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i have a 2002 ex coupe daily driver. i want to upgrade the suspension right now i have goldline racing springs on stock shocks. i want something a little more aggressive. what do you all think coilovers or throw the goldlines on some tokico shocks?

 
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aggressive? you mean you just want something stiffer? or are you actually trying to make the thing handle a little better... because stiffer, especially for the street, does automatically mean better handling.


any way, what are your plans for the car? as wether or not you plan on doing competition with it or just putting around on the street will determin as to whats "best" for you.

 
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Ive had tein super street coilovers on my car for the last five months and imo best mod ive done to my car. It handles so much better its amazing. Springs and new shocks are better than stock but still arnt coilovers.

 
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most likely wont be doing competitions any time soon, but i would like to improve handling

 
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What is a "coilover" but a spring and a shock? I.e. a properly selected spring + shock combo will give you just as good of performance as any "coilover"... yet it will mostlikely be cheeper and give you more tuning options in the long run.

jmx148, I have to ask. what is the car doing now that you are trying to change/improve? no point at throwing parts at the car if you dont know what you want to end up with. So, does it understeer too much? oversteer? what? need to have a baseline before you can improve oppon the chassis.

 
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tends to understeer and have a small amount of body roll (already have front upper strut bar and rear lower tie bar)

 
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Stut bars and tie bars do relitivly little to influence the oversteer/understeer balance of the car, they simply allow the suspension to work better. but that suspension will still do what it's tuned to do, which is typically to understeer.

jmx148, if the car is understeering you have a couple of routs to reduce it. 1. alignment. 2. change spring rates 3. change antiroll bars. or 4. tweak your shock dampering

Initially tweakng the alignment would probably be the quickest/cheepest.

could you be a bit more specific on when and where the car tends to understeer? because springs/anti-roll bars primairly influence mid phase cornering where dampers influence mostly corner entry and exit cornering.

 
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yeah but the tein coilovers are just that a properly set up spring and shock combo all in one niffty unit. You go by brand a spring and brand b shock and tell me how thats a better setup. And the konis have what like 5 ajustments my coilovers have 16 and you have to put a coilover sleeve to make it hight ajustable. For just alittle more money its alot better setup.

 
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i am leaning toward the tein, i primarily notice understeer on the exiting of corners it seems to stick pretty good going into then slightly after mid way car seems to (push) a little

 
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My car was the same way before it felt like it was hard to make the end of the turn. What made me buy em was I drove a s2000 with coilovers it also had recaro spg seats that were kick *** but it was so fun to drive you can just bomb through corners like nothing. I had to get them for my car its like the coilovers are forcing the tires against the road and the stock stuff is like the tires just riding on the road.

 
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Corner exit understeer is ushually a "too much throttle too soon" issue.... its called throttle induced understeer. thats a driver error thing... so heres a tip on that. if you are on the throttle and you start to understeer, ease off the throttle a bit. the nose will bite in again.

now if you are in a nutural throttle instance, and the car is understeering mid to late corner... then you may want to tweak the roll couple balance, by increasing the effectiveness of the rear anti-roll bar.

BTW, audioefx3; Konis could be considered Infinatly adjustible, as there is no "click" points on them. Not to mention the # of adjustments doesnt really mean squat, rather its the difference in valving range from max to min thats important. Meaning, telling me that a damper is 16 or 32 way adjustible really doesnt tell me squat about the damper.

And as some one who Autocrosses and ocationally open tracks my car... I'll take Konis with Ground controls over Teins any day.... why? one reason would be that Tein runs their dampers counterintuitively to getting the best handling out of the car. They adjust both bump and rebound at the same time. GREAT for a street damper, not so much for a race damper. Something like Konis on the other hand only adjust Rebound... good for performance, less so for street comfort. In the end the only thing a "coilover" gives you is Convienance, in the hopes that some one else did the thinking. Its funny really, in the racing world "coilovers" are pratically Non-exzistant... and it seems that the only place they are promoted as being better by defalut over a spring + shock combo is in the import world.

So, take it from some one who actually uses their car for compitition, a Coilover is no better then a properly selected Spring + shock combo, and it can actually hinder your handling performance. and Really, how can you expect some company to be able to build the "best" setup for your individual needs with out them knowing your driving style, what condition the surfaces you drive on are...ect ect ect... the best they can shoot for is a comfortable medium that will be decent in the widest range of conditions possible... not exactly the best for handling... but then its also designed for the street 1st performance 2nd.

 
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BTW, if you want an opinion other then mine regarding the whole "Coilover" Vs spring + shock issue, talk to Boilermaker1. he went from JIC Majic "coilovers" to Ground controls + Konis.... and he regularly tracks the car. ask his opinion on the subject.

 
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thanks for all the great info guys this should give me something to think about for a while

 
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no prob, it's kind of an issue of if just want something that works, get a pre-built "coilover". if you want to tweak the car to its max potentioal, your going to have to build it your self, part by part.

 
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Whatever man. why would you want to cut apart your stock strut and repalce the insides i mean c mon the things are half the cost. Its a cheap setup that works good so if you like cheap good for you Ill stick with my coilovers.

 
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Are you calling Koni's cheap junk? You gotta be fuggin kidding me.

 
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im not calling them junk but yes they are cheap my tires cost more than your suspension

 
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I'd really like to see your $1900 tires, then lets see if your superduper expensive tires, or my cheap, homebrew, Do it yourself machine shop fabricated, throw together parts that don't even match up without modification suspension do more.
Falken Azenis are some of the stickiest tires you can buy.... yet they're also cheaper than all the Michelins that cost 4 times as much. So I fail to see your point.

 
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k your budy zzzz says you have ground contols and konis. Oo so you are selling the jic for the konis smart move dude. I prefer bfgoodrich kd ive had azenis before

 
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You wanna buy my JICs, they're still for sale.
I'll let the lap times speak for why I went to Koni/GC
Unless you've got something earthshattering that I don't know about..... I can't see whats so fabulous. You're speaking off an opinion. I find it hard to believe the overwhelming community of club racers (who buy there own parts) would go out and buy Konis if they could buy pre-builts that work better for basically the same price by the time you piece everything together.
Oh... and good luck getting your Teins rebuilt in a timely manner.

 
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no thanks and i dont race in parking lots so who cares
who said anything about rebuilding it says nothing of that in the owners manual

 
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So only club racers buy there own parts and i dont yea that makes a lot of sense. I guess now a days you have to race in a parking lot around little cones to know anything about suspension. Give me a break. How bout you and zzzz hookup and shove konis up your vaginas

 
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Hmmm.... I think you do have to race in a parking lot around little cones to know a lot. I mean you cant really make those fast turns on the street. I dunno i think you will know and learn more about ur car's handling performance... But then again, im a rookie

 
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It shows you know a hell of a lot when all you got is a couple 4th grade responses.
Last time I checked... road courses aren't set up in parking lots. Yeah, so we both autocross... its cheaper, but we both have a fair amount of track time on our hands too.
Come back when you learn something about what it is the f*ck your talking about. Until then... tata.