Daishi00
04-07-2007, 11:46 PM
So I just had my brand new 500/400 T2’s installed at the most clean shop I’ve ever seen…YAYY (stealing Mike’s favorite line). In fact Myles would sweep the floor every hour or so like Cinderella except without the dress…thankfully :lol:
Without wasting space talking about my other suspension modifications everything has been on the car with both the STi/JDM Pink combo and T2 setups. Camber on the strut/spring setup was –1.5 front and –1.8 rear.
After replacing the stock suspension about 14 months ago with STi struts and JDM Pink springs and other suspension things changed quite a bit. The body roll was gone, the understeer was gone and so was the super soft feeling. The first thing I noticed though was that I had some of the bobbin’ head effect going on, especially on any road that had expansion joints. I was bouncing like crazy in the seat compared to the stock suspension, but still completely livable. The RACE ALK that I have obviously added quite a bit of thump hitting any sort of bump, and the combination between it and the struts/springs any decent sized pothole felt like I had dropped off a story down to the road. Overall I could deal with it, as the handling improvements were amazing, even to my untrained body. It was nice being able to turn into a corner and not feel like the car was going to roll over like an SUV and it would actually go where I pointed it. Everything was just crisp I guess is the easiest way to state it.
Sometime around January’07 I decided that I wanted to change out the struts. After talking to Myles for a few weeks and throwing around ideas from Ohlins Fixed Perches with RCE springs, to PSS9’s to KW V3’s to T2’s I decided the T2’s were the way to go. There were a few reasons for this. Ohlins were first on the list, but I decided that I’d be wanting more as I do want to start to track the car in the near future and being able to adjust ride height, compression and rebound would be nice to have. That put me into the coilover market so I started looking around and doing the research. I narrowed it down to either the T2’s of the PSS9’s. I didn’t like the idea that I had to do the washer mod in the rear on the PSS9’s from what some people have been saying, and that with wide tires there are some clearance issues, nor the progressive spring rates etc. People seem to love them from a comfort standpoint and still handle like mad though which to me was a key thing as my car, even though not my primary is not a track only ride. I'm sure the PSS9's would be more than good enough for me at my skill level, but the fact they seemed a bit unfinished kinda bugged me and that the rear issue hasn't been addressed (from my research. If it has please let me know). The T2’s were the winners because of the small price difference, variable spring rate rebound/compression adjustment, build quality, FITMENT (no mods to make it work and the reversed cam bolt location on the one side isn’t a big deal to me…it still works ;)), limited lifetime warranty and it supports a great shop. The 500/400 rate was chosen as the car is my second car now and I want to finally get into some tracking action this spring/summer, plus I wanted to just simply test them out and see if they were really too stiff for normal driving like some have been reporting…they’re wrong unless they’re granny’s :lol:
On to the good stuff FINALLY
The T2 units I have are the newer design with no front reservoirs. This was a change by KW as a new oil they are using makes the reservoirs unneeded. The finish on the units is topnotch with a nice stainless steel body. The first thing that I liked was the fact that they are tiny compared to my previous setup, which will give me plenty of room for larger wheels/tires. The composite perches look solid and I’m sure they’re as strong as the metal equivalent. I’m also looking forward to see if the composite perches still allow easy height adjustment after a year or two in the salt infested PA area I live in where anything made of metal gets jacked up. I can see where some adjustment might be a pain where the allen screws on the perches are located, but honestly, the amount that most will adjust the height taking the extra 20-30 seconds to find the screw behind the strut body isn’t that bad. I watched Mike adjust the perch inside of 30 seconds of the wheel coming off…and that’s with him burning his arm on the rotor.
