Coilovers

[mitchy_]

as i said before... i had teins in my 33 with 10kgmm front, 8kgmm rear.. and they were horrible..

exactly like JBird said.. couldn't put any power to the ground when there was bumps, as it just skipped and jolted all over the place

i dont know how 10/10 can be fine for the street, when 10/8 were no where near streetable, people who drove behind me said they could SEE my car skipping.

[Sydneykid]

Well, this thread got interesting.

Most points have been answered.

Why do Japs use massive spring rates in Time Attack - good question.

The first point - do they use larger sway bars?? No.

They should. But they don't. It is simply not technology they are familiar with in Japan. They are also expensive to make in Japan (look at labour costs in Japan).

They instead use spring rates to fix every problem - roll, dive and squat... and that's not how to do it.

The simple fact is that semi's hate anything more than 7kg. Over that, and the tyre is working outside its perferred range (so are most shocks), and is giving you its life. It will voerheat quicker, and you will slower at the end of sessions...

Most people will go faster on softer springs, rather than "sick uleh" coilovers

As for adjustable coilovers - I laugh. You can't adjust spring rates firstly, but I think the percentage of the population who actually know what they are doing when they adjust them is about 1%

Son of Sydneykid

[R DIRTY 3]

Well, this thread got interesting.

Most points have been answered.

Why do Japs use massive spring rates in Time Attack - good question.

The first point - do they use larger sway bars?? No.

They should. But they don't. It is simply not technology they are familiar with in Japan. They are also expensive to make in Japan (look at labour costs in Japan).

They instead use spring rates to fix every problem - roll, dive and squat... and that's not how to do it.

The simple fact is that semi's hate anything more than 7kg. Over that, and the tyre is working outside its perferred range (so are most shocks), and is giving you its life. It will voerheat quicker, and you will slower at the end of sessions...

Most people will go faster on softer springs, rather than "sick uleh" coilovers

As for adjustable coilovers - I laugh. You can't adjust spring rates firstly, but I think the percentage of the population who actually know what they are doing when they adjust them is about 1%

Son of Sydneykid

HAHAHA yeah ok. So in your personal opinion, Japan and its manufacturers are behind in the technology area? Yeah right..i see. I have a question for you:

If the Bilstein kits that are developed are absolutely the best thing the world has seen, why do they not do that number of sales in Japan?

Also, over 7kg the tyre is "outside its prefered range"? Well that would depend on what tyre it is yeah? (side wall strength, pressure, compund, temp?)

I am in agreeance completly that stronger springs, or excessively stong" springs cause a negative handling effect, but why do you bag out every single kit on the market that is not your own developed Bilstein kit? Bilsteins are a fantastic shock absorber. They are definately up there in quality and they work...but i can say from first hand experience that the Super Street Teins give my car a much faster lap time.

The adjustments on the Tein are simple...16 clicks that adjusts both bump and rebound at the same time. So, if it is cold or wet etc, i can simply soften the suspension to suit. If the day is warm, track temp is up etc, a firmer suspension will definately benefit. Its beyond me why you continue to knock adjustable shock absorbers? Is it because Bilstein dont do a cost effective Adjustable Shock? Just curious.

Thats my 2 cents.

[R DIRTY 3]

I say compare your setup to someone in the WA who has installed SK's suspension package. If you think having good suspension is as easy as fiddling around with a little nob you are sadly mistaken...the fact of the matter is TEIN's are not suited for street use, and why would you want a ONE TRICK PONY. <that probably does not directly relate to you because you stated your car is a circuit car but please do not recommend it for street use>

James

I have. The result was not in favour to the group buy. 2 different venuse were used. Our Wanneroo race way and a skid pan for motorkhana style tight turns etc. Both locations, Teins were faster. Also, this includes a semi professional driver, and he was unaware of what changes were being made.

And before its bought up, set other than that was the same (alignment settings, tyres, pressures etc) and from memory i think the temp differece between the 2 days was around 5 degrees.

[Sydneykid]

I have. The result was not in favour to the group buy. 2 different venuse were used. Our Wanneroo race way and a skid pan for motorkhana style tight turns etc. Both locations, Teins were faster. Also, this includes a semi professional driver, and he was unaware of what changes were being made.

And before its bought up, set other than that was the same (alignment settings, tyres, pressures etc) and from memory i think the temp differece between the 2 days was around 5 degrees.

Who's kit?

So I know exactly what was in the kit.

Every kit is individualised, some want a road based package, some a more track friendly... Its not just a "one size fits all" thing. We use varying spring rates and varying shock rates. I keep a database too, every single kit sold, I know what they got. If its a road package, then you are comparing apples to oranges. If it is a road and track kit, then what were the spring rates? Car height? Car?

