Another coilover debate

[lizzy176]

Sooooo its time to decide on some coilovers? my 34gtt is road registered with track days involved. Im currently running bilstein struts but they are starting to leak/knock and id rather get something new. With that being said im after some feedback on silk road coilovers if you have personally run a silk road set up or have any links to reviews on them it'd be a great help ✌

[GTSBoy]

Nope.  Standard answer here is MCA.  Accept substitutes at your peril.

[admS15]

MCA

[KiwiRS4T]

15 hours ago, lizzy176 said:

Sooooo its time to decide on some coilovers? my 34gtt is road registered with track days involved. Im currently running bilstein struts but they are starting to leak/knock and id rather get something new. With that being said im after some feedback on silk road coilovers if you have personally run a silk road set up or have any links to reviews on them it'd be a great help ✌

Bilsteins can be reconditioned.

[GTSBoy]

41 minutes ago, KiwiRS4T said:

Bilsteins can be reconditioned.

While that's true, and I still prefer my Bilsteins to coilovers.......the cost of rebuilding them is almost as much as buying new ones which is almost as much as buying coilovers.  So it's hard to convince most people of the benefits.

[Jordy32]

MCA. I've got HSD's and I'm going to suggest MCA like everyone else here.

Do it once, do it right.

[lizzy176]

Thanks for the response, im aware bilsteins can be recondtioned but im after something more adjustable and different. Have tried a few different brands in other cars ( BC, HSD, Gab etc.) A few friends have mca's so ill check in with them.

[Kinkstaah]

MCA's are the bees knees.

Bilsteins can get reconditioned (I asked about mine recently) for something around ~500 for all 4. So still considerably cheaper than buying a set of $2500 coilovers from MCA.

[chiksluvit]

I’ve had my bilsteins reconditioned and converted to coilovers, cost just over 1k with new tops etc, shocks were revalved to suit the new spring rates

[djr81]

19 minutes ago, chiksluvit said:

I’ve had my bilsteins reconditioned and converted to coilovers, cost just over 1k with new tops etc, shocks were revalved to suit the new spring rates

Who did this for you and how comprehensive was the rebuild/revalve?

[Kinkstaah]

Heasmans in Syd (Bilstein Australia) are the only people I could find who would rebuild and revalve shocks. Great to deal with, even to the point where I sent photos over the course of a few weeks to find out if they were leaking, for them to say yep, don't worry - save your money when they could have easily have done the job.

 

[chiksluvit]

Who did this for you and how comprehensive was the rebuild/revalve?

Revalving and regrooving of front shock was done by heasmans, disassembled, revalved, with dyno before and after. The front shocks were also shortened to make sure the front springs stay captive, running 9kg/mm springs, rears I just used helper springs
Bilstein rear shocks are the insert type, I just ran GTR ones which are shorter already with higher rates than GTSt bilsteins anyway, running 6kg/mm

I bought the sleeves/ springs/ bump stops/ tops etc separately with sleeves and spring seats from US and assembled it myself to keep it within budget

[djr81]

My thing is my spring rates are increasing - now 6kg front and rear on a 32 GTR.  At some point the valving will be wrong/less than optimal for the spring rate and the shocks will need revalving.

Can you throw any light ont he kinds of ranges the one set of valving can cope with in terms of spring rate?  So say the are optimized for N kg/mm front spring but can cope with anything between N-M kg/mm and N+M kg/mm.

[GTSBoy]

I can't be precise......but I effectively have GTR springs on my R32.  About 5.5 kg/mm at the front and about 4 at the rear.  I have SK modified B6s on my car and they work really well with those springs.  But I used to have off the shelf B6s using springs that were only a bees dick less stiff and they were also fine.  I can tell that SK's revalving is worth having, but it's not like it's the difference between them working and not working.  It's more about the quality of teh damping than the absolute quantity, if you know what I mean.

So, on that basis, I would suggest that off the shelf B6 valving will more than likely have no problems at all handling 6 kg/mm springs.  The beauty of the valve stack on good dampers like Bilsteins is that they can actually handle a very wide range of spring rates.  Have a read of SK's sticky damper thread for a refresh if it's been a while.

If chickluvit has gone all the way up to 9kg springs at the front, I'm not at all surprised that B6s would need different valving.  Those spring rates are a loooong way from what Bilstein would have intended the dampers to work with.

[djr81]

Yeah hard to know as you are dealing with five different things on each damper high and low speed setting for bump and rebound and also the knee point for the curve. I wouldn't mind seeing the output from a shock dyno just to see what changed in going up in spring rate.

For what its worth the rebound damping on the front feels a little soft.  Not sure why.

[GTSBoy]

Shat upper control arm bushes will sometimes feel like that.  More movement than desired/expected.

[niZmO_Man]

I would start with replacing all worn/floppy bushes, then moving onto dampers and springs... Which is why I still run crappy HKS 'coilovers'

[djr81]

For the record the bushes are fine.

[GTSBoy]

I thought mine were too.  SuperPro/Whiteline adjustable urethane in OEM arms.  Upon removal to fit the new GKTech awesome sauce FUCAs, I discovered exactly how bad they were.  Outer and inner bolts were a looooooong way from parallel due to urethane bushes being well out of shape.  Unsurprisingly, the car drives a lot better since.

[chiksluvit]

Yeah hard to know as you are dealing with five different things on each damper high and low speed setting for bump and rebound and also the knee point for the curve. I wouldn't mind seeing the output from a shock dyno just to see what changed in going up in spring rate.
For what its worth the rebound damping on the front feels a little soft.  Not sure why.

FYI here’s my result before and after revalve