The install was pretty smooth as RCE did it, minus one hiccup. Mike and Myles ripped the old springs/struts out (mostly Mike, with Myles continuing his sweeping fetish and lending his super strength when required), got evil on a bolt on the rear strut with some help from a Lotus mechanic down the complex, and then got the units bolted up. The lower bolt on the rear strut was put on by Mongo the Gorilla with a 30 feet leverage bar as that thing was on TIGHT. That was the only thing that sucked during the whole install for me and RCE wasn’t responsible for the bolt being FUBAR’d. My camber plates and new cut GrpN’s were thrown on, keeping a comparison between the T2’s and my old spring/strut combo pretty easy. Andrew set up the coilovers for their “comfort” setting with input, corrections and final changes made by Myles, which unfortunately I don’t have those written down as I forgot to take my cheat sheet with me and I won’t bug Andrew for it until Monday. He went over it with me, but I was just too enamored with his T-Shirt (NASCAR, but with BORING in it’s place) and forgot. Plus I had to listen to him cry about a metal splinter he got…wuss :lol: I can say that their base setup was just perfect for me really. Both rebound and compression were spot on and no adjustments were needed (jumped ahead a bit). Originally the front of the car was 13.5” fender to center of wheel with the same in the rear. All three RCE guys thought the front was a tad too low (the settings they used were based on non lowering plates so a small change had to be made). Myles and I went for a drive at that point to sort out the car and the settings. First thing I noticed he did was find every friggin’ pothole and bump he could, and hit it FAST. I was cringing because on the old suspension those same potholes would make the car shudder like I just dropped 10 feet down (I know this because I hit a few of the same potholes on the way to the shop). The T2’s soaked up the hits like crazy and a lot of the thump that I had been associating with the RACE ALK over the last year obviously was the strut/spring combo I was running. There was still a thump, but not nearly as jarring as before and unless it was a deep hole I didn’t even notice it. The route we took involved a bunch of turns both uphill and downhill and also had some sweeping corners where you could go at a decent clip. No matter how Myles threw the car around it just went without protest. Turn in was extremely good, body roll was nonexistent and the ride was SMOOTH. It honestly felt like I was riding on slightly stiffer stock suspension…not 500/400 spring rates. Myles is completely right that it is really the valving that makes the comfort level of the ride, not just spring rate. Keep in mind he was doing this driving on the same RE92’s that the original suspension was driven on (summer wheels haven’t gone on since we’re still getting SNOW…in April…WTF). As he described it, it was a bit spongy due to the “balloon” tires I had on. We got back to the shop and adjusted the ride height in the front up to 14” and off I went to the alignment guy that Myles used to use for his Porsche. They went an extra step in my opinion by actually calling up the NTB where Myles alignment guy works and setting up an appointment to make sure I had a slot within a few minutes of the install being finished. Saved me from having to drive a few hundred miles and track down a decent guy in my area. The route over to the shop didn’t allow me to really do any great cornering, but it did involve about 12 miles of highway and it was an extremely pleasant ride. The alignment before was:
Front –2.2 left –1.8 right.
Rear -1.9 left –1.4 right
So only a bit more negative than I had originally had on the car. Toe wasn’t too bad as it was only a few 10ths off total. After alignment it was:
Front –2.6 left –2.4 right
Rear –1.9 left –1.9 right.
Toe was 0.01 in. overall…and that was simply because he printed it out a second too late as it was jumping from 0.00 to 0.01. With myself in the car the camber in the front dropped to an even –2.5 on both sides.
Skipping the next few hours of time (as that involved ekw getting my old suspension installed on his car and cursing Subaru for their rusted bolts…and Mike’s mashed bleeding fingers) I was finally back to an area where there were some turns, such as 90 degree turn, sweeping bends, combination S curves, etc…enough to really see what the T2’s would do.
The first real corner is a 90 degree turn that is banked really well. I entered the turn at the same speed that used to give the STi/JDM Pinks a workout and the T2’s acted like I was on a straight. The handling was very predictable and didn’t need any real correction even while hitting a bump right after entering the turn. The next area involved a couple of S turns closely put together. Since I’m on public roads I made sure to not cross the centerline so I had to take them at a pretty sharp angle. Each corner I bumped up the entrance speed a little more and I never reached the point where I felt the car losing it’s handling ability…even on the crappy RE92’s. Obviously real tires will give me a better overall impression, so it needs to warm up fast. Yes, I am aware that the extra degree of front camber helped out a ton but the suspension was doing a lot of the work too.
2 1/2 hours of driving on the highway this morning back home confirmed to me that the 500/400 rate is completely acceptable on a daily driver level. In fact I found it much more comfortable than even the stock STi suspension which I had the opportunity to experience for about a 7 hour total over the last week or my old STi/JDM Pink combination. The overall handling was greatly increased as well and this was attained on the comfort settings and not the race settings.
