After driving around at stock height for around 5 months, I finally made the jump to a full coilover system. After a full months worth of road testing and abuse on my car, the final review is here. I have the first set of buddy club racing spec dampers in north America. My car is on the stock 18 inch wheels and OEM tires. I also, have front and back f-sport sway bars installed.
Here's the technical details
1. 15 levels of damper adjustment
2.10Kg and 8Kg spring rate front and back
3.Pillow ball upper mounts rubber
4.adjustment brackets for easy height adjustment
5.single tube type shell case (steel)
6.shocks are nitrogen filled
7. shocks can be re-valved and rebuilt
8.made and designed in Japan.
9.knob on top for easy adjustments for damper settings
10.three inches of drop available
First thing up is the intention of these coilovers. These are named racing spec damper, because they were intended for street and track use. Which serves more then one purpose. This is ideal say if you need your car to ride comfortably during your workweek and you need the ride as firm as possible for weekend drives through canyons or on the track. These were made heavy duty to take any type of driving or driver. As I have found through my month of testing the "dual" nature of these coilovers proved to be very valuable for my driving needs.
I drove up Angeles crest highway, which is a local mountain with a lot of sharp turns, changing elevation, steep cliffs, etc. With the damper setting at the stiffest setting the ride and handling was excellent, a huge change from stock. the handling was more responsive and the ride was also. without the stock floating, the car handled the turns and apexes with aplomb. During spirited driving on the highways and on surface roads, with the ride set at very stiff car handled lane changes and abrupt steering inputs with ease, making the car feel more stable.
Driving around town and during my work week, I set the damper settings near the softest settings. With the damper settings set as soft, the ride quality was almost like stock, but without the "floatiness" of the stock suspension. potholes, bumps, dips, and other road imperfections are easily handled with the suspension settings. There was no bottoming out and no clunking.
I started out with the ride height at around 2.75 inch drop. Then later on had it set at around 2.5 inch drop. The final drop and the most ideal for the amount of street driving I do is at 2.25 inch drop. With the ride height at 2.25 my hid cutoff was still very good and the AFS did not need to be adjusted for ride height. At this height I hardly scrape on anything and it looks really low.
Final camber was -2.8 back and -1.75 front. After getting the suspension properly aligned and corner balanced the overall balance of the car was 51.3% of weight front and 48.7% of weight back. All four corners were balanced so the ride height was the same all around, which was made easy with the adjustment bracket. each full turn of the bracket was 2mm.
Overall, I am very happy with these coilovers. Being able to adjust damper settings depending on how I will drive or on my driving needs has been great. Out of everything I have installed into my car, this has been the best modification to date. It has changed the driving dynamics a great deal. This is great since the 2IS is a drivers car and the coilovers just make it that much better.
Finally I would like to thank Tree at Buddy Club USA for making this project possible and for technical support. A big thanks to Tommy at musicbox for the professional installation and all the input with ride height and comparisons to other coilover systems for the 2IS. Lastly, Darin at west end alignment for the expert alignment and corner balancing and all the insight into the inner workings of the 2IS suspension. This project would not have been successful without these guys.
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