lumyeinjun

iTrader: (1)

So I don't know what the best performance suspension setup for the 3G TL is, but i'm looking for it. I'm thinking Koni Yellows with H&R RACE springs are a top contender, but I'm no suspension guru so I'm asking you all to chime in.

I'm currently riding on H&R sports and Koni Yellow SP3s on the middle perch. Handling is much better than my stock TL type-s 6mt. I'm assuming this handling improvement can be attributed partly to the Koni's being able to dampen the stiffer H&R sport springs adequately and partly to the lower center of gravity of the car. For this reason, I'm hypothesizing that H&R RACE springs + my Koni SP3s would be a better performance setup.

I could simply bring my H&R sport springs to rest on the lowest perch setting on my Konis to reach the same drop as H&R race springs, but the only benefit I would gain from that would be a lower center of gravity. I think doing that would actually HINDER my performance because I would have less suspension travel... which increases the chances of hitting the bumpstops and "bottoming out."

If what I've learned about suspension from this forum is correct, then setting the Konis on the HIGHEST perch setting would allow the most suspension travel. This would enable the shock to do more work and decrease the chances of hitting the bumpstops (decrease in performance).

So here's my plan. I'm thinking about swapping out my H&R sport springs for H&R race springs. This will give the car a stiffer spring while retaining the lower center of gravity ("retaining," not "lowering" center of gravity explained next). On the Koni SP3s I plan on raising the perch setting and stiffening up the dampening rate to match the stiffer spring. This would give the suspension more travel and adequate dampening, respectively. I wouldn't really benefit from a center of gravity lower than my current suspension setup because the lower spring and the raised perch level would cancel each other out, but the ride height would still be an improvement over stock height.

Comments and suggestions, please!

princelybug

iTrader: (16)

The answer to this is subjective, based on what your preferences are.

One thing I can tell you is: coilovers > any strut/spring set.

lumyeinjun

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the quick reply! But I don't understand how coilovers can be better than a shock/spring set on performance if the shock/spring combo can dampen as well as the coilovers can. The only benefit I see from coilovers is that you have the option of adjusting ride height. If the koni's are adjustable and the springs are stiff and lower the ride height, isn't that pretty much a coilover? Beside the fact that the springs wern't exactly designed to be coupled with the specific shock, of course.

If the shock/spring combo can dampen as well as coilovers while providing a lower center of gravity and stiffer spring rates, what is the benefit of coilovers over a good shock/spring combo (performance wise)?

^that's a serious question, i'm not an expert at suspension and i'm not trying to be a douche! haha

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

Check out some of I hate cars past writings.
He explains well and modified his koni's a little.

He also suggest a stiffer spring rate in the rear to get a little oversteer.
Do you have an aftermarket Rear Sway bar?

I'll be running Koni yellows with H&R sport springs with a Progressive RSB and Nitto NT05's.

lumyeinjun

iTrader: (1)

^yeahh IHC's postings are what made me think about going H&R race springs with Koni's on the highest perch setting, i'm hoping to get him to chime in on this thread :hope:

I don't have an aftermarket RSB but I think the type-s one will be sufficient for now. I'll consider getting the progress RSB later on, but I want to do the actual suspension components right first. Your setup sounds great though!

anx1300c

iTrader: (2)

Hardly.

That's ricer mindset. A properly set up Koni/spring combo will handle better than a Tein basic anyday, or any other coilover that doesn't allow dampening adjustments for that matter.

princelybug

iTrader: (16)

I wouldn't say that's a ricer mindset. It's mostly common sense. Good coilovers consist of struts and springs that were made to be together, whereas individual struts and springs are not.

lumyeinjun

iTrader: (1)

I wouldn't say that it's common sense, but I wouldn't say it's ricer to assume that coilovers are better than a shock/spring combo either. What many people perceive as "common sense" may seem plausible, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. Modifying a car is a science, afterall, and science over the years has proven again and again to contradict what (in some cases) the majority sees as "common sense." Yes, coilovers are pretty much a shock/spring combo that was made to go together, but that doesn't mean that the quality/performance is better than every single shock/spring combo out there. Nothing is perfect, and aftermarket companies are no exception. It isn't impossible to find a shock/spring combo that can match or possibly exceed the handling gains you can get from coilovers. Koni makes excellent shocks, and with the ability to adjust dampening, I don't see why you can't "tune" Koni shocks to match perfectly with certain springs. H&R is a very reputable company with a history in racing as well. Tein Basics aren't exactly the best suspension setup in the world, and it is, afterall, a coilover setup. Just because the spring is made to go with a certain shock doesn't mean it's going to be better than higher quality, well engineered shocks and springs of two different manufacturers.