Unless RaceComp comes up with another coilover setup that is far superior to the T2’s I can’t see any reason to change this for another setup and I’m super happy with my purchase.
Without wasting space talking about my other suspension modifications everything has been on the car with both the STi/JDM Pink combo and T2 setups. Camber on the strut/spring setup was –1.5 front and –1.8 rear.
After replacing the stock suspension about 14 months ago with STi struts and JDM Pink springs and other suspension things changed quite a bit. The body roll was gone, the understeer was gone and so was the super soft feeling. The first thing I noticed though was that I had some of the bobbin’ head effect going on, especially on any road that had expansion joints. I was bouncing like crazy in the seat compared to the stock suspension, but still completely livable. The RACE ALK that I have obviously added quite a bit of thump hitting any sort of bump, and the combination between it and the struts/springs any decent sized pothole felt like I had dropped off a story down to the road. Overall I could deal with it, as the handling improvements were amazing, even to my untrained body. It was nice being able to turn into a corner and not feel like the car was going to roll over like an SUV and it would actually go where I pointed it. Everything was just crisp I guess is the easiest way to state it.
Sometime around January’07 I decided that I wanted to change out the struts. After talking to Myles for a few weeks and throwing around ideas from Ohlins Fixed Perches with RCE springs, to PSS9’s to KW V3’s to T2’s I decided the T2’s were the way to go. There were a few reasons for this. Ohlins were first on the list, but I decided that I’d be wanting more as I do want to start to track the car in the near future and being able to adjust ride height, compression and rebound would be nice to have. That put me into the coilover market so I started looking around and doing the research. I narrowed it down to either the T2’s of the PSS9’s. I didn’t like the idea that I had to do the washer mod in the rear on the PSS9’s from what some people have been saying, and that with wide tires there are some clearance issues, nor the progressive spring rates etc. People seem to love them from a comfort standpoint and still handle like mad though which to me was a key thing as my car, even though not my primary is not a track only ride. I'm sure the PSS9's would be more than good enough for me at my skill level, but the fact they seemed a bit unfinished kinda bugged me and that the rear issue hasn't been addressed (from my research. If it has please let me know). The T2’s were the winners because of the small price difference, variable spring rate rebound/compression adjustment, build quality, FITMENT (no mods to make it work and the reversed cam bolt location on the one side isn’t a big deal to me…it still works ;)), limited lifetime warranty and it supports a great shop. The 500/400 rate was chosen as the car is my second car now and I want to finally get into some tracking action this spring/summer, plus I wanted to just simply test them out and see if they were really too stiff for normal driving like some have been reporting…they’re wrong unless they’re granny’s :lol:
On to the good stuff FINALLY
The T2 units I have are the newer design with no front reservoirs. This was a change by KW as a new oil they are using makes the reservoirs unneeded. The finish on the units is topnotch with a nice stainless steel body. The first thing that I liked was the fact that they are tiny compared to my previous setup, which will give me plenty of room for larger wheels/tires. The composite perches look solid and I’m sure they’re as strong as the metal equivalent. I’m also looking forward to see if the composite perches still allow easy height adjustment after a year or two in the salt infested PA area I live in where anything made of metal gets jacked up. I can see where some adjustment might be a pain where the allen screws on the perches are located, but honestly, the amount that most will adjust the height taking the extra 20-30 seconds to find the screw behind the strut body isn’t that bad. I watched Mike adjust the perch inside of 30 seconds of the wheel coming off…and that’s with him burning his arm on the rotor.