No japanese coilover kit has a matched spring to shock combination - think I'm wrong? If they have 24 points of adjustment, how can every one of them be engineered specifically to the spring rate? And when the car is oversteering like a pig, do you just soften the rear shocks off?? Because if the spring rate is 10kgs, then it doesn't make any difference. The shocks adjustments don't change the incorrect spring rates.

I don't bag out every kit that we don't sell. I happily endorse a number of products, and people who have asked, I will tell them the other brand names I endorse. No. There's a thread for shock info, called shock absorber 101, read it.

That should do for now, someone else can answer what I didn't. Maybe someone who had a set of jap shocks, then sold them and bought something better??

[r33_racer]

teins to bilsteins here....with matched spring rates for both semi slicks and full slicks. A massive improvement was found in times straight off.

[bryno]

Ive got some HKS hypermax II and they are pretty damn stiff (dont know what the spring rates are though). Can be hard to control on really average surfaces.. getting some good squeaks now too.

Edited November 29, 2007 by brynj

[beersandwich]

lol at jdm fan boys saying japs are best never done anything wrong in their lives and saying other wise is blasphemy!

omg!

oh and if the adjustable shocks are the best in the world, why do fulcrum change the spring rate and re valve the shocks to suit? i thought thats what the nobs for right? (of the teins. however there are some very good coil over units out there - which cost alot more too)

[dangerous_daveo]

Well I have had 3 set ups. First one was just WAY too stiff. And WAY too stiff is still softer than 10kg springs. They were the shocks that came in the car when I got it, were kei office. Keep in mind too, my car being a cef has mcpherson struts, and can handle a bit harder spring, just the way it all works.

Anyway, 2 of those 3 set ups were using the exact same springs with no other changes other than going from a custom made shock (made by what was a reputable suspension shop (not a franchise) which was made to suit the car, spring, swaybars, aust roads etc) to a SK bilstein. I can tell you now, by FAR the bilsteins are the better shock. Its more so the little things. I mean you can hit a cats eye on the road and its smooth. This is with the EXACT same wheel alinement etc as the previous custom made shocks, with the EXACT same springs. It seriously is light and day.

Where I think lap times might be dropping could be partly #1 practise, #2 with practise you feel more confident, #3 you really just arent pushing that hard to notice how much better it could be. That or you are so damn good you could go round just as fast with solid steel struts.

But hey, your money. I know where I would have rathered of spent my money once.

[Kaido_RR]

lol at jdm fan boys saying japs are best never done anything wrong in their lives and saying other wise is blasphemy!

omg!

oh and if the adjustable shocks are the best in the world, why do fulcrum change the spring rate and re valve the shocks to suit? i thought thats what the nobs for right? (of the teins. however there are some very good coil over units out there - which cost alot more too)

i don't think its being a jdm fan boy as such....

i think it comes down to personal opinion, preference and car setup. what works for one person doesn't work for everyone. i personal don't think there is anything wrong with Japaneses spec suspension and suspension components.

and i wouldn't call my Tein Type RS a cheap coilovers

Edited November 29, 2007 by [Michael]

[JBird]

Ive got some HKS hypermax II and they are pretty damn stiff (dont know what the spring rates are though). Can be hard to control on really average surfaces.. getting some good squeaks now too.

Have you gotten the crack in the middle of the dashboard and windscreen yet? To be frank Sydney roads are shit

BTW the Mines R34 GTR runs shocks designed and built in the UK...they then stuck 10kg/mm springs on it.

Michael is right though, it does come down to preference. I find having too high a spring rate makes the car hard to drive particularly in the twisties which tend to have quite a few undulations...it might not necessarily be slower but it feels more dangerous/unstable - couple that with street tyres and the car feels unco.

[BHDave]

lol at jdm fan boys saying japs are best never done anything wrong in their lives and saying other wise is blasphemy!

omg!

oh and if the adjustable shocks are the best in the world, why do fulcrum change the spring rate and re valve the shocks to suit? i thought thats what the nobs for right? (of the teins. however there are some very good coil over units out there - which cost alot more too)

I have to ask, which line of coilovers gets the spring rates changed? I ask because i bought a set of local superstreets and they had the same spring rates as their japanese counterparts. I beleive they revalve, but this then raises the question of why? Is it that far wrong on the japanese version considering the spring rates are the same?

There are different levels of japanese coilovers, i agree. The RA's that michael has are a very good unit with a very good damper. You can argue that the spring rates are high, and i will probably agree. I don't know that a skyline with 10kg/mm fronts could brake well into turn 10 at wakefield with all the ripples in the braking zone. But it's getting resheeted next month so that should improve....

