R32 Sedan - Grip and Drift (have my cake and eat it too build)

[CRSKmD]

Ahah dreamy. Sequential would be sick but I’m happy with my near new 25box for now 

[CRSKmD]

Some tasty suspension upgrades in the form of custom valved Shockworks coilovers and a set of Stanceparts aircups

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Very beefy looking, have a mate that also just ordered a set of customised Shockworks coilovers for his R33 boat. Pretty keen to see how it compares to my dinosaur MCA X-Rs.

[CRSKmD]

I’m coming from circa 2013 ISC “drift” coilovers should be a good upgrade and hopefully I can notice the difference at the track day coming up. Even though it’s been more than a year since I last drove on track 

[DaymoR32]

i've been looking at them stanceparts kits, as i dont wanna go full air ride but would like to be able to fully slam the car at shows and when its parked up. I'll be following to see what your thoughts are on it.

[CRSKmD]

Just now, DaymoR32 said:

i've been looking at them stanceparts kits, as i dont wanna go full air ride but would like to be able to fully slam the car at shows and when its parked up. I'll be following to see what your thoughts are on it.

May not suit your needs then. They are designed to be driven down. And only lift when you need to clear an obstacle or get on a jack/hoist. 
 

the way they work is the lift comes from your suspension droop. 
 

full install and setup post to come 

[reaper]

On 04/11/2020 at 9:15 AM, DaymoR32 said:

i've been looking at them stanceparts kits, as i dont wanna go full air ride but would like to be able to fully slam the car at shows and when its parked up. I'll be following to see what your thoughts are on it.

 

On 04/11/2020 at 9:17 AM, CRSKmD said:

May not suit your needs then. They are designed to be driven down. And only lift when you need to clear an obstacle or get on a jack/hoist. 
 

the way they work is the lift comes from your suspension droop. 
 

full install and setup post to come 

Yeah they work great for having the car at a static low height on the coilover then raising it up for driveways, speedhumps, rbt's

[CRSKmD]

As promised install and setup post. This may come in parts

The Shockworks coilovers are a very nice quality piece of kit, very beefy and a nice neutral colour
Through chatting to them about my goals for the car they were able to offer a custom solution with valving as well as spring rates and lengths (more on that later).

they also come with their own install gloves. Very nice touch

 

The Stanceparts aircups kit too is very well made and for those not familiar with them.

No, they are not  bags.

But rather an air piston that essentially replaces your top hat. They are designed to be run in the "down" position and only lifted up to pass obstacles, get on hoists/jacks, and when cruising past rbts...

When down they are a solid alloy spacer, this means no squish and the coilovers handle as normal.

Now I mentioned spacer, in the down position they are exactly 20mm thick. They sit on the shaft portion of the coilover which means they to take up 20mm of the total stroke.

The Shockworks coilover I ordered have a stroke of 100mm, so with the Stanceparts aircup installed that is now 80mm stroke. 

As the aircup is now the new upper spring seat this means the total "max low" will be reduced by at least 20mm depending on how the coilovers are made. To partially negate this my shockworks coilovers were configured with 20mm shorter springs.

The aircup set needed to be ordered to suit correct shaft diameter, in this case 15mm as that's how they seal and fit to the coilover.

The maximum lift the aircups can provide is 50mm but this will depend on a number of factors including your setup, spring rate and droop.

The reason for this is that the lift actually comes from the droop or wheel extension in your suspension. This is another reason why they are not designed to be driven in the up position long term. When in the up position you will have no droop or wheel extension.

 

Next up the install and setup

[CRSKmD]

As I had gone to the effort of getting higher end custom coilovers. I wanted to make sure I was setting them up right with the car's main use case in mind.

Going fast on track while still being a "street car".

Now the following setup guide might be overkill in the information department but i hope it to be useful for anyone looking to do a similar install. That said, my opinions and theories for coilover setup may not align with your own. With that out of the way...

The first step was to set the shock body length so that at full bump there wouldn't be any significant interference with the body. To do this I disassembled the coilover, removed the spring and bump stop, fitted the aircup and reassembled the coilover. 

Without the spring and bump stop fitted, the coilover was put into the car. The LCA was then jacked up so that all of the shocks stroke was used. Then the bottom mount was adjusted so that at full compression the wheel was still able to rotate freely. For the front I also checked clearance throughout the steering arc. 

 

Make a note of the total shock body length and do not make this any shorter. As any shorter the wheel would be able to make contact with the body before using all of the available travel.

This was done once for the front and rear then the body length copied to the other side. Assuming my guards are flared/rolled/mounted the same… haha… the shock body length is correct to allow for full use of the shocks stroke.

Now it was finally time to assemble the coilovers and aircups. The bump stop was cut down with guidance from Shockworks to compensate for the change of usable stroke length. 

Spring reinstalled. The normal rubber spring locator was unable to be relocated to inside the aircup as the dimensions did not fit. As i did not want metal on metal contact for noise and wear another set of the plastic/teflon washers used on the lower spring seat were placed between the aircup and the spring. Shockworks were able to supply me with another set quickly and at short notice. So shout out again to them.

