BC Racing coilovers - review

[eddyvr4]

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...

 

[Scottie]

Awesome write-up mate!

I have always been curious about these coilovers and run the Tein Super Wagons myself. Your comments on those seemed very familiar!

Can't wait for the road test!

 

[Guest]

This sounds promising compared to the issues I had with my Daiyamas. What's the overall length of these compared to your teins. There also appears to be more travel in the coils compared to what I had.

 

[Hotwire]

Love the Jack Stands eddy (wood blocks for the win)

Good writeup - hope they provide the additional handling you're looking for.

 

[unclepaulie]

very intersted in this, i hav heard only good things from Honda boys about the BC coilovers. im tossing up between these and HSD TT coilovers

 

[eddyvr4]

Peter, i didnt measure the length of the teins before i sold them....

Thanks Lee, the car sat for a good few weeks on the blocks, looking very sorry for itself..

 

[eddyvr4]

Now on to the road test..
firstly the factory damping has 30 settings, 30 being the softest, and 0 being the hardest. (I think they should have done it the other way) the manual advised the factory setting was 8, which is about 65% up the firmness scale, and thats where i set to start with.

Took off slowly down my driveway.. felt quite firm, in fact pretty bouncy, but maybe this was just because i had a dirt driveway.. but out onto the street and the bouncing didnt get any better, felt very firm, steering felt more direct, but what a price to pay. It honestly felt like i was driving on oval wheels, it was woeful. How on earth could this be considered an acceptable ride, i was on the factory default damping setting remember...

Ok then, time to start fiddling with the damping and see if this helps. wound it up softer to 12, front and back. out again, and slightly better, but still embarassingly bouncy, so much so that the handling was irrellevant, the oscillations were so distracting it was not possible to think about anything else.

This was not at all promising..

So now it was time to stop stuffing around, pulled over and dialled damping all the way to softest setting, 30.
Back out onto the road, and - phew! what relief! The wheels were now round again and i was gliding along in relative comfort.

Now that a i had some proper suspension again i could start to assess how it peformed.

So on this softest damping setting of 30, how good was the ride? in summary:

The ride is not as nice as the 5kg/3kg teins, but suprisingly not a whole lot worse either. The car certainly tracks all the small undulations in the road, and it feels quite firm, but when you actually hit a bump there is a decent amount of compliance, and less of a shock than you expect, given the static firmness. Also because the car sits much flatter and doesnt sag when you sit in it etc, (due to the high spring rates) there is always plenty of travel in the suspension, so youre not in as much danger of hitting the bump stops.

if i got in the car and didnt know the spring rate, based on the ride on the softest damping setting i would have guessed 8kg/5kg, not 12/6 which is what they are. so this is quite a relief, they dont feel as hard as they look on paper. (emphasising again, on the softest setting)

Now, what about the actual handling?

Starting on the softest setting again, all round, car tips in to corners much flatter. the outside front wheel does not bog down nearly as much, and hence there is much less understeer. still a tendancy to understeer, and does feel underdamped when starting to push (as you would expect when the damping is on softest). The car takes a while to 'recover' from undulations and still feels a little floaty On dips in the road however there is now minimal concern on bottoming out.

so tightened up the damping 4 clicks to 26, and back to the start of the loop that i was driving round (tight windy 25 - 55km/h posted)

Feeling better again, more planted and confidence inspiring than before, tight corners can be taken much more rapidly than on the old teins, Ride is still quite acceptable considering the speeds, car still feels predictable and progressive. the floatiness on rapid steering transitions still evident with my 5/3kg teins is now vastly reduced, although you can still feel its not a light car. It now feels as though the limiting factor in terms of cornering speeds is becoming moreso the tyres than the suspension, you can feel they are working much harder than before. In general it is much more impressive, and enjoyable to drive at speed than before. however the car still feels somewhat nose heavy and tending toward understeer.

Alright, lets dial up the rear damping a bit more (try to dial out understeer) then, (3 more clicks to 23), and back around the circuit again.

This keeps getting better.. doesnt seem to be a impact on ride, however understeer is reduced, the car now feels like the turning axis has been moved rearward and generally feels more neutral. Tail does not feel loose. in some spots where there was dirt on the road causing the car to step out a little, it did so predictably and easy to catch. Mid corner changes to steering inputs are more immediate which gives you more confidence and a greater margin of safety.

even when loaded up hard into a corner, there was enough travel left to absorb mid corner bumps without worrying about upsetting the line, bottoming out the car or the suspension, which was a problem before. (im still on stock swaybars)

Note this is all dry condition driving.

