Thinking about buying those cheap coilovers? Read this first.

[Matt D.]

When I bought my car a few years ago I immediately started autocrossing it. I figured in order to get it to handle the best I needed coilovers. I mean, who doesn't want coilovers, right? Not everyone can afford a $2000+ set of KWs and the like (I was eyeing Zzyzx at the time) so I opted to go cheap and picked up a set of Ksports from MAP. They seemed great at first, the car handled even better than it did in stock form, it really did feel like a gokart. Then I realized that if I softened the dampening knob away from full firm the car became very bouncy on the road as if they were blown, so I had to leave it at full firm constantly. Before too long the car started making all sort of noises in the front suspension, especially creaking when going over bumps. In the end the rough Minnesota roads took their toll on them and the front two were blown. Overall it seemed like a great investment at first for autocrossing, but the fact that the ride quality is so horrible on the street and there is little dampening adjustment in the mid range of the stroke (look at the shock dyno graphs) the whole idea of cheap coilovers was obviously a ridiculous one.

Since it was time to fix the suspension I chose to try out aftermarket springs on my stock struts. I was torn between the Swift Spec-R and GTWorx springs, but ended up getting the Swifts because I could get them locally, thanks again to MAP.

Once the Swift springs were installed I immediately realized that I no longer hated to drive my car on the street. They solved everything that annoyed me about driving on these terrible roads, and I was no longer embarrassed to have people in my car. The ride is firm, but comfortable. The suspension doesn't make stupid noises that it shouldn't. And so far from what I can tell is that the car doesn't handle any worse than the Ksports ever did. Mind you I haven't done anything more than rip around a few clover leafs on snow tires, but it feels just the same as the Ksports did. Though one thing I noticed is when going around curves at highway speeds if there are bumps that would normally upset the car with the Ksports, the Swifts just soaked up the bumps and the car stayed planted and didn't get nervous.

That being said, I am a firm believer that people should stay away from cheap coilovers. Save yourself some money and headaches and just buy a nice set of aftermarket springs. Cheap coilovers are nothing but trouble, but if you don't believe me you can search the internet about Ksports, Megans or what have you and find out yourself how terrible they are. Now, could things be different if I lived somewhere with nicer roads? Maybe, but that wouldn't change how cheap the coilovers are or how poorly they perform, the performance between the two is negligible. Just trying to do my part in helping people modify their cars properly and save themselves some trouble down the road.

 

[mndsm]

Excellent logic sir. I was looking at doing Konis and Eibachs since I can't afford a decent set of coilovers... since the Konis do afford me some adjustability, and Koni even says get the Eibachs.

 

[dmention7]

I'd have to agree wholeheartedly. I'm not always a fan of going with brand name stuff, but your suspension has to deal with so many complex dynamic situations (and the results of even moderate failure can be so severe) that it's just not worth cheaping out at the expense of real engineering.

 

[niterydr]

Good post Matt. I had limited exposure to the K-sports on the stealth, but I can confirm your concerns. The car was a full blown racecar on the street and handled as such. Any sort of crack was painful to experience. At the track it did okay, but didn't seem as "planted" even compared with the stock suspension. Some of that was tuned out after serious supension tweaks and some was power, but I believe that the cheap Coil-overs were not helping.