What i'm saying is... coilovers are great. But I don't think it's so simple that we can generalize coilovers and shock/spring combos and say that one category is better than the other. Different manufactures and different products/combinations of products produce differing handling/ride characteristics. You can't simply say ALL coilovers are better than ALL shock/spring combos; it is VERY possible that a shock/spring combo can in fact provide the best PERFORMANCE HANDLING for our cars. We need to look at the individual product and say "yes, it has been proven on the track that a TL on H&R coilovers can finish a lap faster than a TL on eibach pro springs + a-spec shocks."

jwr0ng626

iTrader: (1)

hmm, I think you need a RSB more than springs

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

^ a healthy bit of oversteer is awesome

anx1300c

iTrader: (2)

Ok, to rephrase, I'd bet money that a properly set up Koni & spring combo will out handle the same model car, same tires, same sway bars with Tein basics or any other lower end coilover. It's not some complex equation to pair a shock with a spring. In fact, Steve Dinan contracts exclusively with Koni to supply him with all his BMW suspension upgrades. I don't see him using coilovers on cars that pull 1g on the skidpad. The big plus on coilovers is ride height adjustibility, which is fine for people constantly changing wheel/tire sizes.

And TL's employ shocks, not struts.

jwr0ng626

iTrader: (1)

^theres also a HUGE range of springs/shocks/struts people can choose from... ex tokico w/ eibachs, kyb, koni, tein,s h&r, ground controls... MANY people dont know how each spring will respond to certain struts, therefore, opting w/ coilovers cuts out confusion.

If youre educated and know what you're looking for in a shock/spring combo... more power to you. but for the rest, most people arnt using coils for 100% performance.. and it just makes life easier.

94eg!

Wow! This thread has some bonehead info in it. There is no such thing as a "matched" set of dampers and springs. While these two things can be tuned to a vehicle, driver and track condition, they are very much independent of one another. To say otherwise is just plain ignorant.

What works for one driver, may not work for another. The ability to tune damping (not dampening) will go a long way towards finding an ideal setup for a driver. This is where Koni excels. Their dampers have a wider range of adjustment than almost any other off-the-shelf brand, and offer digressive valving that helps keep the tire in contact with the road. Now that being said, these are not for everyone. If you don't know how to tune your dampers to get a desired driving experience, you may be better off sticking with stock suspension or just some lowering springs. This is for the simple fact that you won't ever know the difference and it can save you half a grand. And if you don't plan on ever racing your car, then what's the point at all? A little oversteer is completely pointless if you don't enjoy driving sideways.

The only benefit a so called "coil-over" setup offers, is the ability to adjust ride height independent of suspension stroke. This is because the lowering of the vehicle is done by reducing the height of the shock in it's respective lower mount. This allows you to maintain the same amount of suspension compression in the lowered position. This is not without it's problems. Because the wheel is now allowed to move further up into the wheel well than before, you can run into interference problems. Things like hitting the UCAs against the shock tower, or rubbing tires. Of course other thing like warranty support and reliability should also factor into ones decision.

PS: The TL uses shocks and not struts. Struts are a different style of suspension completely, like that found on newer Civics and RSXs.

lumyeinjun

iTrader: (1)

This guy has one of the worst attitudes i've seen on Azine. It's just too bad that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about hahahaha pretty legit argument

I hate cars

He's 100% correct.

I hate cars

Back to the original question, you need to plan the entire setup out before buying anything. Don't buy the springs until you know if you're going to to swaybars.

There's roll stiffness and there's balance. Balance is just as important as roll stiffness. If you're not going to do a rear swaybar, you will need a rear spring rate that nearly matches the front spring rate to get proper balance. If you add just a rear swaybar, you can get away with some of the aftermarket offerings which tend to make understeer worse but the RSB will counteract that.

If you're after absolute best handling without compromise I would go very stiff on the springs and keep stock swaybar size. Swaybars are mostly to get that compromise between comfort and roll. They tie the sides together so you lose a little of the independence of the independent suspension. They also have a tendency to lift the inside wheels during a hard corner. Stiff swaybars and soft springs are notorious for this. Swaybars are not evil but make sure if you go with a very large swaybar you have a stiffer than stock spring too.

When I did just the 24mm rsb the car oversteered with the stock suspension and little 5at 25mm hollow front bar. Once I put the 28mm solid H&R bar in the front it brought balance back to nearly stock. This required me to go with a very stiff rear spring rate and stock a-spec front rate. Luckily the rear spring rate doesn't kill ride quality up front but rear passengers feel it. A better street setup might be a TL-S 27mm fsb up front and 24mm Progress on stiff out back to avoid having to run a higher rear spring rate.

