30k miles on theirs with no issues. There's almost never any reports of issues with them and they've got good customer service and support. That cannot be said about JIC's and they've been known to die very rapidly.

Price out Yellows, GC coilovers, camber plates and rear solid mounts and you're in the same sort ot price range as the Flex.