Quote:
Originally Posted by kenchan
basic on what, your swift springs or any lowering spring in general
that are sort of made to work on your stock dampers? you cant compare
some cheap spring set to these coilovers.
also, you may find it interesting that there are quite a bit of setups
running higher spring rate on the front, not just the fit application but
on other cars as well.
until you try it in person and experiment you wont understand the
reason behind it all... until then, all that stuff in your head is just
stuff in your head. that is my conclusion after experimenting with
many sus setups on many different cars.
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i can't lie, i refuse to take such logic seriously. "because many others do it" or "because these are more expensive than those" are poorly constructed arguments that aren't convincing.
i'll speak from my own experience. the off-the-shelf damping and spring rates on KW's V2 and V3 for the CT9A Evo has a spring rate balance similar to the ETs that we're talking about in this thread. again, we'll assume that there is no change to motion ratio, which is important because we can isolate what the intended use of the suspension is just by comparing the product's spring rate vs. stock.
look at redlinetimeattack.com and look at how many, many of the cars that place in the top 3 of each class say "robispec." almost all of those cars run a variant of KW coilovers based on the same shock body as the as the off-the-shelf stuff, but run a Front-to-rear balance that i think makes more sense, which would be a rear rate that is stiffer than the front.
while the fit and the evo are not the same car, there are some notable similarities. such as the 60/40 weight distribution. even more interestingly, the evo applies torque to the rear wheels, which would lead many to expect some concession to a lighter rear rear-wheel rate to ensure traction at the rear.
instead, all of the successfull robispec'd cars run something like an 8/9k at a minimum. how much more so do you think that a FWD, with no driving torque at the rear wheels to consume some of the available grip, should have a harder spring/wheel rate in the back?
i know that not everyone intends to enter their ET equipped at the next time attack, and that is not my point. i'm saying that i wouldn't buy a suspension that would make my car understeer even more than stock, even if it lowers the car nicely, or enhances transient response. i recognize that what i want may not be what anyone else is interested in, but i post this to emphasize the point that if someone is willing to throw the cash at some coilovers, it's worth your while to read up a little bit about what spring rates mean, and call up the manufacturer and talk to the engineers. ask them about their design philosophy with a particular product becuase you may not be getting exactly what you want. i wouldn't just drop that much coin without a pretty thorough understanding of what i was getting.