On my particular coilovers the normal spring seat is on the top hat. As the new spring seat is the aircup which has now moved down the coilover to be on the shaft the effective top hat position has been moved by 40mm.

As a comparison my old ISC coilovers the spring seat was lower due to the tophat design.

 

Pictured below are two coilovers, one with the air cup and one without. They have the exact same bottom mount position (and shockbody length) with the spring installed with zero preload. 

It is easy to see how much "max lowness" adjustment you lose (40mm in my case).

So the compromise for installing the aircups is:
40mm “max low” lost
20mm stroke lost

Now the springs configured were 20mm shorter so effectively that leaves us with:

20mm “max low” lost
20mm stroke lost

 

Edited November 11, 2020 by CRSKmD
rogue hyperlink

[CRSKmD]

I haven't forgotten about this but i haven't had time to get the pictures i need for the next parts. stay tuned

[CRSKmD]

Bump, droop and height 

Depending on the use case the ratio between bump/droop will vary. 

Track use the consensus seems to be 70% bump and 30% droop

For street use, more droop to deal with potholes and uneven surfaces is ideal.

As the aircups lift comes the droop I wanted to maximise the amount of droop travel without compromising the bump travel and track performance. Hence me settling on a 50/50 ratio to start with.

As i had 80mm of stroke i wanted the static/resting height of the car to be half way through this travel giving me 40mm bump travel and 40mm droop or wheel extension. Which in turn gives me 40mm lift.

With this plan in mind the coilovers were fitted to the car with the springs just retained (no preload) and the shock body lengths as adjusted earlier. 

The spring seats were then adjusted in order to have the static position half way through the stoke. Adding/reducing preload as needed.

At this point the actual vehicle heights were not worried about.

Once set the vehicle heights ended up at 335mm front and 325mm rear.

With the aircups up the heights are 375mm front and 365mm rear.

so 40mm lift front and rear.

Jack access is a dream, to think part of the reason i originally got the subframe brace made up was to have a jack point that was higher than the diff because the car was too low to use it

Edited March 23, 2021 by CRSKmD
typo

[CRSKmD]

I will cover the air tank install shortly.

An added bonus of the air cups is that when they are up there is no more droop which means one pump of the jack and the wheels are off the ground!

Tyre change over at the track

After over 1 year since my last grip day I didn't expect to see any improvement from the suspension upgrades.
That being said I managed to match my previous PB!

 

For any one that knows T1 at Mallala, bit of a butt clench moment with my wheels either side of a pretty gnarly ripple strip.

Hopefully next time I have more of a chance to play with the damper settings as this past track day I was constantly coming in dealing with melted/blown/split vacuum lines

[CRSKmD]

Last update for today

New look for All Japan Day 2021

side note: can i change the name of the tread considering its no longer +T or my daily?

Edited March 23, 2021 by CRSKmD

[CRSKmD]

so for the first time in ~7 years I headed back out for a drift day. The last time I did any actual drifting I had an RB20DE+T making around 185kw.

safe to say a 7 years of slowly setting the car (and my brain) up for circuit not to mention coming back with much more power than last time made it for an interesting experience.

I still had tyres from 2013 when i last did drifting stored in the shed so slapped them on and headed up

Starting out on the Wet skid pan I, along with the instructors who jumped in, found it challenging to even do a consistent donut around the cone. Eventually we decided this was due to a combination of the snappy power band an too much front end grip which lead to the car pivoting around the front axle rather than closer to the driver.

Changing to the shittiest  front tyres I had access to and moving off the wet pan was like night and day. Just look at that smile.

After this day I signed straight back up for the next one where things happened...

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by CRSKmD
typo

[CRSKmD]

after learning from the first day i changed absolutely nothing and came back for the next school skid pan day. I should note the tyres i'm using for this and the last day are the same ones i bought in 2013 and were sitting in the shed since I was last drifting.

It took a few laps with some great pointers by the instructors before it clicked and suddenly i found a decent groove and managed to even link a few laps.

great clip my mate got of me sliding back into line

some on board footage including me sending a water barrier to the moon...

 

Aftermath of the water barrier.

[CRSKmD]

not super related but got myself a new workshop jack

[reaper]

Water barriers are not fun to hit at speed, ive learnt that the hard way

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Ouch, luckily it's just body.. easy enough to fix up!

[CRSKmD]

The next day I had a grip session at The Bend Motorsport park for JDM speed. Thankfully even with the big wack to the 1/4 my track wheels still fit without rubbing

Maxed out 5th gear down the main straight with plenty of space before the braking zone. Different, longer gearing might be in the near future. notice the grill flexing up and the lip pulling down 😅

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Cars setup for grip generally don't slide very well, even in the wet!

I've taken my shit box to a few skid pans and it's so hard to hold it sideways. Also having 2mm toe in at the rear doesn't help with sick angles haha