Coilovers vs springs is a bit confusing. The TL technically comes with coilovers from the factory. The term has come to mean an adjustable ride height around here. There's no performance advantage to coilovers except some offer a little more travel and of course height adjustability. Originally coilovers were known as a performance item over springs and shocks because on some cars the springs and shocks have separate mounting points and the shock valving did not follow the spring rate curve. Adding a coilover setup would help out a lot but not so on the TL.

Konis plus springs will put you nearly in coilover price range so you need to consider carefully. Konis offer a great range of adjustability and will accept any common spring available for the TL. They do a great job at controlling the spring and body motion without being harsh. Tuning the rebound to the spring and your preferences is fairly easy.

jwr0ng626

iTrader: (1)

^what spring rate do u have in the rear?

and are all koni damping adjustable? I can easily do my homework right now .... but



94eg - 1 coilovers - 0

Slpr04UA6

IHC- I was waiting for you to chime in! 94eg was right, and you took the time to explain it in even greater depth, thanks! I would also like to know your rear spring rate/koni dampening settings.


OT-IHC do you happen to know what H&R sports spring rate is?

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

I believe he said he used the aspec rear and added a spacer, but its not a permanent solution. He's having a shop make it permanent

94eg!

I apologize for my attitude. Really no excuse.

As you can see from I Hate Car's experience, "tuning" a car involves quite a bit more than simply buying and installing parts. This is also why you must ask yourself what your intended purpose is for the car before you go spending money on things you might not really need.

My point is that it's okay to buy lowering springs to simply lower your car. Expensive shocks won't be necessary. In fact, the stock shocks will work just fine. If you want your car lower than lowering springs can offer, then coil-overs are going to be a must for you. But if you want to race/time-attack your car, then be prepared to buy and experiment with lots of different parts.

I've personally spent a lot of time/money on my project Civic suspension. I went with Koni Sports (I stripped the yellow paint off) way back when Ground Control made custom coil-over sleeves specifically to fit the Koni bodies. This was and is still one of the best off-the-shelf suspensions around for a Civic that wants to do some track days or auto-x. The Ground Control top hats for the front allow a little extra compression in the front to soften bumps. Ground control is a nice company for sleeves because they let you pick your linear spring rates if you know exactly what your looking for.

94eg!

The yellow ones (called sports) are externally adjustable by sticking the provided white knob onto this yellow tab sticking out the end of the upper shock mount:

jwr0ng626

iTrader: (1)

ahh nice, thanks for the info!

I had ground control coil sleeves w/ oem shocks on my solara and the ride was horrrrible... shouldve researched more and pair it up w/ some koni's

owell live n learn!

I hate cars

FWIW my rear rate is around 500lbs. I'll have to look through my receipts for the exact number.

I believe one of the vendors posted several spring rates a while back but can't remember which one.

94eg!

It just depends. If you lower it too much, you'll be riding on the bump stops causing excess stiffness. If you have too stiff a spring to start, things will feel to harsh no matter what. If your spring is too stiff for the dampers, you can tell because the car will seem bouncy long after you've hit a bump. If the latter wasn't your problem, then chances are expensive shocks wouldn't have helped you out. Also my mother's solara rides like it's on pillows, so I'm sure the difference was quite a shock. I wouldn't be surprised if the stock dampers couldn't handle the stiff lowering springs.

I ran my stock Civic shocks with the Ground Controls for almost 4 years. It never seemed under-damped. And even though I drove around 3" down, the shocks were still in good shape when I swapped them out. Of course here in Vegas we have very smooth roads compared to most of the country.

Also, Ground control uses Eibach race springs which can seem very stiff because they are not progressive like most OEM springs.

jwr0ng626

iTrader: (1)

woww thats impressive! Mine felt so bad I got rid of it after a month. I have eibach springs in that car now, and megan coils in my TL.. love how the megans feel comfort wise, but never had a chance to "test" it performance wise.. would love to do a track day and test its potential

Nick337

iTrader: (2)

What is the stock spring rates if any one knows?

94eg!

The springs would have to be tested to find out because Honda doesn't tell you.

BTW: It's a shame informative threads like these always drop off into oblivion.

jwr0ng626

iTrader: (1)

^lol.. so whats lumyeinjun gna opt with?

lumyeinjun

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for chiming in IHC and 94eg! great info!

I think i'm even more iffy about what i'm going to go with than when I first started this thread haha. I was planning to get the progress rsb after switching over to race springs, but now I'm considering testing out the progress rsb first

94eg and IHC seem to have a lot of experience in suspension, so here's a semi-subjective question for you guys. For a TL-s with a progress rsb and type-s fsb, which setup would you rather have on your daily driven, sometimes tracked, car:

Option 1: Koni Sport SP3 + H&R Race Spring
Option 2: Koni Sport SP3 + H&R Sport Spring

Just curious

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

I believe IHC said that anything more than a 1inch drop hurts performance.
witht hat being said, I'm going with the H&R sports with koni yellows with the Progress RSB and some sticky ass summer tire.

