eddyvr4
Leaving Skid Marks
Having run with the Basic TEIN low down wagon coilovers (the cheapest teins) for a while, whilst these were a definite upgrade from the stock suspension, i was still less than satisfied with the handling, and was looking to further improve it at minimal cost. My 'eds car' thread goes into detail if youre interested. http://ozvr4.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3253
but running 18s, (Sumitomo HTRZIII 235/40) and with the teins, the problem could be summarised as
-More neutral, but still tendancy to understeer when pushed.
-Dropped (only) 23mm, underside of car crashed into tarmac on heavy undulations at highish speed on a few occasions.
-Still floaty during rapid direction changes
The Teins had a great NVH, almost same as factory, but were just not firm enough for the combination of ride height & road conditions that i was experiencing.
I was confident swaybars would drastically improve the floaty direction change issue above, and the understeer, but they would do nothing for the cars tendancy to bottom out, and my dump and engin crossmember were having a losing battle with the bitumen, and i had to address this, as it was making me paranoid driving it at speed, on my favorite backroads. Also it was chaper to upgrade my coilovers to these, than to get the swaybars....
So i did a fair bit of investigation and could find very little (none?) bad rap on these Taiwanese "BC racing" BR coilovers, and quite a bit of good. Obviously a major factor was low cost, this was not a "cost no object" exercise!
eg, http://features.evolutionm.net/article.php?id=84
but do your own Google research..
There was reservation from clubVR4 that these would have same problem as the diayama units, which were problematic basically due to the lack of height adjustment, (too low) but i found this is not a problem.
BC racing also do inverted and remote reservoir units, but not for our chassis. (far as i know)
after much discussion with the factory and the NZ ebay supplier (both who were quite helpful) we established the correct model for galant/legnum is the BR series B-01-RS. (since these discussions the ebay supplier, 'peformance guru' is now advertising these specifically for legnum) They have rubber top mounts which is good as it hopefully keeps the noise and harshness down.
My units came with 12kg/mm front and 6kg/mm rear springs as supplied, although the factory revised the fronts recently to 10kg if you pick up newer stock. (contrast this to the teins which are 5kg/3kg) The high spring rates concerned me, i did want an ok ride, but more on that later...
I also got the adjuster extenders which were only $33 more. So total cost under $1350 to my door. Best price wholesale suspension in AUS would do me was $1700 + delivery.
Taking delivery (NZ to adelaide - 3 days later!) there was nothing to sugggest cheapness in the build, if anything they looked nicer made than my teins, although i got them second hand. However the real test will be over time, so its premature to classify the quality as top notch, but there was no dissapointmant on opening the box, quite the contrary.
Also noticed they had plastic upper and lower spring caps to suppress noise, wich is a small but nice touch
heres a pic with the optional extenders, which i cut to length in the installation.
Installation was very straightforward. the factory height setting is extremely low. (maybe so they pack in a smaller box) I added exactly 30mm extra height on the threaded adjuster, front and rear to give the same drop as my teins (about 1 inch from stock)
If required you could drop the car as little as 10mm, although i think trying to run it at OEM height as they advertise is possible would be right on the very limit, (25mm thread still in the bottom bracket) but if you assume a minimum of 10mm drop, and a maximum of, well, way too much.
Encouragingly It appeared the units had been 're-engineered' to an extent for the legnum/galant chassis, as equal visible thread on all 4 struts resulted in exactly the same height from floor to the guard all round (in my case 640mm), even though the front and rear struts are quite different in design. Maybe trivial, but it gave me an impression at least some thought had gone into the vehicle specific customising of what is obviously a mass produced universal type coilover. (in terms of piston size and features)
More on this later, as im not sure i can say the same for the range of damping adjustment.
the C spanners supplied fit properly, and whist spring preload can be adjusted the factory warns to leave it alone, or risk a very poor ride.
the user manual is poor engrish, a bit confusing and fairly generic, but gets the message across if you read it carefully
The lock-rings and threaded tube are aluminium,, and there is warnigs about trashing the threads if you dont clean them thoroughly before adjusting them.
the units are about 500gm (10%?) lighter than the teins, personally i would have prefeered slightly heavier and in steel (like tein) for robustness, , but at least they wont rust..(like the teins were starting to)
here is pic of rear adjuster instalkled , with extender. nice and neat.
