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Coilovers too soft

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:31 am
by twowheeled
When my car was relatively stock I bought some KW V3 Coilovers. They worked great, I thought they were a good compromise for street and track work. Now with the turbo the rear end is too soft. The car squats quite a bit when I roll on the gas, to the point where I'm bottoming out. Since the rears are progressive, I'm not sure I could change the springs out to a straight rate with higher spring rate? It looks like the perches are too wide to fit a standard spring. Any suggestions?

Re: Coilovers too soft

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2012 10:55 am
by v67gsr
Two options.

1. Run Tein tapper spring like I do with my Ohlins.
2. Run GWR upper spring perch and pair with regular spring.

What spring rate are you looking for? I am running 10/6 right now I have to up rate the springs because of the massive aero load. If you can wait for a bit I can sell my current set of spring to you. The front pair is Tein race (the green light weight one) and the rear pair is Tein tapper spring. They are about 16 months, 10000 km street, and 4 track days old. Never driven in winter time.

Re: Coilovers too soft

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2012 4:30 pm
by AZ Sun Lover
twowheeled wrote:When my car was relatively stock I bought some KW V3 Coilovers. They worked great, I thought they were a good compromise for street and track work. Now with the turbo the rear end is too soft. The car squats quite a bit when I roll on the gas, to the point where I'm bottoming out. Since the rears are progressive, I'm not sure I could change the springs out to a straight rate with higher spring rate? It looks like the perches are too wide to fit a standard spring. Any suggestions?
Remember the shocks are valved to the spring rate. You may blow out the shock? I'm betting you can sell the KW's and buy a stiffer coil-overs then to buy new springs and have the shocks re-valved.

Just my .02 cents. Maybe Brian will post his .02 cents.

Good luck,
AZ

Re: Coilovers too soft

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:13 pm
by Brian
On a coilover that starts this soft my bet is that you can only push 1kg on rate without the coilover feeling under-damped.

Will that be enough for you? Hard to say, it will make some real difference given the rates you are starting with.

Will it wear the shocks out faster? YES...it will, but hard to say how much faster it will wear the shocks.

If you want much more than 1kg additional rate then you could re-valve them.

Note that there are some creative alternatives. You could also do some much stiffer and TALLER bumpstops to effectively up the spring rate and limit the squat you are getting. You might talk with our friends at Fat Cat MotorSports on what they suggest for your setup and goals.