it's all relative to what you need to do.

some people buy a suspension piece for look, some buy it just because they want a bling jdm hardware listed under their sig

and there's a rare and small number of people actually buy it because they know what they want.

most people now a day would go for coilover right off the bat because of the adjustable and relatively affordable price. as you already noted the cost of lowering a car in the right way adds up quickly if you roam pass the "mild" drop zone.

most poster/hardparker slammed their car and think a 3k jdm piece will save it from riding like crap with a 25et rims 195 stretch rubber. heck, most of the people can barely handle installation, let along adjusting the preload, damper, etc

suspension travel, scrub radius, preload, etc are all important to how a car handle(and how it handle at limit), most people think the over happy rear end is going to fixed by hardware buying, often time a stiffer(and incorrectly adjusted) coilover will make it even more harder to correct.

you sir, are the few individuals that question that before jumping on buying stuff

as to budget coilover: there's some good one and a lot of bad one out there, there's budget/fly by night coilover that snap off at the collar, there's one that have all four damper with different valving. so becareful who you ask for advice in the forum and good luck.

 

Keep in mind I'm a complete suspension newbie, but is there anything like this for the S? The way the text reads makes it seem like the adjustability with no travel loss is a rare trait to have in coil overs ...

http://www.fastmini.net/crosscoilovers.html

 

actually most of the coilover today has this.

the older coilover/sleeve over lower the car via single adjustment perch, your ride height change as your suspnension travel

ie: GC/Koni, tein basic, KW

for one thing, they are cheaper to made, there's way to get around it by using helper spring, etc. KW uses this design(surprise for mid grade level part) because of the german inspection/safety thing they have oversea.



the second type is the ride height and preload independent adjustment coilover, most of the older high end and newer coilver uses it.

ie: JIC, buddyclub, Tein mono

the preload(preload tension for spring) and ride height is adjusted independently. There's a MAJOR catch to this: if you slam your car with height adj without playing with preload(depends on the K constant of spring of course) you might get too much travel as suspension part/wheel hits other part of the car

and then you can get too much preload and have the car bounce around instead of absorbing the bumps on the road.

it's a great if you know what you doing, but in a hand of complete noob, there's tons more way screw up.

anyone tell you to do preload/height adjustment without knowing the weight of the car, the static height, spring rate, length of damper, how much suspension travel you have is not doing you any favor.

I personally don't get what's the fuzz about 50 way adjustable suspension, it's more of a marketing thing than actual performance.(sadly most people buy part without even knowing what they are getting into, of course jdm 50 ways adjustable always sounds better than fix dampering, right? )

 

The link The Gent posted is way beyond my knowledge. I'm just going to assume it was all factual because I am in no position to sift through all that to say what is/isn't correct.

Where would I be able to find these so called "crap" dyno plots for japanese spec coil over units such a JIC, TEIN, Spoon, etc. and the competitors from KW, BC, Challenge, etc.

The only info I regularly hear about for coilovers is spring rate (again, something I know little about/what is "right")


It just sounds so hard to believe the most popular models are inferior to stock setups