So to summarise, ive only done a fairly brief driving test, but im very pleased at this point. The car feels transformed handling wise, and is quite a bit more rapid and rewarding when pushing. Make no mistake there is a tradeoff in ride compared to stock at normal speeds, But less than i feared, and (for what its worth) i would classify the ride as borderline to acceptable for a daily driver, and totally acceptable as a weekender, given the damping adjustability.

it seems the upper half of the damping adjustment is just way to hard, but there is still a wide and granular enough range of adjustment available down the softer end of the scale. Maybe on a track the harder end would be useful.

i would advise to start on 26 clicks front and back (not 8) , and go from there.

the adjuster extenders for the rear are great and adjustments can be made very quickly without having to leave bits of trim off, and then inevitably losing the fastners....

Can i also make it clear im not saying these are better than the 'equivalent' featured teins, (which are probably the mono flex?) im simply comparing them to the basic non adjustable, softest teins, which is what i was running previously. Probably my experience would be very similar to many with the tein Monos or similar specced coilovers to these.

The ability to influence the balance (understeer) at the turn of two dials was just great.

I cant comment on reliability at this early stage.

With these in i dont feel at all desperate for the upgraded swaybars anymore, it might still improve things, but its dropped right down the priority.

I need to do more kms and experimentation but ive rambled for long enough..


EDIT 7/8/09 :: pls read to the end of this thread to find out about why they were initially so stupidly firm on the higher settings.... the problem is resolved!

 

[Hotwire]

And you start writing for HPI, Zoom or any motoring magazine when eddy?
Great writeup

 

[pu-11-me]

Can you come tune my suspension? Lol.....

Interesting write up (I read the whole thing hehe) which I have actually learned some stuff out of so good stuff bro

 

[eddyvr4]

Thanks... Took me longer to write the damn review than to install the things!

 

[Guest]

This sounds much better than the Daiyamas I had . Hitting a bump mid corner would have upset the car and the extended adjusters are a very nice feature. You could link the info here on CVR4 as one of the guys there had asked if anybody was interested in a group buy.

 

[weeaazz]

your massive essay

thats why we love this forum so much,great review

 

[eddyvr4]

good idea peter , ill put link to club vr4 thread

 

[Guest]

good idea peter , ill put link to club vr4 thread

Thanks Eddy ,spotted your link there

 

[J-B]

Very nice write up there Eddy, would love a ride in your car sometime to see how comfortable those coilovers are.

 

[montgomery]

Jeez , as you said , on paper those spring rates sound lethal!!

Good to hear that the damper adjustment can counter act the spring rates though.

For the price , these seem to be pretty darn good from what i have read/ seen.

Oh Ps , good write up!

 

[twisted32]

Very nice write up there Eddy, would love a ride in your car sometime to see how comfortable those coilovers are.

+1 mate. I will be looking at suspension at the end of May (when I get back from NZ), so would love to organise to catch up and see how they perform. (I am bored of the Selbys bars and stock suspension)

 

[eddyvr4]

no worries Rob, happy to return the favour... (And Jarrad too.) Jarrad, 'Comfortable' is probably not a word i would use to describe them.. more like 'not too bad' or 'reasonable' or 'acceptable considering the handling'..

I hopped in the commodore yesterday, and pulled over at the end of our street, it felt like such a boat, i was so sure it had a flat tyre.. Nup, they were fine... but id just been driving the Legnum.. Make your own judgement on the good and bad aspects of this little story..

Just for completeness ive included a pic of the car dropped on them rear now a little lower than i had with the teins, looks just right now.

 

[J-B]

im not hoping for comfortable, just trying to figure out if they could be used on a daily basis.

If the ride is too hard do you know if they can supply them with any other spring rates at all?

your car looks awesome too

 

[eddyvr4]

Thanks! Yeah you need to come for a ride and decide yourself, for a daily as i said above its acceptable to borderline, i reckon most drivers prepared to trade some ride for handling would find it a good comprimise, especially if you can spend a fair portion of your total time behind the wheel exploring the enhanced peformance. But for those who are basically wanting to run it as their primary family car with some go fast bits, and only ocassionally get it out on their lonesome to throw it through some of their favorite windies, might find the comprimised ride day in and out a high price to pay for the ocassional blat.. Its not really a black and white thing..

(Although to contradict myself, the softer teins i had i would unreservedly reccomend WRT ride to anyone, almost factory ride, but i was still unsatisfied with the handling..)

PS mines also running 18s with the stiffer sidewalls, (96 load rating from memory) so if your on 17s it could be a bit smoother than my setup.

'Peformance guru' on ebay would not swap springs. (i wanted 10Kg fronts) Wholesale suspension have to order them in as specials, so probably could, but they sell for $500 dollars more! I figured i could probably buy a softer set or pair of springs afterwards if neccessary and still be ahead...

BUT - the factory does supply 10kg fronts as stock now, so once 'peformance guru' clears his stock, youll get 10/6kg out of the box. But he said they are slow movers.. (so i didnt bother to wait and went with the 12/6kg).