I have been running Tein S-tech's with the stock touring shocks for about a year. The s-techs are too low for my daily driving, so I figure I might as well replace my 13yr old shocks now that I am doing my springs. I can do either:

eibach pro kit and koni yellows - eibach says the drop is 1in, which is .4in higher than the s-techs up front. $755 at shox.com. Thing is, I'm afraid .4in might not be enough of a height increase, although it might be fine.

or for a little more:

stance/apex exc/megan coilovers. I know at least the megans are under $1k (I don't want to go over $1k), I think the others are around there. But the 2 things that concern me with these are:

1. I am not sure how long these more inexpensive coilovers will last compared to Koni yellows. What do you think?

2. They all seem to have even spring rates front and back. A friend has the Apex's and says the 620lb spring rates aren't bad at all for daily driving because the damping is good. But they all have equal spring rates front and back? 12k/12k. Does anyone offer different spring rates? I have enough oversteer already...

This car is daily driven with the occasional auto-x (as in 2-3 a year) and am planning on doing the occasional track day. Daily driving is the priority. I'm afraid if I go with the eibach/konis that in the future I will wish I had just spent a little more to get the coilovers, especially if I need a little more ground clearance. But the equal spring rates of the coilovers are perplexing me as well... help.

Thanks in advance.

 

Ty;er (Rynberg) Has lectured me about this before. He asked me,"Why do you want coilovers? I really couldn't find him a great answer other than they were cool. For autox, koni shocks, upgraded springs (I'd go with swift), upgraded sway bars (I'd go with swift here too!), and you can have a great handling FD. I remember an article out of one of my Young Version magazines (Japanese auto mag by Nobuteru Taniguchi), a swift springs w/swift sway bars, and upgraded shocks FD compared to the same Fd with A`PEX-i coilovers (don't remember which model). They did a lap time test, and the swift springs equipped car was only 4 seconds slower. To me, that is not a lot of difference for a springs to coil comparison. It's all up to what you need, and it seems you don't need coilovers. Just my 2 cents. Take a lot of consideration to your budget, and you needs. I f you want coils, wait, and get something more worth spending a lot of money for. Don't settle.


-Jeff

 

Thanks for the advice, I haven't heard of "swift". I'll have to check them out.

Damon and Howard Coleman helped me out via PM's. Damon reminded me that if the eibach's/konis turned out to be too low I could just use a lower perch setting with the konis and my stock springs that I still have. And Howard suggested that the spring rates on my S-techs were close to ideal and I should have a space made to add the proper amount of ride height to my springs.

Very sound advice and will use one method or the other. Glad I can avoid the coilovers, I am definitely not hardcore enough of a racer to take advantage of them. And Howard did state that equal spring rates are insanity, I don't know why all these coilover companies are offering them as such for non-drifting applications.

 

Not that what I'm going to say has anything to do with you and I, but Feed's time attack car uses 18/18 on their track car, and RE amemiya's Touge Monster uses 16 front/18 rear.

-Jeff