Hi there all,

I'm about to fit BC Racing coilovers - I know they're popular in the US, so I wondered if you guys could give me any advice about adjustment/setting?

I've ordered slightly lower spring rates than BC's standard to cope with UK roads (10 & 8kg/mm), but what would be a good starting point with the damper settings and particularly the front/rear bias?

The car needs to cope with bumpy, twisty rural roads rather than smooth tracks.

I'm sure UK conditions are different to yours, but any thoughts and advice will be grately appreciated.......

Cheers,
FB

 

take it to your local speedshop, there's way too much to cover over the internet. We can make tons of suggestion for you but haven't driven on the road before mean it's more or less a guessing game.

one of the biggest mistake people make when upgrading their suspension is not dialing it in right, if you can't tell preload, droop height and damper stroke/travel vs damper curve and spring rate then you shouldn't try to dial it in, it could be very simple or very complicated.

most of the people buy decent part and try to dial it in, half of those people end up messing up.

i am sure you can install it yourself without much trouble but making ti work for you in your preference take some knowledge

 

there's not much you can screw up once you set the height and maybe corner balance. there's no pre-load. Just damping.

to keep things simple, keep the setting the same number of clicks from firm or soft for all 4 corners

i currently run about 18 clicks from soft. ran about 9 clicks from soft before. i'm just trying a bunch of different settings for various road conditions. try a bunch of different settings to see what's best for your conditions.

 

exactly what i see from most of the coilover owner. not offense but...

how much preload depends on the length of the damper, after calculating the weight of the vehicle, plus the ride height. how much suspension travel left on the static ride height will dictate how much to preload. if you lower the car, after it sit on normal on the ground and have 2 inch of travel left, you better preload that or you'll ride bumpstop(which depends on the length of damper+bumpstop and of course the spring rate)

damper is another wild card when dialing in the suspension, good damper is very expensive, not everything is linear and nice like a playstation racecar. There's damper that only let you adjust effective at low speed, etc. The front and back could be differently dampered even if they are the same brand. 16click, 65click is more of a marketing hype than anything.

it's never that simple if you get more into it, sure not everyone is going to feel the need to go all out but i don't see why someone should cheap out dialing it in when he or she already blew some cash on the hardware. it's like running window 95 on window 7 supported hardware, sure it will run but why?

 

preload and height should be independent of each other with these coilovers: https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.ph...f=185&t=604020

 

no no no and no

no disrespect but um..just ask anyone with experience with adjusting coilover.

YES they are adjusted independently but they need to be adjusted to work as a system.

if you have 2-3 inch of stroke left with a sub 8-10k spring(streetable), are you going to left the preload alone? how are you going to control the suspension travel? by turning knobs on the damper? that's the job of preload(plus other thing, if you don't go with a stiffer spring rate)

YES they are adjusted independently but NO they will need to calculated and adjusted accordingly, it's not just a install and knob turning deal. There's tons of people don't even bother with the math(and think turning the knob will do that) but why bother talking to them about it?

 

Interesting reading.... thanks folks.

I thought that the BC Racing equipment only has a single adjuster ( http://www.bc-racing.co.uk/br-series-coilovers.asp ), but your comments suggest otherwise; I've obviously misunderstood something.

Anyway, I'm going to book the car in for a geo calibration with one of the UK forum's favoured chassis experts and have him help me with initial damper set up as it's clear that trial and error isn't wise.

Cheers......

 

no problem, that's why some of us are there.

it's almsot the same with all the newer part, it require some degree of knowledge and experience to get it dial in right, it's less and less of a bolt on a forget about it thing.

the coilover you posted is a single damper(the marketing department like to call it single adjustment for both bound and rebound) adjustment, height adjustable via damper body and preload adjustable via perch, top hat equipped.

i am not trying to be a smart arse but if you can't tell damper adjustment from preload, you be WAY better to have someone adjust it for you. Most of the people owning a set of coilover don't know how and it's perfectly fine to have a pro to dial it in. there's no point spending a lot of cash on something and not get the most out of it.

i don't have any experience with the brand, i tense to stick with something that have a long history of suspension experience, almost none of the fly by night company does R&D, the best i can think of is retro engineering from someone's part.

most of them comes and go, omni was the hot sh-t back in 2003 in the honda tuning scene because it's cheap and have tons of adjsutment, that went down the tube a year or so later a good number of their coilover snapped in half and total cars left and right. Someone in a nissan forum damper dyno'ed a ksport coilover and found none of the damper dyno match with the L/R side so pick something carefully

 

Thanks again for the advice