Let's talk coilovers

[IPD]

Have you missed the several pages of discussion on the merits of Bilsteins?

Seriously dude... if you don't have anything constructive to say, how about you stay silent?

DG

until/unless the "billstein solution" is offered as a kit from one of our vendors....it's not a truly good option. i didn't buy my turbo kit headers, o2 pipes, wastegates, etc...peacemeal either.

[BigTyla]

until/unless the "billstein solution" is offered as a kit from one of our vendors....it's not a truly good option. i didn't buy my turbo kit headers, o2 pipes, wastegates, etc...peacemeal either.

Performance parts don't have to be offered as a kit to be a good option. Indeed, many of the most effective and performance-oriented products are one-offs. They might be more expensive, but I wouldn't let that be the end-all of judging something as not being a good option.

[DG]

until/unless the "billstein solution" is offered as a kit from one of our vendors....it's not a truly good option

Oh, Jebus. Turn in your Man Card.

You own a rare and obscure Japanese GT car made in tiny numbers for a short period of time - that has no racing heritage and no factory support. There are ZERO economies of scale in the platform and little to no opportunities to leverage other markets.

Shit is NOT going to be spoon fed to you. You are, by virtue of owning this vehicle, in the business of the one-off and assembling of bits from multiple sources. Assuming otherwise, Cleopatra, is to set yourself up for a lot of disappointment.

Are far as Bilstein, Koni, etc's work and quality control goes...

Man, I loved the Bilstein guys. Brett and Bill were awesome to me. (Brett is still there, Bill is at RockShox now) Joe Stimola (RIP) at Penske was awesome, and I always liked Lee at Koni too. These are all great guys who do everything they can to help out customers.

But you have to understand how they work - they don't (except in very special circumstances, like the Neon ACR having Konis on it from the OEM) have access to the OEM engineering data. They don't have models of your car. They cannot be expected to know all the geometry and handling quirks of a thousand car platforms (unless one of them owns the same car as you - likely with a Neon or Miata, not so much with a 3S)

What they do have is a great big book of valvings and the forces that go with them. If your spec matches a valving in the book - awesome possum. If it doesn't, then they start with something close and start making changes to the shimstack to try and get it to match. But at this point, you are on the clock AND you are in competition with everybody else who wants valving. And brother, if you ain't a NASCAR Cup team, you are wayyyyyy down the priority list.

I never had a single Bilstein custom valving exactly match my spec. They were usually in the ballpark, and closer than an OTS valving (like say a 7030 or whatever) but they just didn't have the time to tweak the valvings.

So I started learning to do it myself. It was ultimately faster and cheaper to do it that way, even with the learning curve. And it ain't easy; it would take me a couple of iterations to get to where I thought it was acceptable and even then I was never really perfect.

Their quality control was excellent, in that, if they say X shimstack will make Y force, it absolutely will (Bilstein and Penske especially) The likelihood of Y force matching your spec? Much less.

Ultimately, the only person you can trust with your car is YOU. The buck stops with YOU, not with any supplier or soi disant "expert".

A buddy of mine was the engineer for one of those American LeMans spec LMP cars (the funny looking ones... one was a Pontiac, Porsche had another - spec chassis with your motor in it - I forget the name of the series) The car wouldn't handle and reacted to suspension changes oddly. So he did the step he skipped and measured and modeled the car. Guess what? Rear suspension rockers out of spec - falling rate on the motion ratio. Aha!

It's not being "jaded", it is about being professional.

DG

[IPD]

i'm just saying that when joe-blow looks for suspension, his options are something super-expensive, something affordable that has to be pieced together, or something plug & play that's virtually the same price.

ya think there's a REASON why pre-made 16g kits sell so much better than DIY garrett turbo setups?

[DG]

Which is precisely the reason why the crap vendors can sell crap. It's crap - but it's easy. And cognitive dissidence kicks in and prevents them from realizing that they spend all that coin on crap.

That, and it turns out that evaluating shocks is really difficult, even for the super-talented.

Rise above the simple and easy. Don't waste your money on crap, just because good is hard.

DG

[B-Man]

You just hate everything, don't you?

[DG]

No, not at all.

