Quote:
Originally Posted by eldaino
kenchan:
how do you feel these compare to the tein basics? (i think i remember you commenting on how teins are kinda noisy in the past?)
the front/rear spring rate thing that kennef brought up is kinda bothering me too...
as someone who has 2 other great handling cars, do you find that the enduratechs make you understeer MORE than the stock set up?
i dd my car, but i attack the backroads often and eventually would like to run my car in autox' events every few months when i'm done with it.
but daily driveability is still the priority, but i don't just want to lower my car and make it look better if it wont perform better.
thoughts?
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the TEIN's i had were the TypeHA's which were the previous generation
before the FLEX came out. i also had the TypeNA's which were the perch
type. so i don't have actual experience with the Basics. the HA's were
pretty noisy...and it wasn't just from the pillowmounts. it was coming
from inside the shock housing. they worked very well for the setup i had
on my 98 prelude... to carve canyons. i use to live in LA and went to
Malibu every weekend to carve the santamonica canyons. I went
through Dunlop SP8000's every 3-3.5k miles.
the HA's i had on the 02WRX were crap. the spring rates were too high.
TEIN c/o in general were(are?) not THAT great as a lot of folks think,
imho for street. the primary reason is because TEIN's philosophy seems to
be that they want to stiffen up the suspension to the point where the
user can optimize running their ideal alignment angles. (alignment angles
change throughout the suspension stroke) that could work on the track,
but you loose daily drivability. plus, that's quite a bit of burden on the
tires. you need to run good tires to fully benefit the TEIN philosophy.
if your friend's voices are shaking while talking, your ride is
not dailydriver friendly. i you're karaoke'ing inside your car and your
friends all have perfect vibrato's, your car is not dailydriver friendly.
if you need to dodge manhole lids, you got a bad setup.
im sure some of you know wat im talking about.
been there done
that. i learned from my mistakes. basically, you didnt do your home
work or trial/error resulting in your sus being too stiff.
a good system will absorb bumps and contain it instantly. and no vibrato
in people's voices. one way to achieve this is to ride on lower spring
rate while running higher damp rate.
i started running my own setups about 7yrs ago on my cars by selecting
springs (looking at the various spring rate offerings from many
manufacturers), dampers, adjustable swaybars, different offset wheels,
different width wheels and tires, and putting together my own system
with countless trial and error, going to the alignment shop over and over
again. the results have been a solid handling car with lots of comfort
while riding -1.5"+ lower than stock on 35 profile tires. it's quite an
achievement if you think about the roads we have here in chicagoland.
i was planning to do the same kinda custom setup on the FitS, but as you
all know, there are no decent adjustable dampers out there for the USDM
other then the upcoming Tokico's... so i tried the DF210's on stock
dampers, fixed rate rear swaybar... and as expected, it turned out
crappy as a whole. or shall i say it turned out like a whole load of crap
by previous reviewers. and there was nothing else i could do other than
to swap out the entire system if i wanted to achieve the nice lowered
look.
No, the ET's do NOT make the car understeer more. the car turns
very well even in the rain with crappy tires like my Ziex912's. you can
use crap tires and yet get decent performance from the ET's. im not sure
if that is the same on the Basic's... as mentioned above, TEIN's philosophy
seems to demand more tire traction.
RiftsWRX is running even higher front spring rate (6K vs 5K) on his ET
setup than mine cause he claimed his car's rear was loose.
for auto-x application you may want to get the rear swaybar not
because of understeer, but with the open diff the inner front tire
starts to lift off the ground while turning rather than plant more torque.
so you can imagine how well the car is turning with the ET's. i recommend
you run +55 offset (stock) if you run the rear swaybar to minimize the
unnatural feedback you get through the steering wheel.
another thing i want to point out is the lack of ABS noise since running
the ET's. even on the stock setup i remember feeling the ABS noise
pretty frequently while driving spiritedly. the ABS noise is just another
way to gauge how well your tires are planted to the ground going
through different dynamic cg changes. the smoother and more
dynamically the car is riding, the less noise you get.
i thought they were pretty performance oriented.
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