Review: BC Racing BR Type Coilovers

[Loop]

First and foremost, I want to thank BC racing for getting these coilovers out to me as quickly as possible. I want to thank Tristan @ BC racing for answering all my emails. Awesome customer service!

Initial impressions: These came very nicely packaged and nothing was damage inside. It is protected by bubble wraps and cardboard materials. When I took these out of the box, first thing in mind is a very high quality built and how pretty these looked. It’s a strong, heavy, and thick built. Looks way more solid than the OEM ones. Also includes your brackets for your brake lines and ABS.



Driving impressions: Hands down way better than my Eibach spring w/ OEM shocks. I had my setting to 15 fronts and 10 rears. The ride felt smoother, much better handling, and less harsh than my Eibachs with the settings I had. I have only used this setting so far, but I will be updating my thread later on when I test out all the settings. Personally I like my ride stiff.

Handling: I love this part about the BC racing coilovers. It handles amazing. Cornering on turns couldn't be more fun. It’s just sturdier and less body roll.

Noise: The noise did increase a little, but I was going to expect this when you have pillow ball mounts. You are having metal on metal. I will be re-tightening everything to see if this can be completely eliminated. Though this isn't too much of an issue for me because in the end you’re having better performance.

Price: Best bang for your buck with all the features it has. Don't miss out the group buy that Circuit Motorsport is having!

Installation: Very straight forward, fitment is great. I only had one issue and that is the locking nut they provided for the rear which were a little too big. So I went to Lowes and bought the right locking nut size for only $4 for 2, one on each side. I will be mentioning this to BC racing to make sure they fix this small issue.

Dampening: Love it. 30 way adjustable for fine tuning. You can feel and hear the clicks to know which one you are on. It only requires counting and turning the knob. Very simple to do.

The only problem is when you want to do the rear dampening; you are going to need to jack it up so you can fit your hand. It’s definitely not BC racing fault for doing this, it is how Nissan built the Altima because you have no access to the rear strut from the trunk. Which would have been easier since you could of just pop the trunk and adjust it from there.

Front camber adjustments: Definitely a bonus feature! I have not tried this, which I will need to do because of my aggressive wheel setup I have. In order to do this, you are going to have to do it before hand because you have very limited access when it’s installed. Here is a picture of what I mean:



Ride height adjustability: I did not adjust mine and used the settings it came from the factory. Definitely has potential to be lowered more and go back to stock height. You can adjust these to your style. This isn't hard to do, you will need to take off your wheel and use the supplied wrench BC Racing gives you. Follow its instructions for proper lowering or heightening. The reason why I haven't adjusted mine yet is because I am letting it settle and I can go from there. Even without adjusting, it is lower than my Eibach springs still. Which I will be showing pictures later on this post.

Current gap measurement:Front

Rear

Eibach:

BC Racing:

Pictures:

Note: Take in consideration that I have reduce weight going on.

[bunda4th]

Very nice. I wish I had money now...

Can you take a picture of it from the back so we can see how much contact the tire get to the ground.

Those look nice and your car is awesome!

What size wheels/tire combo are you running? Also do you know if you will rub or not if you go a bit lower as in you drop it to make it flush. (no gap between fender/tire)

[nordy]

Wow! Pure Sex...

Ive ordered and can't wait

[LongBeachCoupe]

Ohh come on LOOP!They look great, but I thought youd crank em down all the way just to show us the "low life"!

[legend_217]

Loop ! Do you have to take out your Eibach pro-kit and put oem springs on when you install BC coilovers ?

[LongBeachCoupe]

Loop ! Do you have to take out your Eibach pro-kit and put oem springs on when you install BC coilovers ?

Unless im missing something BIG here lol... you take ALL springs off, OEM, Eibach, H&R.. whatever!

See those Black curly things, those are the springs for this!

[hamandbacon]

Loop ! Do you have to take out your Eibach pro-kit and put oem springs on when you install BC coilovers ?

you must not know a lot about how cars work..

[LongBeachCoupe]

Ham he had me second guess myself for a minute!

A little knowledge that I used to educate myself after royally screwing up my car in Forza 2 lol....

So, what are coilovers? Most people know they're expensive, race cars use them, they're expensive, some show cars have them, Loop has them, and they're expensive! (But everyone's talking about them!)

In the simplest definition, coilovers replace the stock shocks, struts, and springs on a vehicle and enable ride height and weight distribution to be adjusted with minimal effort. (simple enough..)

Most coilover systems also allow shock compression rates to be altered through the turn of a knob like these BC ones. One of the best features of coilover systems is how easy they are to install many manufacturers ship their coilovers pre-assembled. But there has to be more to it, right?

Coilovers were designed with the racetrack in mind and performance as a primary concern. Through the use of scales that measure the amount of weight each tire supports, coilovers can be manipulated through compressing and uncompressing springs to give the vehicle more desirable weight distribution. No problem, right? This straightforward concept turns more complicated when a specific weight distribution is desired. Unless your tracking the car hard, just think of Forza 2 lol.

During cornering, weight transfers across the chassis diagonally. In other words, when entering a left-hand turn, weight travels from the left-rear to the right-front of the vehicle. This fact also holds true when adjusting coilover systems to achieve a desired corner weight. For simplicity's sake, we're going to use an example utilizing a Utopian car weighing 3,000 pounds. We're also going to discount the driver's weight and assume the car is perfectly symmetrical. By putting the car on scales that weigh each corner of the vehicle, we see that the left-front weighs 950 pounds, and the right-front weighs a similar 950 pounds. On the rear, both the left and right weigh 550 pounds.

