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SOLVED! Help! Car Doesn’t Feel Right After Coilovers, Wheels, and Tires
-PROBLEM SOLVED- Forgot to remove the nuts from the top hats before installing. I used my OEM nuts to install them thinking that the nuts on the new coils were what was holding everything together.
Hey guys, I picked up my second S in November five years after I sold my first. It’s a MY06 and has 39k miles. It’s not my daily and gets driven less than 200 miles a month.
I live less than a half hour from LHT in Florida, lucky me! I was originally going to install the BuddyClub Coilovers which they highly recommend but they were back ordered for a few months and I got impatient. I ended up getting the newer version of the Fortune Auto 500 Coilovers with 9k F/R springs after chatting back and forth with Will from THMotorsports. The Fortunes came highly recommended by him for street driving and I have no plans to track the car.
I installed the Fortunes my self, let them settle, and took the car to another shop (Not LHT) to have my new tires mounted on new wheels, and get an alignment. Since getting the car aligned, it doesn’t feel stable going straight. It’s hard to describe but it sort of feels like it’s wandering, if that makes sense. I don’t feel totally comfortable driving the car now the way it handles.
The car is going back to LHT in August for the Kraftwerks supercharger (LHT already changed all fluids, installed header, and FX400 clutch) and the thought of doubling the power with the way it currently feels has me nervous. Please help!
New Parts Installed:
Fortune Auto 500 Coilovers 9K F/R Springs
Enkei RPF1s 17x9 +45 all around
Hankook Ventura V12s 225/45F & 245/40R
My observation....that is way too much rear camber relative to the front and for the street in general. I'd get the rear down to roughly the same as front if not slightly less. Excess camber = good for high speed corners, i.e. track. Not good for straight line.
1) I think you may have too much toe in the rear. Also the camber is too much
2) your rear tires are .3” shorter than your front tires but by the looks of it your tire to fender gap is much greater in the front.
the car should have a bit of natural rake and the rear tires being smaller means the wheel gap should be slightly more in the rear.
think you need to raise the rear a bit and maybe lower the front. It’s worse for your aerodynamics to have your front end kicked up like that. At speed the air coming under the car produces natural lift and puts more weight on your rear tire with squirmy alignment specs
I second tire pressure suggestion. Check rear tire pressures. If they are not equal, thats your problem, or at least a big part of it.
This car, and its torsen diff, are especially sensitive to differences in rear tire diameters. Pressure will change diameter.
If pressures aren't the issue, check the new rear tires batch codes. Make sure they're from the same manufacturing batch. Even tbe subtle diameter difference from different batches can cause havoc with our cars handling. You can use a string around center of tire to carefully measure diameter and compare one side to the other.
This has happened before with guys who got their tires from tire rack, and tr apologized and quickly sent replacement, and problem solved. I suspect a local tire shop will balk at this being a possible cause, and you'll have much trouble convincing them that a small difference in rear diameter is causing any issue. For most any other car they'd be correct. You're gonna have to work at it to convince them its not in your head and that tires are the cause.
Next time you get an alignment, I'd recommend Speed Syndicate. It's a few minutes from LHT. They prep & maintain race cars and street cars and have worked on a ton of S2000's.
Too much rear toe, id knock total in half and too much camber in rear/knock that down to about -2. Those v12 tires are soft sidewall/poor handlers as well. Not helping. Id return them if you can ideally, or just have to jack up the tire pressures to max 40psi+ to firm them up as much as possible.
And where is the caster reading?
Last edited by s2000Junky; 02-18-2019 at 03:00 PM.
I don't really think anything special is needed for the car to feel normal or safe. The car's alignment would have to be PRETTY badly out of spec to make it feel strange. Most of the time, the car drives fine even with questionable alignments.
I would focus on finding something really WRONG.
The alignment on the print out is close to factory spec. OP's got seemingly reasonable tires and the car isn't slammed below the ground. And he says it was fine before the work.
My bet is on something being loose or installed incorrectly.
Or there's maybe a ton of tread squirm. Some tires squirm around when new and will cause a wavy, delayed reaction feeling. Do you have a 2nd set of wheels to swap in?
02-16-2019, 06:47 AM
SOLVED! Help! Car Doesn’t Feel Right After Coilovers, Wheels, and Tires
