Hi Everyone,

I'm upgrading to Ground Control Eibach springs on the advice of the local performance shop I trust. From what the owner says (and his advice is usually spot-on) he says if my shocks are working fine, there is no need to upgrade or replace them when we do the new springs. He usually is very conservative in his advice and doesn't like to spend money on parts when it's not necessary (one of the reasons I like his advice!) but this does seem a little odd to me as the car is now 8y old, with almost 93k miles. What is your opinion & rationale? Also welcome are opinions/experience with the Ground Control's.

Thanks to all of you who know a lot more about suspensions than I do.

 

that would be a big negative, it's not even about the condition of your current stock damper, when you pair up a firm spring to a stock damper, the OE hardware can't keep up with the added spring rate. You can get away with it if you are running a mile drop such as tein stech or eibach prokit which are around 15-20% increase depends on your M.Y.

There's not much good selection when it come to damper for our car, simply because the oem hardware leaves little on the table in term of performance out of the box(external reservoir, high pressure gas Mono tube), some of the better damper out there are already out of the price point for a off the counter damper.

if you want to order the GC with koni yellow make sure you are getting the right hardware, I believe the sleeve will be different to run the snap ring instead of spring perch.

also please beware with GC you are not able to preload the suspension as well as keeping a decent handling if you slam the car on stock length damper

 

Thanks, Iam7Head, although a lot of that was over my head. (I'm doing research on the terms I didn't understand now.) However, I don't understand your overall assertion "That would be a big negative." Are you saying the OEM damper (What I'm calling the shock) is not a good pairing with the GC springs? From what I read, at stock height, the GC springs have the same spring rate as the CR's OEM springs. I plan to ride at this height.

I hear a lot about these "Koni Yellow" shocks (dampers) but after much research I am not convinced they are overall superior to OEM. All the seem to offer is adjustibility.

 

Hello, sorry i wasn't clear, but the best thing to do is call look at your ground control spring and look for it's spring rate, with eibach/GC you can specify spring rate so you can have a mild increase to a pretty firm increase. I don't know exactly the rate for OTC GC, if they are close to CR damper are you pairing it up with CR damper? the OTC rate should be around 450 300 ish?

Koni yellow is very popular because it's a very versatile package, you can have it rebuild, revavle, shorten. I don't have first hand experience with the OTC koni yellow for our car but generally a twin tube damper will somewhat be less consistent comparing to a monotube(if all things are equal).

 

Care to expand on your assertion that a twin tube will be less consistent?

 

This is usually true for twintube(TT) vs Monotube(MT) if all thing are created equal

A TT is usually pressurized from 70-100 PSI, under heavy usage it is more prone to cavitation when the gas and oil mixed in thus resulting in less consistent performance, especially under high temperature repeating punishment. Comparing to a TT, a typical MT is rated somewhere with 2-4 times higher internal pressure thus resulting in higher resistance of heat, with only one physical barrier to go thru, it's also easier to cool down.

The shim stack valve in MT is usually more sensitive, precise in dampering control vs orifices in TT but how much more is a question a damper dyno can tell.

It all come down to the cost and target market segment, from a MFG standpoint you can built a entry level MT with X amount of dollar, with the same amount you can build a better TT with better valving. If you ask me it's about finding your sweet point in the market, the same goes with entry level coilover adjustable damper(height adj, pre-load adj, damper adj) vs a very well build/engineer and matching non-adjustable damper with spring. If they need to CNC 30 more pieces and outsource more parts with the same price tag, the chances are they will cut down the cost at the internal bits, simply because you can't see it and the average customer will more likely to buy it because it's 30 ways adjustable instead of not adjustable.

sorry to bring it off topic but it might be a good read for other member on the forum. Remember the suspension brand Omni? they started the fully adjustable coilover boom for the honda world 6-7 years ago, with mega adjustable coilover for the price of OEM replacement damper and spring. With nothing but happy reviews until a couple years ago their lower damper collar start snap in half, that's why I never recommend no name suspension part no matter how good they look on the spec sheet, if you can't even find a place to rebuild the damper why bother? and yes i'll take that non-adjustable bilstein over <insert latest JDM slang> 30 ways adjustable coilover.

 

I was pretty sure you were going to bring up these points, but I thought I would ask anyway. I have to disagree with your asertion that TT can not stand the heat like a MT can. This has been an internet myth for a long time and Lee Grimes of Koni said it best (http://www.roadraceautox.com/showthr...p?t=20142&amp;) It's a long thread with mutlitple posts from Lee on various misconceptions about TT shocks. CRX Lee is is SN, he starts on the second page.

 

Ground Controls should be fine if you dont slam them or have them set too low, GC's on stock shocks will be fine, how low do you wanna go? If too low opt for koni yellows

 

Btw, stock shocks and koni yellows are the same length, so if it's too low for the stock shocks you will be too low for the yellows.

 

I'm starting to reconsider the Ground Controls as I don't really want adjust-ability, just a well-performing spring. My original springs are all FUBAR as you might see on my "Mystery Alignment problem" thread on Under the Hood.