Plain and simple, corner weighting is a difficult task that is time consuming (And did I mention difficult?). The process is so complicated that you must actually use some of the knowledge you attained in your advanced placement physics class in school. The concept is fairly straightforward, but the actual practice will kick your butt.

As I said, weight transfers diagonally, so the coilovers must be adjusted with the knowledge that when you adjust the right-front, the left-rear will be affected, too. But it doesn't end there. Let's say, for instance, that the right-front coilover spring is lowered....

What affect will that have on the left-rear? When the spring collar is lowered, the weight resting on that corner will decrease. The weight resting on the diagonal wheel will, more often than not, decrease as well, but the weight resting on the other two wheels will be force-increased, depending on the chassis design. Each adjustment affects every corner, and that's why the process of corner weighting gets so immensely complicated.

In our hypothetical example, if we wanted to decrease the weight on the right-front wheel, the spring collar should be lowered. The weight on that wheel would decrease beneath 950 pounds, the diagonal wheel should decrease beyond its resting 550 pounds, and the left-front and right-rear resting weights should increase accordingly, as there must always be a constant weight pushing on the ground in a stationary car. A lot of little adjustments must be made at each corner, and detailed records must be kept in order to find out what worked and what didn't and by how much.

[Loop]

Very nice. I wish I had money now...

Can you take a picture of it from the back so we can see how much contact the tire get to the ground.

Those look nice and your car is awesome!

What size wheels/tire combo are you running? Also do you know if you will rub or not if you go a bit lower as in you drop it to make it flush. (no gap between fender/tire)

I still need to do an alignment, but I can still get a picture up within a few days.

Wheel setup: 19x9 +29Tire setup: 245/35/19I have stretch tires.

If you have the right wheel/tire setup you shouldn't rub if your looking for that slam/flush look. Since my setup is aggressive, I will need to camber the front since it seems to be sitting at zero. With the camber adjustment built into the coilover, this will be easy to fix. The rear has a natural negative camber, a little less than the Eibach, and I will be rolling my rear fenders just in case if the camber needs to be corrected.

[LongBeachCoupe]

Vin, check this Link Do you think you can do what they did to the g37 so you can adjust the rear with ease?

[Loop]

Are you talking about the rear dampening extender? If so, you are block off from doing that. BC Racing seem to redo the design because of that. Take off the trunk carpeting and you will see why.
Modified by Loop at 11:59 PM 5/3/2009

[LongBeachCoupe]

Doh! I was just taking a stab at it for you!

[FGFCacoupe]

Viscious stance. Cant wait to see it slammed more

[nnguyen]

great review! ill be sure to order mine from modern racing soon.. since i like local.

One question tho, how would one go about adjust the camber in the front since it block? Do i have to take off the whole assemble?

And thanks again for such a great review! slam it! lol.

[windex]

Great review loop! One question though... What size is the locking nut that you had to buy?

[Circuit Motorsports]

Awesome review, car looks great!

If anyone has any questions on these or just wants to place an order through us just shoot us an email - [email protected]

Get in on our group buy!


Modified by Circuit Motorsports at 12:57 PM 5/8/2009

[desertdragon]

Hey Loop, do your front tires sit flush with the fenders? or do they stick out about 2 mm?

Thank you in advance.

[legend_217]

you must not know a lot about how cars work..

That's why I'm here. lol

[akamaru]

nice Loopreally nicecant wait to get these babies~

[One Crazy Max]

it looks very nice loop.

did the wheels end up looking more flush?

how heavy are they compared to stock, and by the looks of them they seem to be very high quality.

i think im going to be getting these for the summer.

[toxik]

lol i have a dirty mind

hehe nice loop

[Jose3.5]

My buddy ordered these for his sedan and should be getting them this week

[akamaru]

lol i have a dirty mind too LOL

[PHENOMenalVinyl]

wow i wish i had the money to do this.....but i dont so yea........guess the eibachs will be the new f/s item on here lol

[Loop]

Thank you all. I will respond shortly to your questions.

[Loop]

great review! ill be sure to order mine from modern racing soon.. since i like local.

One question tho, how would one go about adjust the camber in the front since it block? Do i have to take off the whole assemble?

And thanks again for such a great review! slam it! lol.

Make sure they are a authorized BC dealer and that they actually have these in stock. These are going to be hard to get since they just came out. Very limited production at the moment.

I am not to positive on the front camber adjustment. It looks like you are going to need to take off the entire coilover due to limited access. I would ask BC Racing or CMS if you have questions.

Great review loop! One question though... What size is the locking nut that you had to buy?

I am not 100% what is the correct nut size since I bought the wrong size myself. I believe it is m12x1.25 though. I will know soon when I get my new bolts from Nissan.

Hey Loop, do your front tires sit flush with the fenders? or do they stick out about 2 mm?

Thank you in advance.

They are directly under my fender LOL. I need to camber my front so I can lower it more.

it looks very nice loop.

did the wheels end up looking more flush?

how heavy are they compared to stock, and by the looks of them they seem to be very high quality.

i think im going to be getting these for the summer.

The front went back to its stock camber from it looks like. The rears actually look more flush, but I will need to roll my rear fenders for a more flush look.

Sorry, I am not sure about the weight.

[theoctopussi]

what's the link to get these?

[Loop]

what's the link to get these?

Circuit Motorsport is having a groupbuy for these coilovers on NICO!

Link: zer...axima

[akamaru]

Loop, is there any squeeking noises from the coil?and have u tried to go over speed bumps?

[nnguyen]