Nukleus

I've had the Eibach ProKit on stock shocks/struts and 205/45 17's for a little over 3 years now... ever since Rob was barely postin' on 2k1civic.com to promote his business. Been a long time and I'm glad to have found this forum recently.

I ride an 02' coupe DX. I got my drums replaced and repaired the other week and found out one of my rear shocks was pretty much blown. The stock ride was pretty bouncy in the back now so I figured it was time to upgrade the shocks to top of my suspension. I've had my eye on these so-called Tokico D-Specs since they came out. I heard they were originally available only in Japan but now they brought them over here. Long story short, I bought them and had them installed today.

First off, my alignment is way off so I need a 4-wheel align ASAP. While driving straight, the top of my steering wheel points to 10 o'clock. Enough bitchin' and onto the review:

The factory setting for the Tokico Dspec is very close to maximum firmness. Let me tell you, that sucker is pretty damn stiff. Of course, I had to go test them out right away by making sharp turns, figure eights, etc. The car corners like a demon. If I had lowering springs with a higher spring rate I'm sure there wouldn't have been ANY body rolling going on. You know, I do have the Eibach ProKit so I assume that these springs are pretty much as soft as performance springs get.

I do know this, at maximum stiffness, if I had a rear-wheel drive car I'd be out there drifting with no worries. These Tokico Dspecs are scary. The adjustability is infinitely variable between max hard and max soft. No easy to adjust settings here. The manual gets you started by setting the shocks at maximum hardness and then rotating the adjustment **** 360 degrees 5 times towards the softness direction. In other words, you turn the dial around 5 times away from max hardness. This is the suggested start point. The maximum softness is 7.5 full turns away from the max stiffness. At 5 turns, my suspension was stiffer than the Prokit on Stock shocks/struts but still had enough travel to be comfortable (no excessive bounce). It really did feel just right. I suppose that if I had lower and stiffer springs that there'd be less travel than I'm getting now.

As a quick reference, on about 1 turn away from max stiffness, I could not compress the front or rear end of my car by trying to push it down. On 5 turn s away from max stiff, I could get the rear to bounce maybe an inch at most.. maybe less.

The manual says that max softness would probably be softer than stock. I haven't gone there and don't need to go there.

So what's the take-home message? I love these shocks/struts and would recommend them to anybody. The Tokico Dspecs are very powerful and can definitely step-up your suspension tuning.

Within the next weeks, I will be tuning the stiffness of the rear and front little by little to get more grip at the front wheels. This will definitely involve slowly stiffening the rear shocks and possibly softening the front. Truth be told, I kind of want it so I can get some oversteer while taking a sharp corner. Powersliding is rather pointless for an amateur like myself but it'll definitely have it's enjoyment value.

I wrote this review because I couldn't find any real reviews on the Tokico Dspec Shocks/Struts. I hope this helps out anyone who is looking to buy these. I would've liked to have bought Koni's but the whole front strut alteration would've taken too much of my time or cost too much to have a shop do it. So if you've got the right tools/time or enough money to get Koni's installed, I say you should do that. In my case, the Tokico Dspecs were convenient to install and have enough adjustability to make for an interesting suspension tuning experience.

Hope someone finds this useful. Good night and God Bless!

TRIZ

iTrader: (14)

Ha, post some videos when you get the powerslide down!

Nice write up!

bigainabuilt

iTrader: (3)

Sweet review! I will be dropped on sportlines within the next 2 weeks and was planning on doing a review also.

AmbulanceMonkee

iTrader: (5)

good review.

Nukleus

Regarding the Eibach Prokit and Dspec shocks I installed recently. I carpool with a friend of who has a 2003 Lexus IS300. I often drive his car on his days to drive cause he's a lazy-***. His suspension is stock but I love how it drives... firm yet comfortable over dips and bumps. I know his suspension is worn-out because he never drives his lexus like a sports car, he babies the thing.

So, in an attempt to get Lexus IS300-Like handling, I set the damper settings on my Dspecs to almost match the Lexus, if not a little better since I'm increasing front-end traction for this FWD. It's kind of crazy, I used to rave about RWD cars having the most natural and best feel when cornering, now I'm second-guessing myself. Having the front wheels of a front-wheel drive planted and taking a corner sharp does feel like there's a lot of control at your fingertips. I guess maybe that's what they call "grip-driving." (Note: I only test may car out at abondoned wharehouse parking lots)

If remember right, the front struts are set to 4 turns from max firm and the rear are set to 3.5 turns. I'm still experimenting, but the manual for the Dspecs suggest that making the rear firmer will keep the front wheels better planted on the ground when Accelerating, and believe me, it does. Spirited acceleration up a hill from full stop used to make the rear-end squat and the front-end lose some traction. I was able to minimize the squat to allow the front-end to stay planted. I was pretty surprised... I love my Dspecs!

Although 0.5 of a turn from 4 to 3.5 doesn't seem that big of a difference, there's an exponential gap in the adjustment curve between 3 turns and 4 turns... meaning the level of stiffness between 3 and 4 turns is a bit dramatic.. not too dramatic but definitely larger than going from 4 to 5 turns or 5 to 6 turns. A graph is provided that shows the level of adjustability per turn from max firmness ( 0 turns ) to max softness (7.5 turns). Paying attention to the graph they give you is important because each turn isn't always a linear adjustment... depending where you are in the adjustment spectrum.

I'm pretty stoked... if you take the time to tune your car, you can definitely get suspension performance of an expensive sports-car, if not better. I say "it can be better" because I didn't even adjust the shocks/struts close to max firmness. When the Dspecs were 1 turn away from max stiffness, I swored my teeth were going to fall out because of all the bumps I felt on a normal road. The only time I'd adjust the Dspecs to that height of performance would be when I'm able to buy another car in the future and end up auto-x this civic. By then I'd probably buy sportier springs, but the prokit still has a higher spring rate which does the job for everyday driving.

I know this was a whole short-story, but hopefully somebody can benefit from this.

ragingSPAM

iTrader: (8)

i used to have d-specs...i loved them but i got full coilovers afterwards so i sold them...now i sold the coilovers and im gonna upgrade to most likley JIC FLT-A2 or buddyclub rsd's

Nukleus

What type of coilovers did you end up using after the Dspecs? Why did you sell those full coilovers? I'm curious.