second thoughts on the tein coil overs

Keep the Coil Overs, pimp your sister out to the dirty old men in here to pay for it.

If you like the ride, lowering springs will compromise this for you.

We went all mushy with ours and increased the amount of rubber between wheel and road, thus giving him a better ride on rough roads. You'd not think that on 165/60/14s it could be accused of being choppy, but it's much better on 185/60/13s on certain sections of my old commute.

'Course, now I'm hunkering along much smoother dual carriageways, so maybe

Vamp, a decent well made set of coilovers will always make more improvements to the handling than a set of springs will.

You say the ride is spot on, so you could adjust the damping to replicate that, still lower a little, and not risk bottoming out, or running on the bumpstops. Also, Teins should be rebuildable, and if you decide you want to trackday when money is better, you can get a proper suspension setup (alignment, wheel balance, and with the TEIN top mounts, camber, and due to them being coilovers, corner weights), it will even help down the back lanes, where maybe you are only giving it

When I get the cash together, it will be Koni & Eibach, Koni & H&R, Tein, or if on a silly low budget and I can locate a set, KYB coilovers (not so easy to find) and Eibachs. I'm not sure about even just the standard uprated KYBs as they don't offer any adjustment to height.

hmmm i'm still unsure, i mean i'll probably track day once in a year if that! just seems like over kill on the road really, it sits quite low on the

i'm tempted to sell the coil overs, grab some strut bars to help stiffen things and then concentrate on the engine side, the ride is pretty good as it is and i thought the cash i make on the teind could be spent elsewhere on the car. keep the car a bit Q car like then ;)

Believe it or not, some lowered shocks and springs, whether struts, coilovers, or just shocks and springs can actually improve the ride, if you spend an afternoon with someone who knows what they are doing. Springs alone will just harden the ride, add strutbraces to stiffen things further and you end up crashing from bump to bump. Strut bars make the suspension work harder because the shell flexes less, so it absorbs less of the shock, and keeps things more in line with where you expect it to be going. If you fit low springs, on standard struts, with strut braces, the sweet, but compromised handling could suffer more.

Sell your sister, sell a kidney, but don't sell the Teins. Fit them, get them set up, then get some decent tyres when you are working again, and give the brakes a touch of DS2500 pads and a set of braided hoses and some new fluid. Once all that is in, then you can consider wether you need strutbraces. After you've done all that, you can also decide whether it needs more power, or whether it goes round corners as scary fast as you like, or whether you just want a drag strip monster.

With Tein shocks it will still look like a Q car (well as much as any mid engined black jap sports car with turbo whistle can look) because you can't see the green struts unless you look, and then only until they are very dirty.

Most of the people I know with coilovers played with them for a couple of weeks then never touched them again. Seems like a waste to me unless you are doing a lot of track days.

Fraser