Coilovers

[BHDave]

Thats unfortunate

[djr81]

it's simple do you care more about handling, or more about your comfy ride to work

buy a cima or a celsior or something if you want comfort

A high spring rate does not necessarilly confer good handling on a car. In fact chucking hard springs at a car it is one of the easiest ways to make it an ill handling heap of rubbish. As a rule the higher the spring rate the less forgiving the set up will be for any compromises you have to build into the set up. As all road car based suspensions are necessarilly compromised the chances are you will make it appreciably worse than a stock car. Particularly if your first priority is impressing your mates but making it low/hard.

Too many people believe that simply because a car doesn't/can't move about on its suspension it must handle well. They are wrong.

Old adage: What is good for ride quality, done correctly, is also good for roadholding.

Edited January 14, 2008 by djr81

[mystery_kid]

i never said anything about impressing mates, the typical sau retards did

this thread really is retarded, simply because what some people consider to be rock hard suspension others consider to be soft and hurts their wittle hiney

all said and done, 12/10 would be good for a drift car. ass would be stepping out with that if you're going for road holding

haha 4/3 though you might aswell just keep stock suspension

[mystery_kid]

hey dave

If you don't like it you can bang it up your arse.

[djr81]

i never said anything about impressing mates, the typical sau retards did

this thread really is retarded, simply because what some people consider to be rock hard suspension others consider to be soft and hurts their wittle hiney

all said and done, 12/10 would be good for a drift car. ass would be stepping out with that if you're going for road holding

haha 4/3 though you might aswell just keep stock suspension

Well for whose benefit would you put springs (or coilovers) in your car that make it grip, handle and ride substantially worse? Not to mention all the other attendent problems that come along with such a dumb set up. Clearly not your own, so all that is left to do is assume you are doing it to impress your mates.

The point you are clearly struggling to understand is that an excessively high spring rate (12kg/mm & 10 are too high) reduces the grip available to the car. It does not necessarily mean the thing will be better at drifting either. In fact quite the opposite - it will most probably be worse. Certainly it will be unpredictable when the car gets anywhere near some bumps.

The ride quality turning to sh!t is just another downside to having excessively stiff suspension in the car.

[mystery_kid]

ok so they make them for no real reason at all my bad

[Mr. Keets]

...this thread really is retarded, simply because what some people consider to be rock hard suspension others consider to be soft and hurts their wittle hiney...haha 4/3 though you might aswell just keep stock suspension

Kid if you think this thread is retarded dont post in it; take your act to the wasteland and let the grown ups and the those who want to learn get on with it. Just because YOU think 4/3 is ghey doesnt make it so. Your f#cking this thread.

[Roy]

ok so they make them for no real reason at all my bad

Ppl write of Japanese coil overs saying their spring rates are too high etc etc. When you consider how smooth their main tracks are then you could probably get away with the higher spring rates. Phillip Island needs more spring then Sandown, Phillip Island is smoother then Sandown. So at the end of the day what is perfect for one track is less then ideal for another track, and certainly not perfect for the street. So its all about getting the right compromise for you and what you do with the car.

That said softer springs are going to be more forgiving then overly hard springs and shocks that make the car skip, bodyroll isnt the worlds biggest sin

[salad]

ok so they make them for no real reason at all my bad

That's the problem with the Japanese, they try to do everything with just springs. You need to find a balance between controlling roll with springs/bars/low speed bump/roll centre height.

Each has their own seperate downside which degrades grip.

Springs: The higher the rate, the less the compliance.

ARBs: Work my transferring load from the inside wheel to the outside wheel. Therefore more lateral load transfer and less grip from the tyres

Low speed bump: Works great on turn in and you can get good compliance with a fair amount of digression in your valving, but roll resistance drops off more and more the further you get into a corner.

Roll centre height: The higher the roll centre (smaller the roll moment lever arm), the more load is taken by the suspension arms and more force is directed vertically (jacking forces). What this means is, weight is lifted off the wheels, so you get less grip from the tyres.

What the best combination is depends on a HUGE range of things.

You will find that most companies usually use big spring rates to mask a cheap/crap shock. Have a look at the spring rates that all the cheap generic crap are offering these days. And for some reason they think this is good for daily driving!?

Also, as Roy said, having some roll is not the end of the world. As long as the car is at a reasonable height and the geometry is still decent, a little bit of roll is fine. Skylines have double wishbone/multi-link suspension, so they have camber gain as the car rolls. We dont have the problem (as bad as say Mac struts) of rolling onto the outside of the tyre with insufficient roll resistance or pretty high static cambers.

Edited January 14, 2008 by salad

[Rolls]

ok so they make them for no real reason at all my bad

How old are you, have you even finished high school?

[nizmo_freek]

I Would be interested to know your guys thoughts on my setup (tein super drift with 7kg springs front and rear) using stock swaybars at the moment, im think of getting into a bit of track work in the near future (will possibly be using 235 or 245 semis all round, would probaly use street tyres on my 1st go though) , in my opinion my coilovers seem about perfect for the road, not to stiff at all (our NZ arent exactly the best!)

