Mini Review...Tein Flex (No EDFC)

**MR2** · 01-24-2011, 07:38 AM

well, spoiler...at this stage I'm not real impressed!

I bought a full Tein Flex kit from some american dude (hai!) and they were dutifully shipped on over & arrived in excellent condition, as I think I've mentioned a few times I've been pretty much after something that would allow me to have more space for a wider tyre while keeping a nice high profile to reduce rim damage from the arsehat roads we have (Seriously).
anyway on paper these things seemed to fit the bill, no damn spring hat to fight with, half decent brand, made for the car & Adjustable (oh I do love tweaking).

as they arrived:

Soo, I installed the front set only (to play with it) I wanted to change on thing at a time, and had the 19" rims to go on that needed the extra clearance of the front shocks, rears fitted on no worries, for reference the tyres I'm using are 245/40R19, they are ~1" larger in diameter than normal so the speedo would be a smigion fast.

installation was pretty boring, everything lined up, was only missing a bolt that the last guy snapped off so naturally I used cable ties

the first photo shows the brake line that I had to cable tie to the strut(pre-tying)

Showing clearance:

The Manual: Tein Flex Manual for 91-99 GTO/VR4

**MR2** · 01-24-2011, 07:39 AM

The Meat:

a few interesting things:

1, On page 5 of the manual listed above (the useful page) it says that the height adjustment should be ~1.1" this is the space between the top locking ring and the height locking ring, for me to be happy with the cars clearance I had to adjust this up to almost 3" (see the last pic above), this still had 2" of thread in the Clevis so I consider it safe, the "reference" values were faaaarr to low for any of the speed humps/roundabouts/dips/potholes I normally traverse.
2, the stock ECS Covers WILL fit as long as you don't have EDFC installed, and no offence but I cannot reallllly see the point of EDFC considering that it cannot adjust spring rates, which is what you need to balance your valve rates against. it's kinda an expensive toy, which is why I've never bought it even though i've seem them for sale even as low as $250 second hand).
3, you COULD probably fit the ecs covers ontop of the EDFC motors if you installed some shims (love the sleeper look).
4, if you install the coil over tops with the struts all the way in, then adjust it back to normal camber at the clevis it gives you as much tyre clearance as possible.

Soo, giving it a fairly normal cruise all seemed good, a bit harder than stock (to be expected, stock is meant to be 4kg springs, the teins are 12kg (so I'm told)) I played around with the settings, to setup the suspension you kinda have to have a hard valve rate to match the spring rate, you can toy around a little more if you have separate rebound, but alas I don't! anyway with some more day to day driving it seemed that a setting of 8 was fine, then I found with some roadworks around me that the car would tend to continue to bounce after the bump was long gone...so I pushed it up to 14, this seemed to be magic, the undulations were a little harder felt but there was only one! (highlander) this was fine until I decided to plant it to get around a car...low and behold the car managed to lighten up the steering wheel considerably twice on the same piece of road, this is pretty scary, the front of the car was lifting up enough for the tyres to leave the road and the steering to be come very very light! sooo I backed her off down to 10...in theory all better? next time I took this bit of road, though not quite as fast the car did not seem to bounce as much....and diden't seem to create phantom bumps after.

the final test, and this is my big one, there are some interesting private roads that I occasionally visit, these are by no means wonderfully paved or in anyway level these roads are pretty much the only reason I've started to upgrade the car and my last test before considering the car to be track ready

, so here I am driving into an S Bend, I'm on the left side (remember americans, we're on the other side to you) traveling into the first curve (to the right)....just as I'm on the brakes hard on the way in turned 90% of what was needed for the rest of the corner, WHACK a nice big bump and OOOOHHHHSHIT the car lifts off, when the wheels come back and steering is doing SOMETHING I'm into the leaves and rubble and crap that lines the 2 foot between the edge of the road marking and the SOLD ARMCO railing!! totally heart in mouth as the car held on through the crap until the S changed into the left hand and she pulled back into the open bit of the road....

these shocks are coming the FUCK OFF!!!.

anyone want?

anyway, before I give them the last harrah, I'm going to try 2 things, firstly I'm going to wind them up to maximum....see what it's like...then down 2...then down another two. if none of that makes me happy (And I suspect it won't...the problem here(IMHO) is travel, the shocks & springs cannot absorb enough before it must be pushed back into the frame, as the frame itself takes the force and starts to push away the springs help it even more and you kinda having your arse on a pogo stick? (visuals PLEASE)
the SECOND thing I'll be trying is seeing how I go with fitting the 6kg springs on the rear into the front shocks...then adjust and see...still not helping what the boat/car will do when you hit bumpers!

Last step will be stepping into FULL rally coil overs...something with ~6-8" of play...something with a more inbetween spring....maybe even something that electronic adjustment will actually be useful on :O

till I find that Coil-over, it will be back to stock struts.

**MR2** · 01-24-2011, 07:39 AM

Not much to say...assuming the 6kg spring fails in the front strut, I'll sell the whole lot, not that it's of much use, since Ksport don't do a Gravel Rally kit, but the Ksport Rally kit for other cars of similar weight is a much more reasonable 6kg front and 5kg rear, Ksports AR kit is the only one made for this car and it's faaaar to high a spring rates for practical street use....local guys Pedders can do custom shocks so when I'm feeling flush I'll go hit them up.

everyone feel free to post your Tein Flex experiances.

**RL7** · 01-24-2011, 08:33 PM

I have these on my car. I bought them second hand and haven't really paid much attention to them. I didn't even know how to adjust them until now. I'll probably do some measuring and fiddling with them when I have some time. The lightening of the front you mention is interesting, because if I get into it, the front will lighten up and get a little fidgitey. I just attributed this to the tires losing traction and torque steer(fwd).

I like them fine, but that's probably because I keep in mind that most of these suspension kits are made for the track. A pothole or speed bump in the middle of a race track would be the end for most cars that hit it. I go over speed bumps slow and try to avoid potholes. That being said, it's not all that bad over bumps. I had a hard core race suspension on one of my previous cars and that was hell to drive on the road. The tein's don't provide a luxurious ride, but they aren't nearly as bad as those were. I would not recommend them for everyday commuting over shit roads or off-roading or anything like that though. I actually found the stock suspension pretty good for that type of stuff.

Where are the clearance issues with the stock suspension? What hits?

**MR2** · 01-24-2011, 09:04 PM

no ground clearance issues with stock suspension only ever hit front bar on stuff.

**RL7** · 01-24-2011, 09:29 PM

No, I mean does the wider tire hit the stock strut body?

**GTOJOE** · 01-26-2011, 06:27 AM

Hey Mike!! buy some shoes. Every pic you post you have bare feet

I found that after I fitted a front strut brace the front suspension seemed better. Could be in my head but I though the stiffness of the body forced the shocks to do their job instead of the body taking some of the flex. But like I said it could be in my head hahaha.