[QUOTE]Originally posted by copec
[B]I went to the sema show at vegas, tein (suspension) was there.

 

Why are you trying to lower the car in the first place? What are you looking to improve?

 

An good set of springs and shocks w/ an alignment will probably work fine. Someone just has to play around the alignment and figure out what works.

 

Rich i believe you are exactly right. its not the dampening but instead the geometry. from my understanding it has something to do with the car already having an aggressive toe setting stock.

Jerry, i know you didnt ask me, but i want to lower my car to both improve the look when driving on my 18's without sacrificing performance and to minimize body roll.

 

The main reason is that I could not find stiffer springs without a drop. I took a look at the Zeal coilovers, and well I like them, particulary because of the three systems that they ofeer. The full race looks very nice and the price is not that bad ~2200 msrp. I figure ~1500-1700 from a dealer. Not bad for what you get. If I can't get back to stock settings then I don't want to pursue this.

Lowering the car ofers quite a few benifits on the track. On the street its questionable.

 

Is there a way to adjust the factory toe settings?

 

We used koni yellows on my friend's civic and they were AWEFUL. The car handled pretty well with them, but the ride could not have been much worse. Too stiff AND too bouncy. Didn't matter what we adjusted them to - I think the rebound dampening was the problem and they don't have rebound adjustments.

 

I recently installed the Tein RA's and have my alignment and corner weight appointment set up for next Monday. I currently have them set .9" lower in the front and 1.1" rear. I'll let you know how close to stock is possible at these ride height settings. We will continue to adjust the height until we can produce reasonable alignment settings.

BTW, my goals for the suspension changes were to reduce the car's positional change and to be able to change the car's over/understeer behavior by adjusting front and rear ground clearances. Basically the same goals discussed in the Mugen S2000 development paper. I have lowered the rear of the car more than the front in an attempt to dial out some oversteer and make drift control easier to achieve.

Of course, I have not had it out at the track yet but it appears that these coilovers are very tunable. Tein says they are 16 point adjustable but for some reason my dampers seem to have 21 adjustments on all four corners. The dampening adjustments have a wide range from near stock to almost locked out. For the street I have the settings at 8 front and 4 rear. The ride is easy to live with even thought the springs are rated at 10kg/mm front and rear, more than twice as stiff as stock! It just goes to show what a high quality damper can do for ride quality.

Here are a few post-install pics.

 

I looked at the Tein RA's as well. I saw a little excerpt of the Mugan paper and was hoping somebody could post it or forward it to m it would be very helpful. If you could post your alignment settings after you lower the car it would be a great help so I can give my shop something to start with. I really need to buy a hanes manual or the like for this car to see the ends of the adjustment's before I proceed.

 

No problem, I'll post all of the final settings on Monday. If you PM me with your e-mail I'll forward the Mugen paper on to you. BTW, the shop manual for the S is Helms.