Bon Bon

Really surprised you'd say that about the 350Z set Cheifgroover, but maybe we need to look at the 350Z sets in more detail. None of us own 350Zs and we only have customer feedback to go off, so your comments are invaluable. We've got more experience with Supras and haven't ever heard anything like you're saying about them. I'd love to have had your 350Z here to have a play with the setup, I can confidently say I am "fussy" about the way a car handles, and would have tweaked it until it worked beautifully. To be honest, the 350Z coilover market is pretty small-fry in this country, so we've not done a great deal of R&D work outside of the HSD factory 'default' kit. I still stand by the Supra setup being superb and suitable for everything described above. I can only apologise that the 350Z kit didn't meet your demands, I remember dealing with you in the first place and wish you'd come back to us when you owned it, I would have liked to have worked to make it better for you!

Only downside to the circlip setup is obviously the inability to cornerweight your car, which does make a noticable difference to the handling. Plus for those that do want millimeter perfect ride height it's not ideal, but not everybody's that fussy. lol Neither the 350Z kits or JZA80 kits are designed to be super hardcore track setups, just excellent fast road & trackday setups, if you WANT a hardcore setup then we can provide a 3 way adjustable kit with whatever spring rate you prefer. Equally, while not practical, I'd be really interested to look over any cars with handling problems and see if a few setup changes could fix it. I mess with my car's suspension setup constantly, and have been using it as a development mule for our upcoming E36 M3 coilovers. Just as an example, we've ended up settling for a softer rate than I would "prefer" for track use, but I drive my car every day and have compromised down a little so you get 90% of the on track performance but huge gains on day to day comfort. In reality it's faster in 90% of real world situations with the softer setup anyway, since it's more friendly to drive up to the limit. Equally, for really aggressive use I'd ramp up the rebound damping a little, but day to day it makes it annoying, and can make it unhappy over the kind of funny undulations you find on the road. You can't please all people all of the time, our setups are generally the most hardcore that is stomachable on a day to day basis... Ark, if you want to give us (Driftworks) a call then I'll see if we can sort out some tweaks to make things better for you.

Thanks Chris, obviously there is that underlying issue there...

It's not a "fault" of the suspension though, the damping setup may well be softer than the old HKS ones and making the effective wheel rate lower, but this is just a case of having enough suspension travel for the wheels to catch... I'd be interested to hear if Ark has any other issues with track use? Ok, if they're a little soft for his purpose then fair enough, but it's not an issue of "better", maybe just stiffer. It's not uncommon to have to play around with spring rates, arbs, etc, etc for track work, I know the Nordschleife in particular requires some very careful thinking about to deal with heavy compressions and the violently bumpy karussell... General rule I work off is you spring the car stiff enough to not bottom out, then roll, pitch, etc are controlled by playing with arbs, damper settings, etc. If you can't stop the car from pitching with a combination of spring choice/damper setting without spoiling the car's feel and composure then arbs, beyond that it's a case of tweaking for feel. If it's bottoming in some compression situations but you wouldn't want it damped more aggressively and body roll isn't an issue then definately think about a slightly stiffer spring, a small change that the dampers will be fine with can make a big difference to the amount of compression travel possible in a given situation.

You can adjust the travel to sit the shock where you want it, lower the spring perch and raise the bottom mount and you'll have it sitting farther down in it's travel. Having said that, resorting to making the suspension bottom out to stop the wheel from hitting the arches is a horrible solution and will make the handling when the suspension bottoms "interesting". If you want to try a slightly stiffer spring rate for track work then that would be a preferable option, ~20% stiffer wouldn't be a problem for the dampers and would reduce suspension travel greatly. To be honest though, I'd suggest beefier anti-roll bars if that's your problem, since stiffer doesn't always = better.