But on the other hand i know that Racepace likes to play with the RA's and they set up a few of the quick Victorians cars...

At the end of the day, there's more than one way to skin a cat. SK likes to do it one way. It's the Colin Chapman school of thought isn't it? The japanese guys like to do it another, i assume because their tracks are in better condition than ours otherwise they would have to approach it differently. There are a few members on this forum who regularly do track work who persist with higher spring rates and haven't joined the arguement. I'd be interested to hear their thoughts and experiences.

[JBird]

Like I said, Tsuchiya can make a 10kg/mm 12kg/mm etc. spring rate-ed car go fast through touge (watch any hot version, BMI) but watch how he has to fight the wheel. It would make driving the car a chore.

I prefer a car thats fast and "easy" to drive, and still have some level of day to day comfortability

[Sydneykid]

SOSK covered the concepts pretty well, so I will try and explain some things a little deeper.

1. The Japanese don't have our history of swaybar upgrades, so they are more inclined to use springs to achieve the result

2. Japanese mechanics charge like brain surgeons, hourly rates of $500 are considered cheap. So they try and do everything in one installation, taking a coil over kit out of a box and bolting it in is way cheaper than doing springs, shocks, bars and a full suspension alignment.

3. Wheel alignment is expensive (refer #2), so is often left off the list. You can't see what you get, no shiny boxes to show off. That may sound harsh, but brand name showing off is prevalent, a symptom being the shopping lists seen on the side of cars.

4. Changing suspension geometry is quite alien, and requires a skill level and experience that the typical Japanese mechanic simply doesn't have. They don't teach suspension geometry in automotive mechanics courses.

5..Japanese aftermarket suppliers tailor their products to the market, what the market wants the market gets. They don't try and educate the market, they simply make and sell what everyone expects. Here we tend to follow the European process and educate the buyer so that they can then make an informed decision.

6. Keeping #5 in mind, the Japanese market expects that to have a good handling car, it must be firm. Firmer means better handling, rock solid means that's the best handling they can get.

7. Their roads are, in general, better (smoother) than ours, but not as much as some people would have you believe. But their race tracks are unbelievably smooth, especially the newer ones, they are billiard tables. Japanese race drivers tend to not use the ripple strips, they drive between the lines. Notice how most Japanese professional race teams have at least one European or Australian driver and they do the qualifying. They value their analytical skills and feel for what the car is doing and what it needs ot go faster.

8. The concept of DIY is not strong in Japan, they prefer to get in an expert to do the job. Whereas fitting bars is pretty much a DIY job for an Ozzie.

Add it all up and you can see that their whole philosophy of suspension upgrades is quite different to ours. We have much lower labour rates, so a quick bolt on solution is not necessary. We do a lot of DIY, so bars are a great value for money handling upgrade, in fact almost every single suspension expert will tell you that bars are the best value for money handling upgrade you can make.

I will finish up with this (you may have read it before) I did this for a magazine article some time ago, the editor hated it because it showed a lot of his advertisers in a bad light. The idea was to take a $1600 coil over kit (not for a Skyline) and break its retail price content down to show what you get for your $400 for each corner. Then I compare it to a Bilstein, Koni, Whiteline, Kings, combination for $400 per corner;

Coil over kit retail price breakdown;

Strut top $60

Bump stop $15

Dust cover $8

Upper spring seat $20

Lower spring seat $15

Threaded sleave/case $30

Spring $80

Shock $172

Total $400

Bilstein, Koni, Whiteline, Kings;

Bump stop $15

Dust cover $8

Spring $80

Shock $297

Total $400

It's easy to see that you get a 75% superior shock value ($172 compared to $297). The cost in a shock is the type of materials used (fairly minor difference) and the valving sophistication (where the real money is spent). Simplistically this is why a $1600 kit (featuring Bilstein shocks) will always be a superior solution. Over the years I have fitted many kits to many cars road cars, race cars and all things in between, and I can confidently say that every single car has done faster lap times, been more comfortable and easier to drive when we removed the Jap coil over kits and replaced them with products engineered for Australia.

Don’t believe me? OK let’s try this, what is the source of the shocks used by the top Japanese race and time attack teams? In almost every case they use European, some recent examples that you can check for yourself;

The M Speed R34GTR (HPI #87) uses Dymamic, made in the Europe

The Nagisa Auto R34GTR (HPI #85) uses Quantum, made in Europe

The Garage Ito/Pro Stock racing R34GTR (HP#86) also uses Quantum

I t will be interesting to see how Giant’s R32GTR compares at Tsukuba this week. It is running a set of adjustable stabiliser bars I made up for it, together with Eibach springs and Ohlins (from Sweden) shocks.