Stay tuned - Next installment will be road test...
but running 18s, (Sumitomo HTRZIII 235/40) and with the teins, the problem could be summarised as
-More neutral, but still tendancy to understeer when pushed.
-Dropped (only) 23mm, underside of car crashed into tarmac on heavy undulations at highish speed on a few occasions.
-Still floaty during rapid direction changes
The Teins had a great NVH, almost same as factory, but were just not firm enough for the combination of ride height & road conditions that i was experiencing.
I was confident swaybars would drastically improve the floaty direction change issue above, and the understeer, but they would do nothing for the cars tendancy to bottom out, and my dump and engin crossmember were having a losing battle with the bitumen, and i had to address this, as it was making me paranoid driving it at speed, on my favorite backroads. Also it was chaper to upgrade my coilovers to these, than to get the swaybars....
So i did a fair bit of investigation and could find very little (none?) bad rap on these Taiwanese "BC racing" BR coilovers, and quite a bit of good. Obviously a major factor was low cost, this was not a "cost no object" exercise!
eg, http://features.evolutionm.net/article.php?id=84
but do your own Google research..
There was reservation from clubVR4 that these would have same problem as the diayama units, which were problematic basically due to the lack of height adjustment, (too low) but i found this is not a problem.
BC racing also do inverted and remote reservoir units, but not for our chassis. (far as i know)
after much discussion with the factory and the NZ ebay supplier (both who were quite helpful) we established the correct model for galant/legnum is the BR series B-01-RS. (since these discussions the ebay supplier, 'peformance guru' is now advertising these specifically for legnum) They have rubber top mounts which is good as it hopefully keeps the noise and harshness down.
My units came with 12kg/mm front and 6kg/mm rear springs as supplied, although the factory revised the fronts recently to 10kg if you pick up newer stock. (contrast this to the teins which are 5kg/3kg) The high spring rates concerned me, i did want an ok ride, but more on that later...
I also got the adjuster extenders which were only $33 more. So total cost under $1350 to my door. Best price wholesale suspension in AUS would do me was $1700 + delivery.
Taking delivery (NZ to adelaide - 3 days later!) there was nothing to sugggest cheapness in the build, if anything they looked nicer made than my teins, although i got them second hand. However the real test will be over time, so its premature to classify the quality as top notch, but there was no dissapointmant on opening the box, quite the contrary.
Also noticed they had plastic upper and lower spring caps to suppress noise, wich is a small but nice touch
heres a pic with the optional extenders, which i cut to length in the installation.
Installation was very straightforward. the factory height setting is extremely low. (maybe so they pack in a smaller box) I added exactly 30mm extra height on the threaded adjuster, front and rear to give the same drop as my teins (about 1 inch from stock)
If required you could drop the car as little as 10mm, although i think trying to run it at OEM height as they advertise is possible would be right on the very limit, (25mm thread still in the bottom bracket) but if you assume a minimum of 10mm drop, and a maximum of, well, way too much.
Encouragingly It appeared the units had been 're-engineered' to an extent for the legnum/galant chassis, as equal visible thread on all 4 struts resulted in exactly the same height from floor to the guard all round (in my case 640mm), even though the front and rear struts are quite different in design. Maybe trivial, but it gave me an impression at least some thought had gone into the vehicle specific customising of what is obviously a mass produced universal type coilover. (in terms of piston size and features)
More on this later, as im not sure i can say the same for the range of damping adjustment.
the C spanners supplied fit properly, and whist spring preload can be adjusted the factory warns to leave it alone, or risk a very poor ride.
the user manual is poor engrish, a bit confusing and fairly generic, but gets the message across if you read it carefully
The lock-rings and threaded tube are aluminium,, and there is warnigs about trashing the threads if you dont clean them thoroughly before adjusting them.
the units are about 500gm (10%?) lighter than the teins, personally i would have prefeered slightly heavier and in steel (like tein) for robustness, , but at least they wont rust..(like the teins were starting to)
here is pic of rear adjuster instalkled , with extender. nice and neat.
Stay tuned - Next installment will be road test...