K-sport (D2) coilover reveiw: Daily driven and tuned at track

[Onizuka]

Well, I feel I have explored most of the capabilities of these coilovers in addition to living with them for 3 hours a day, 5-7 days a week, so time for a reveiw.

First let me say these are a great deal if you want lots of adjustability (with limitations I will explane later) for not alot of cost. The K-sports feature a single adjustable double action damper, seperate spring pre-load and ride hight adjustments, and are availible with inexpensive camber plates up front (there is also crude camber adjustment on the front shock arm mount by means of a slotted mount hole). There are also a ton of spring rates availble, all the way up to insane springrates that will crack your car in half from stress. I personally run 7kg front springs and 5kg rear. I just this past weekend when to learn how to tune a suspension. We started with a 3 hour discussion on suspension tuning on friday. Satuday we spent 8 hours on a skidpad and slalom playing with tire pressures along with camber angle and damping.

In the morning satuday is where I found my biggest complaint with these coilovers. The height adjustment in the rear is severly hampered by the threaded shock tube not being able to thread any farther down on the lower portion (which is how right height is supposed to be adjusted on these). The only way to lower it is by dropping the spring spanners which alows for about an inch of spring play for every inch past about stock ride height that you drop it when the shock is fully extened. Because I like my spring sitting where they should and I was going to be doing a autocross event the next day, we put the perches right up for no spring play on the rear and decided to live with the ride height (about an 1 inch higher than what you see in my signature).

The fronts offered plenty of camber and ride height adjustment. We used a probe type pyrometer to tune camber (and tire pressure, but that not part of this review), and ended up with what I guess is some where south of negative 3 degrees negative camber on a track only setting. There are dashes on the camber plates so switching between camber for street and track is a breeze. Increasing negative camber increased the toe-in which made the turning a little slower, but we werent going to mess with the tie rod ends since I had to drive home and we didnt have alignment equipment with us.

The spring rates im running seem to be about right on the edge of damper capacity for track duty, so it anything stiffer would probably need to have the shocks re-valved. Damper adjustment is done with long 9 inch allen wrenches with a knob on the end. I had to take out the rear shocks to put in the damper knobs since the s13 coupe doesnt have anywhere near enough clearence to drop them in from inside. So s13 coupe drivers (and possible S14 folks) remember to put those jobbers in before you install so you dont have to do it at the track like I did. For the track I used full hard front and about 3/4 hardness on the rears. There are no markers or clicking so you have to remember how many turns of the knob there are from full soft to full hard and adjust by your own increments (like choosing 1/8 or 1/4 turns).

I've driven around 10,000 miles on these coilovers in the dry, in the wet, in the snow, in the bitter cold and very hot. There is surface corrosion on all the threaded shock bodies, enought to make messing with the spanners a pain. The front right pillow ball also froze and cause the strut to rotate on the spring instead, constantly causing the spanners to loosen. That was fixed with WD40 and a coating of grease. I drive on horrible PA roads and the shocks have held up fine, and nothing has cracked. They are fairly quiet too (when properly setup, IE: no spring play or sticking pillow ball).

Fixes: I plan on getting helper springs for the rear (like what coilovers without seperate ride hight and spring pre-load adjustment have) so I can drop the car back down to where I want it with the spring spanners. The shock bodies will probably get cleaned and coated with something more durrable. Other than that, Just more tuning.

Was it worth it? For $700, you bet.

[phuphyter]

Awesome review. Thanks!

$700? Wow, I thought they cost more than that. Good to know.

Hows the daily driving treating you?

[Nismo_Freak]

Did you account for the toe in determining adequate camber with the pyrometer?

You might have gone overboard with the camber due to heating of the outer shoulder because of the toe.

[Onizuka]

We didnt go too overboard with the camber, front end stuck alot better under throttle in corners. Im totally guessing on how much camber there was, all I know is it performed ALOT better. I'm planning on going to a race shop for alignment and having them count how many turns to adjust the tie rods for the right toe for both street and track settings. I want just a tad of toe in for the street and zero toe for the track.

Now what I really need is to get me some SPL rear toe and camber arms, as well as subframe collars. Oh yeah and hard bushings all around too

[sleepyRPS13]

i need to get rid of my ksports

[eddiec]

i still find the ksport 7/5 set up too stiff. one day i'll quit b%$chen about it and find a 4kg that fits.

in the neantime i replaced the 21mm hicas rear sway bar w/ a stock 15mm. i'm hoping this reduces my effective spring weight on each corner to get rid of some oversteer. find out this weekend how it turns out.

[xagna]

Where did you find D2/K-sport coilover for $700? Is the source still available? Let me know! [email protected]