Cheers

Gary

[beersandwich]

i wasnt talking exactly to you michael, just in general and the main consensus on internet forums such as this one.

umm bhdave, im pretty sure the SS Aussie (fulcrum) ones have a 5/4 spring rate, which i believe is alot less than the standard jap rate, thus they re valve the shocks to match the rate. not 100% on jap rates but i dont see any other reason why they would revalve the shocks.

[75coupe]

maybe people are defending the Jap spec coilovers because the second hand (albeit rather new in some cases) are extremely cheap like $1000 for fairly new coilovers if you import them yourself, and the SK groupbuy goes a fair way over that and its not a direct bolt in job that will only take an hour of your unexperienced time to install...

so it sounds like it comes down to what you can afford....

Even if your car is not a daily driver hard suspension will not be approriate for our roads, maybe if you like to drift it may be alright, but try doing a pac run in stiff skyline... Aussie roads capable of having some fun on are pretty crap...

[gts4diehard]

just wanted to know if anyone has got the aussie setup teins, I remember being at Fulcrums in Brisi just over 2 yrs ago and they were looking for skylines to trial teins on as they had the japanese engineers coming out to Oz to setup the shocks for aussie road conditions... if the teins from Japan were so great for aussie roads I don't think they would have bothered sending out their engineers.

I remember putting some Bilsteins on my r32 gts4 sedan and they were 'track' spec and I thought the car was really unbearable on some of the roads around Slacks creek - Brisi, and that was with std springs! I don't now how some of you guys can put up with these extra hard springs on Australian roads. Matched springs and shocks are definitely the way to go!

[Roy]

Well, its not fair to compare my old street Bilsteins with the Tein RAs that i currently run. But i was stoked with the quality/durability of the Bilsteins, but as the car got faster they really needed to be tweaked to keep pace with the car. Which is understandable. I went with the Teins as they were new and alloy body, combined with some other Voc guys getting good results with them.

The car is so much nicer, though i cant really say if the car is any quicker. Yet to have a good run at PI or Sandown with the new shocks, but i hope they make the car quicker/more stable. The quick run i had at Sandown meant the car was 1.4seconds of my best with the Bilsteins but that was driver related...not the fault of the shock

You can see that the car still squats nicell and gets the power down well. It also is a revelation over the bumps and kerbs of Sandown. Much improved.

At Winton i went 3 seconds quicker in only two laps. But truth is i think my old times were about 1.5sec off what they should have been with the Bilsteins. So wil have to wait until i get back to PI or Sandown to really get a fair comparison.

BUT, at the end of the day that would still be a comparison against old street Bilsteins and a Tein setup for track and street work. I doubt the end result will be that different if i have of used the Bilsteins instead of the Teins as a basis of ew springs and re-valving for Aus tracks

[Roy]

Don’t believe me? OK let’s try this, what is the source of the shocks used by the top Japanese race and time attack teams? In almost every case they use European, some recent examples that you can check for yourself;

The M Speed R34GTR (HPI #87) uses Dymamic, made in the Europe

The Nagisa Auto R34GTR (HPI #85) uses Quantum, made in Europe

The Garage Ito/Pro Stock racing R34GTR (HP#86) also uses Quantum

I am the first to question the way Japanese build their race/track cars.

I only have to think back to what happened with the EVO when they exported it to Europe where the suspension was quickly found to be a shortfall. European engineers throw some specific Bilsteins at the car and everyone is far happier...and 6 months later Mitsubishi Japan themselves are using the Eurpoean engineered Bilsteins in the new MR, the top performance version of the car. There are several cases where Bilsteins have been used as an optional premium suspension package.

That all said there are several competitive track cars in Japan that use the local gear. The HKS EVO appears to use HKS shocks, either that or they are clever in making someone elses shock look like theirs with colour and decals. Many others use the Tein RS ans N1 shocks. Along with the brakes they run its the next thing i look at...and apart from the HKS EVO, the only other shock to get a look in is the Tein RS and N1 range.

But, personally i am very reluctant to look at what the Japanese are doing with their cars. For isntance i cringe at the Mines GTR that everyone has hand feeds over Has anyone else seen the footage of it over in the US on the track? Sure it was quick, but it looked like a bucking bronco

[Luke_ENR34]

ive got some Cusco Zero-2E coilovers on the way from Japan, spring rates are 10 and 8.

has anyone used these or driven on these spring rates?

cheers luke