I'm a huge fan of the 3S platform as a street / GT car. The thing is amazing at turning time into distance. As a long distance highway cruiser, it is one of the fastest and most comfortable cars I've ever driven. Twice now I have departed Gagetown, New Brunswick at 0600 and rolled into Windsor, Ontario before 2300 and felt completely fresh on arrival. Its weight and AWD makes it capable in all weather so you don't have to white-knuckle as much if it gets rainy or icy, and as heavy as it is, Mitsu has worked miracles with the ECS, the RWS, and the split-torque centre diff that makes it handle far more nimbly than it should for its weight. I've had three close calls (including a three-moose slalom) that should have killed me by any rights, but the Stealth made it work. And you can stuff it full of an enormous amount of shit, so I can carry a full deployment-load of kit plus some recreational crap and it all just fits. And the fact that it is utterly unsuited for use as a race car has kept me from disappearing down that rabbit hole again. Gas mileage of 23 Hwy / 11 City isn't great, but it isn't horrible either, and while it has been a bit of a maintenance nightmare, most of that is related to the fact that the previous owner beat it into the ground, more so than any intrinsic flaw.

For going stupid fast more easily and cheaply than anyone should ever have a right to, you cannot beat a used C5 Z06 Corvette. I have never been in a car that has gone that fast, that easily, that cheaply. Vipers and 911s are ultimately faster, but cost way more and are WAY harder to drive. Seriously, anybody who is considering modifying a 3S to go autocrossing or track-day driving needs to try a C5 Z06 first - ideally back-to-back with your 3S. And that's unmodified. Modified, they just get faster but stay easy to drive (except, maybe, with regards to throttle modulation if you go stupid big on the throttle body). I have driven an 1100 HP C5 Z06, and aside from a little learning curve on throttle control, I have never been in a car that had so little drama and went so quickly.

For going racing wheel to wheel, Formula Ford is where it is at. A real formula car, that follows all those rules about car setup that you see in the books, and can be driven hard and often, for a ridiculously cheap outlay and even cheaper regular maintenance. No fucking around with production car bullshit, just a simple set of double-a-arms and a bog simple motor.

But for really learning how to drive, a 125cc kart is just incredible. Almost no maintenance, and what you do have is of a similar order to a fucking bicycle. But ludicrously fast, sequential shift, and almost no setup tricks to learn, mostly just driver ability and driver mass.

I'm also a huge fan of the sponsors I had who kept their word to me and never did anything to make me embarrassed or ashamed. Most of these guys (like TRE transmissions) are more DSM guys, but places like Forced Performance turbos are flat-out awesome and I love them to death. The guys at Bilstein, Penske, and Koni were all great too. GEMS in the UK - great guys. Hypercoils; awesome folks. Claude Rouelle is a complete hoot and is willing to listen to even little guys like me. Carroll Smith was amazing and all his books are required reading (link here: Autocross to Win (DGs Autocross Secrets) - Further Reading ) Bill Mitchell is a great guy and fun to talk to....

And I haven't even scratched the surface: I raced against some incredible people: Kent Rafferty (RIP) Chris Lindburg (RIP), Bob Tunnell, Vic Sias, Marcus Merideth, Corey the S4 Guy, Bob Endicott, Matthew Braun.... the list is just massive. It's easier to list the assholes (although I won't) because the list of incredible people is just SO much longer. Racers, by and large, are great people. T00ners, in general, SUCK - but people who compete with each other every single weekend tend to be better for it.

I could go on and on and on.

The issue here is that the 3S platform is what it is - a GT. A very GOOD GT, in many ways. But it ain't no race car. And over and over and over again I see guys who are infatuated with race cars talking about their 3S like it could be one too - and demanding race car parts (in kit form, no less) with absolutely no understanding of what that really means. Well, I know what that really means. I learned that lesson the hard way. And anybody who actually listens to what I say will be ultimately better for it (even as I describe EXACTLY how to transform their 3S into something vaguely race car shaped anyway - because if you are going to do it, you might as well do it right).

DG

[MR2]

You have to experience it...to fully understand it


depressingly.

going to have to replace my rear's with DMS's soon too I think, with the fronts being a little stiffer the rears arn't so good.

[niterydr]

If won were to go with a ground control coil over setup and wanted similar street manners, what weight spring would recommend on a nearly stock weight 3/s?
600/432?

Reading more and more, thinking I want to just replace my ECS struts and put on GC coil overs and call it a day.

[Maximal]

I had GC coilovers for a while and they were pretty horrible. The ride was way too stiff and they were also pretty noisey without some sort of helper springs to take up the slack when the suspension unloaded. I don't think I'd feel all that comfortable racing with them.

I'm running the Megans now and after several track days they do their job. They may not be perfectly setup for my car but there are a lot of other things I can do to it before doing that will make it worth it.

Years ago I talked to a company about making custom coilovers for our cars and it got pretty pricey. However, they didn't have off the shelf struts for our cars. Now that Bilstein does maybe it's time to look into it. However on a car by car basis they're going to be just as pricey as already mentioned here.