TEIN SUSPENSION

[phanatikz32]

looks like i might be able to get my hands on some tein suspension parts (adjustable tension rods, and uper controll arms) for a good price. but be4 i purchase anything id like to know what z32 people think of tein. does anybody here recomend their products for the z32? also does anybody know where i can get some front and rear tein super street coilovers for a good price (under 1000)?

[nsrZ32]

Tein makes top notch stuff. I run some old school Tein coilovers on my Z32 and have installed Tein parts on lots and lots of other cars. I highly recommend them

[freakonaleash1187]

I have heard many good things about Tein and have never really heard anything bad on them. But I highly doubt you will be able to find any Tein coilovers for under $1k.

[phanatikz32]

yea your right. ive been looking over the last few days, and the cheapest i found were 1200 on ebay, but they prob. wont be there for long, its gonna take me about a month be4 i can afford to upgrade but im sure it will be worth it in the end

can anybody explain or describe the difference im going to feel in handling from coilovers and adjustable suspension parts?

[evildky]

in general coil overs are all about the same, well at least the ones made with a decent level of quality, the more important issue is spring rates, many people just buy whatever set they find and assume they are getting great handling, running the propper spring rate for your needs is very important, if your autocrossing 400 lb/in would be a pretty good starting point, for road racing 600lb/in (these might be low for such a heavy car but this is what I have seen in many early z's), for street i's just a matter of how cushy you want to be, you could match the stock spring rate if you're only desire was to gain ride height adjustabulity by reducing spring preload and you can run you're stock shocks without blowing them, the good news is the most decent coil overs sell basic length and diameter springs which can be swapped out for higher lower spring rates to suit your needs, any decent race shop will sell 2.5 id in a few lengths depending on your needs ynormally in 25 or 50 lb/in incriments, I'd highly recoment looking into ground controll, their tech department is staffed by weekend racers who can give you a good idea as to what spring rates are gonna give you the performance you want, and what shock valving will be neded to handle the spring rates suited to your application

[phanatikz32]

i want to be able to corner at high speeds, and decrease body roll, while maintaining a semi-comfortable ride. I want to be able to keep up with lighter cars in time attack runs. what parts would you suggest i look into to acomplish this? i got out beat by an eg6 at GMR and it pissed me off, but i was putting off suspension work to do my engine swapp, but now since my suspension is ****ed up i figured id just upgrade now.

[nsrZ32]

Make sure you do a quality set of sway bars. They will solve your body roll problems in the corners. I went with Suspension Tech myself for those.

[evildky]

a good set of matched roll bars will definitely help keep your car flat in the corners, lowering the center of grvitya nd roll center will help as well, quality chocks such asn the race series double adjustables form koni will allow you to fine tune the compression and rebound for the track and you can then loosen up for street use, i seem to recall stock spring rates being well below 300 lbs/in so a 400 lbin should be a step in the right direction without ratteling any teeth loose, one advantage of the coil overs being you can have 2 sets, you can buy a softer set to run on the street say 250 lbs/in, I highly recomend you call koni's tech line as well as ground control, or even tein or whatever brands you feel comfortable with, I know koni and GC both have great customer service department willing and able to help you select the right product, heck, GC also makes ADS shocks but their tech's recomended the tokiko illumina as a more affordable option for my needs

[nsrZ32]

^ I notice you recommend GC a lot....that surprises me as I've never heard anything good about them at all around the track (auto-x or road course)

I still say go with a quality matched complete coilover setup instead of trying to match up struts and springs.

[evildky]

when it comed to coil overs there isn't much to mess up, so long as the spring rates are within a close tolerance of what they are advertised as, and they do have a good customer service department as least the tech portion of customer service, and when you order good shocks (ADS, Penske, Bilsten, Koni Race) you can have them valved to work with whatever spring rate you want to run and are rebuildable, seem the only teins I've seen are on street cars and the owners have no idea of their spring rate they just bought a kit and assume the springs are the correct rate their application, I just hate to see someone go buy an off the shelf kit with no idea what kinda of valving or spring rates their getting, I'ver personally never seen a track ro autocross car running teins, at least not one that was near the top of the raw sort, I know the top finnishers in FP at nats were running ADS with GC's, but I can't afford the ADS

I just hate the mentality that " I have coil overs so my car handles great" the truth is you can put coil overs on your car and make it handle worse, getting the propper valving and spring rate is the difference, my car currently has koni calssic's with ST springs when put this set up on I had to run a fatter rear bar and a skineir frotn bar to ballance the setup, my car consistantly lands in the top 10% raw sort, i just can't seem to keep up with those formula cars and 4 or 5 fendered cars

[phanatikz32]

How do i know what spring rates to look for, and whats good and whats not? is the spring rate how much pressure it takes for the spring to compress? what is valving? heres a link to the ebay coilovers how would these handle on my car?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors...&rd=1

[evildky]

spring rate is a measure of how many lbs of force it takes to compress the spring one inch expressed as lb/in, those that you linked are rated 448/336 which I assume means 448 lb/in front and 336 lb/in rear (that or progressive rate which is good fro street and crap for competition), which I would think would be a good tight setup for a street driven occasional track car, definitley gonna be stiffer than stock but on a track car of that weight 600 lb/in would be closer to ideal, and being a set I'd assume those shocks are valved to handle those spring rates, with many high end shocks you can have them rebuilt to handle the spring rates you desire, they say they have 16 levels of damping, with that many adjustments I'd assume rebound and compression are both adjustable, compression is about how much resistance the shock has to compressing, rebound is about how much force it pushes itself back out with, if the springs are too strong for a shock they will blow out the internal valving quickly requiring a rebuild or replacement, I have no idea if teins are rebuildable or not, for the price range I'd think they would be

[phanatikz32]

wut about these

http://www.autopartswarehouse....d=283

[evildky]

the illumina's are a decent dual purpose shock for a primary street car, I don't see the spring rate but tokiko's ttend to be marginally stiffer than stock, they would be an improvement over stock for sure, probably not as good a set up as the teins but at half the price they look like a bargain

[nsrZ32]

wut about these

http://www.autopartswarehouse....d=283

That's a quality all purpose setup.

[phanatikz32]

what about the illumina adjustables, beneath the ones on the top?