Anyone really tuned your coilovers?

[SpeeDDrifT]

I have a set of Tein HE coilovers...and i have adjusted them to fit my demands...however i can't help but to think that there is much more potential if they were "tuned" professionallly......

I believe suspension tuning is the most complicated tuning one will tackle when tuning a car. There is a great deal of mathematics involved if it is done correctly....balancing the car's charataristics thru the adjustment of the coilovers.....

So has anyone spent an extensive amount of time in suspension tuning.....or better,.has anyone had the tuning done professionally and can you share what kind of adjustments were made? ......I am looking for any kind of foundation to help me tune my suspension better

I have tuned my suspension based on my own prefrences but as i said earlier i think there may be more potential I think we may all be able to learn for eachother's experience...my primary suspension setting is based on drifting and autocross....

Ride Height: 2 fingers in front, 3 fingers in backDamper: 7 in front, 10 in backSpring Rate: Well I guestimated this one....Toe: I haven't really ventured into this area yetCamber: A slight negative camber when on track...more in front

thank you for whatever advice you share in advance.

[Nismo_Freak]

Tuning professionally requires some equipment alot of shops don't have.

I'd suggest you have the car fully cornerweighted with you in it.

Have the car aligned with you in it... I can supply you with some alignment specs that worked pretty well for me to work off of. In no way will my car's setup be considered ideal for your car.

As far as setting the compression dampening level... thats all based on driving style and preference. Obviously if the car is understeering you need to either make the rear dampers harder or make the fronts softer, and visa versa.

I have my HA's set for grip and they have 8 / 16 front and a 10 / 16 rear (16 being softest). The amount of dampening rests solely on the amount of weight being transfered and the cars level of grip. The alignment also helps to determine both.

Make sure you align the car AFTER having it cornerweighted... because cornerweighting the car requires you to raise or lower the car.

Set a base alignment, gather data like understeer/oversteer, conditions in which it happened, tire temperatures after runs on 3 points of the tire (inner, center, and outer). Keep a manifest of the temps, you should see a correlation in the change of tire temps and alignment changes.

Data is key to setting up a suspension, trial and error is the only method. The pro's have to do it, we have to do it.

Tire pressures should also be monitored closely. Set them at 34 psi front and 36 psi rear cold if you can stomache the bumpier ride. Changes in tire pressures should also be evident in your tire temps at the end of a run, and thus should be noted after every run.

Check temps first, then pressure.

[SpeeDDrifT]

Nismo- thanks so much for such a great response and the advice. I was interested in having the car cornerweighted but how much difference in heights in corners can i expect? Will one corner have much more gap than another? I saw a show on Speed channel that was talking about cornerweighting and how on a Hyundai race car the cornerweight was off by 400lbs.....that is quite a lot and i would imagine that the ride height would be significantly different on opposite wheels......i would also expect even more change in a car that had been in an accident...such as mine. Unfortunately they did not go into the details of the cornerweighting, or tuning of the suspension.......damn. anyways thanks again for your input..