RjG2

Not to jack this thread but, I have superstreets on my 05 and a progress rear sway bar.
My ride is pretty smooth but I feel that it is too bouncy. Any one have a solution for this?

CaliWowie

Now im no suspension expert either and im not trying to correct ya... just something came to mind when you said...

"If what I've learned about suspension from this forum is correct, then setting the Konis on the HIGHEST perch setting would allow the most suspension travel. This would enable the shock to do more work and decrease the chances of hitting the bumpstops (decrease in performance).''

I come from a history of off-roading and i remember thinking the higher the trucks the better the suspension because they have tall shocks to absorbe allot of impact...but later on realized that absorbing impact is just "up travel" and the the real focus of off-road trucks is "down travel"....the point is that while racing on the track ull have a low center of gravity but when u jump the body will go up with momentum but the suspension will drop so it can reveal the maximum inches of travel and also get the wheels to make contact with the ground to put the horse power back to work...same idea for keeping the wheels on the ground during a turn with body roll. now then you get into sway bars and stuff.

If you were to put your konis at the highest perch setting would that compromise the down travel enough to were a daily driving tl guy would have to worry about it?

as far as professional street racing goes, how much focus do you think goes into down travel vs. up travel? is there a perfect middle setting? or is it better to have more of one than the other?

I hate cars

You have a very good point and its something that's often overlooked. If I had to name the single biggest weakness of my suspension it would be cresting a hill or a large dip in a corner. No car is going to like that scenario but my TL will almost entirely lose contact with the road and skip over 10'. This is one reason you don't just crank the rebound damping of the konis to full stiff. Rebound of the shock is to control the spring, not make the car artificially stiff.

Shorter springs make this worse. As the suspension gets near the end of the spring's travel there's just not much to push the tire down and remain in contact with the road. Overly stiff swaybars make this worse. Too much rebound in the shocks will make it skip over bumps.

As far as I know, shorter springs are the biggest offender.

The bigger immediate issue with the TL is hitting the bumpstops during compression.

The way I did my Konis, I have full travel in either direction but it took some modification to the shock to get it. In fact, I should have slightly more rebound travel if I'm picturing this correctly. Too tired right now to actually think.

Slpr04UA6

^would you be interested in explaining to us what you did to your Koni shock to get this extra travel? I am sure I am not the only one interested in this information. I do remember you stating something about the possibility to send them(Koni's) out to get revalved for compression damp. If not, could you name a place for us to look? Thanks

a.patel

I have my car on koni sp3's with h&r race springs complemented by progress RSB. the rear is set to middle height perch setting with the sway bars set to their stiffest setting. i raised the front height perch to the 1st height perch setting since h&r race springs offer an aggressive drop. I'm still trying to figure my spring rate out for the front ones because i feel like they're just wayy to stiff for the Koni sp3s. they still bottom out very easily for me. I called Koni and asked them to perform a re-valving job but their tech informed me that theses shocks are about the stiffest they can get. there really isnt much room for improvement with the SP3s.

a.patel

only if H&R made performance shocks (shorter rod) to go along with the race springs.

94eg!

Why would you want a shorter rod? That would just limit suspension droop.

lumyeinjun

iTrader: (1)

You bring up a very good point, i've never even considered the negative effects of raising the perch level I'm going to have to think about this for a long time. To be honest, I'm not very familiar with "up travel" and "down travel" so i'll have to do some research on that before making my next move. Thanks for the input! Appreciate it!

Accord_V6_400m

iTrader: (1)

As far as coilovers go I like the AMR coilovers I have on my Accord. I have the 10/8 adjustable setup but im thinking about bumping it up to 12/10

CaliWowie

Yeah man. Different people bring different theories to the table. No doubt the koni set up is a experiment daily. Lemmy see if I can paint another up travel-down travel thing for ya...

Let’s say your suspension has 10 inches of travel total. now installed on the car the weight of the car compresses your suspension to 5 inches. now your suspension can soaked up a bump up to 5 inches from a constant flat surface. and the momentum keeps the body where it’s at. That would be called "up travel"

Now if you're at a constant speed on a flat surface and you come up to a 5 inch dip. your suspension will drop into the dip, while your body stays the same with the momentum keeping the tires on the ground for no loss of traction. That would be called "down travel"

now if you taking a hard left turn your body roll will make your right side dip and you’re left side rise...the travel in you suspension will be experiencing up travel on the outside while the left side of your car will be experiencing down travel.

From this gangster azz thread i collected that overly stiff sway bars wont allow your suspension to deliver the right amount of up or down travel. And short spring won’t allow for much drop on overall dips.

Hope that helps.

Great post. Great input. Great knowledge all around guys.