What would you suggest to make an improvement? i guess i would really need to get out there 1st and see how the car really feels on the limit then work from there.

By the way this is a great thread, very imformative!

[salad]

Rear needs softer springs, the car will be quite oversteery otherwise.

[some_cs_student]

Apologies for hi-jacking the thread, but everyone else seems to be doing it anyway

Rear needs softer springs, the car will be quite oversteery otherwise.

Interesting point, I'm using Ohlin's adjustable coilovers (came with my car from Japan), the rears feel very stiff, the fronts feel a lot softer but maybe thats just my imagination due to there been more weight on the front it goes down much easier.

Interestingly the owner has also changed the sway bars, and all control arms, I haven't had a chance to test the handling but I hope to sometime soon.

After going from stock R34 struts the Ohlin's seemed harsh until I made a few adjustments (little things on the top) and its a nice ride now, it feels softer than R34 struts now.

Does anyone know what the spring rates are in them?

They look a lot like the coil-overs in this thread, J-boys posts.

Maybe this thread should be cleaned and stickied? Great thread so far

[some_cs_student]

Hmm, found ohlins on an R33 that are said to be 5.0kg/mm F, 5.3 R according to this GTR.co.uk post so maybe thats how stiff they are. I'll try and find the measurements I did on them and the estimation I had for the spring rate and see if its close

[260DET]

If soft springs are the go then someone should tell Porsche, those Career Cup Porkers bounce around all over the place

It does seem that a lot of dampers work better with soft springs though, specially the cheaper off the shelf ones like Koni Yellows. So perhaps its not so much the soft springs which work, rather its the dampers which don't work so well at higher spring rates.

The braking area into turn one at QR is a good test for suspension compliance, the old Zed which had 300 pound springs used to brake through the ripples there without a problem at all, thats a 1150kg car with strut suspension all round, Koni yellows on the back, Koni double adjustables on the front. So I think anyone who can brake heavily through there without the car bouncing around, like a lot do, has a decent basic setup.

[NickR33]

Ppl write of Japanese coil overs saying their spring rates are too high etc etc. When you consider how smooth their main tracks are then you could probably get away with the higher spring rates. Phillip Island needs more spring then Sandown, Phillip Island is smoother then Sandown. So at the end of the day what is perfect for one track is less then ideal for another track, and certainly not perfect for the street. So its all about getting the right compromise for you and what you do with the car.

That's spot on Roy... my car has the Bilsteins/Whitelien combo and loves Sandown... I have done a 1:29 around there with the stock turbo and street tires, which is pretty quick considering... Phillip Island however is another story... excluding the fact I have only been there once and I don't have a harness (which makes it hard to stay in the seat without gripping the wheel like a fat kid holds a chocolate bar) I'm dismally slow... 2:06 to be precise, same tyres, same tune... it just gets too much roll as you stay loaded up in the corners for ages and I don't run enough negative camber to even it out

I like a bit of bodyroll, helps you feel what the car is doing underneath you but I also don't like scraping the door handles on the road!

[1400r]

seems to be alot of assumption about what the Japanese do and don't do

regarding swaybars/rates etc

when's the last time you had a chat with your local Japanese coilover engineer?

at the end of the day Japanese branded coilovers were made for Japan originally

Japan = mega flat roads and even flater tracks

I love how some back yard racer thinks he has more of an idea than cusco/tein/hks whoevers engineers

[Trust33]

id like to see jap coilover on the newly resurfaced wakefield.

[Simonster]

For my ten cents worth - you are running mismatched front to rear spring rates. For my Gt-R I have 5kg front 4kg rear with a 22dia front & 24 dia rear sway bars. You are much stiffer on the front & softer on the rear both in spring & in sway bars- hence the car will pick up its inside front tyre.

So you need to bring the spring rates closer together & then fatten the rear sway bar. Also (again spring rate dependent) the front bar is pretty fat relative to most offerings although at 7kg/mm it is much more liveable than if the car was (for example) running a 5kg/mm spring. Whether you do this by just adjusting one end of the car or not depends on how high you like your rates.

Hey DJR,

Just for your info, car runs an RB25 which was part of the reason for the harder front rates to rear.

More importantly, i drilled another 2 holes in the whiteline rear anti roll bar. What a difference, car sits much flatter i acutally get power on oversteer out of slower corners now, which im dialling out.

Didn't touch anything else. It's a different car now!

[djr81]

Hey DJR,

Just for your info, car runs an RB25 which was part of the reason for the harder front rates to rear.

More importantly, i drilled another 2 holes in the whiteline rear anti roll bar. What a difference, car sits much flatter i acutally get power on oversteer out of slower corners now, which im dialling out.

Didn't touch anything else. It's a different car now!

Well good to see you got a result out of all the flamage on this thread.