The install was pretty smooth as RCE did it, minus one hiccup. Mike and Myles ripped the old springs/struts out (mostly Mike, with Myles continuing his sweeping fetish and lending his super strength when required), got evil on a bolt on the rear strut with some help from a Lotus mechanic down the complex, and then got the units bolted up. The lower bolt on the rear strut was put on by Mongo the Gorilla with a 30 feet leverage bar as that thing was on TIGHT. That was the only thing that sucked during the whole install for me and RCE wasn’t responsible for the bolt being FUBAR’d. My camber plates and new cut GrpN’s were thrown on, keeping a comparison between the T2’s and my old spring/strut combo pretty easy. Andrew set up the coilovers for their “comfort” setting with input, corrections and final changes made by Myles, which unfortunately I don’t have those written down as I forgot to take my cheat sheet with me and I won’t bug Andrew for it until Monday. He went over it with me, but I was just too enamored with his T-Shirt (NASCAR, but with BORING in it’s place) and forgot. Plus I had to listen to him cry about a metal splinter he got…wuss :lol: I can say that their base setup was just perfect for me really. Both rebound and compression were spot on and no adjustments were needed (jumped ahead a bit). Originally the front of the car was 13.5” fender to center of wheel with the same in the rear. All three RCE guys thought the front was a tad too low (the settings they used were based on non lowering plates so a small change had to be made). Myles and I went for a drive at that point to sort out the car and the settings. First thing I noticed he did was find every friggin’ pothole and bump he could, and hit it FAST. I was cringing because on the old suspension those same potholes would make the car shudder like I just dropped 10 feet down (I know this because I hit a few of the same potholes on the way to the shop). The T2’s soaked up the hits like crazy and a lot of the thump that I had been associating with the RACE ALK over the last year obviously was the strut/spring combo I was running. There was still a thump, but not nearly as jarring as before and unless it was a deep hole I didn’t even notice it. The route we took involved a bunch of turns both uphill and downhill and also had some sweeping corners where you could go at a decent clip. No matter how Myles threw the car around it just went without protest. Turn in was extremely good, body roll was nonexistent and the ride was SMOOTH. It honestly felt like I was riding on slightly stiffer stock suspension…not 500/400 spring rates. Myles is completely right that it is really the valving that makes the comfort level of the ride, not just spring rate. Keep in mind he was doing this driving on the same RE92’s that the original suspension was driven on (summer wheels haven’t gone on since we’re still getting SNOW…in April…WTF). As he described it, it was a bit spongy due to the “balloon” tires I had on. We got back to the shop and adjusted the ride height in the front up to 14” and off I went to the alignment guy that Myles used to use for his Porsche. They went an extra step in my opinion by actually calling up the NTB where Myles alignment guy works and setting up an appointment to make sure I had a slot within a few minutes of the install being finished. Saved me from having to drive a few hundred miles and track down a decent guy in my area. The route over to the shop didn’t allow me to really do any great cornering, but it did involve about 12 miles of highway and it was an extremely pleasant ride. The alignment before was:
Front –2.2 left –1.8 right.
Rear -1.9 left –1.4 right
So only a bit more negative than I had originally had on the car. Toe wasn’t too bad as it was only a few 10ths off total. After alignment it was:
Front –2.6 left –2.4 right
Rear –1.9 left –1.9 right.
Toe was 0.01 in. overall…and that was simply because he printed it out a second too late as it was jumping from 0.00 to 0.01. With myself in the car the camber in the front dropped to an even –2.5 on both sides.
Skipping the next few hours of time (as that involved ekw getting my old suspension installed on his car and cursing Subaru for their rusted bolts…and Mike’s mashed bleeding fingers) I was finally back to an area where there were some turns, such as 90 degree turn, sweeping bends, combination S curves, etc…enough to really see what the T2’s would do.
The first real corner is a 90 degree turn that is banked really well. I entered the turn at the same speed that used to give the STi/JDM Pinks a workout and the T2’s acted like I was on a straight. The handling was very predictable and didn’t need any real correction even while hitting a bump right after entering the turn. The next area involved a couple of S turns closely put together. Since I’m on public roads I made sure to not cross the centerline so I had to take them at a pretty sharp angle. Each corner I bumped up the entrance speed a little more and I never reached the point where I felt the car losing it’s handling ability…even on the crappy RE92’s. Obviously real tires will give me a better overall impression, so it needs to warm up fast. Yes, I am aware that the extra degree of front camber helped out a ton but the suspension was doing a lot of the work too.
2 1/2 hours of driving on the highway this morning back home confirmed to me that the 500/400 rate is completely acceptable on a daily driver level. In fact I found it much more comfortable than even the stock STi suspension which I had the opportunity to experience for about a 7 hour total over the last week or my old STi/JDM Pink combination. The overall handling was greatly increased as well and this was attained on the comfort settings and not the race settings.
Unless RaceComp comes up with another coilover setup that is far superior to the T2’s I can’t see any reason to change this for another setup and I’m super happy with my purchase.