i am looking for opinions on my set up and if it is going to give me a nice tight grip on the road

front x brace-spoon-installed
front strut tower bar-spoon-installed
rear cross beam bar-spoon-installed
front and rear sway bars-cusco-ordered
springs-stock

is this going to be a good set up and in the future i want to order the tein coil overs with the in car controller

 

toss it all away and go to a driving school, first.

ok, just kidding. f/r cusco sway bars, I wouldn't install these if you like to drive fast they bias the car towards oversteer. the x-brace makes a teensy difference in perceived stiffness, the stb and rear cross beam do nothing but look pretty.

 

sorry i am a little slow but what do you mean by oversteer and can you recomend a better sway bar.

 

Oh, boy... you're trying to tune your suspension and you don't know what oversteer is.

I wish I had a beginner link to provide for you, but I don't have one at the moment. Hopefully someone will post one here, because you really need to understand the basics of suspension tuning before you start buying "upgrade" parts.

 

I think adding the front would be advantageous in reducing oversteer but from what I hear it may introduce a little bit of understeer. Oversteer occurs on this car when cornering hard, the rear wheel on the turn side lifts slightly. The front sway is supposed to help keep it more firmly planted and correct this. I would think that adding a rear sway would almost cancel out the affects of upgrading the front but I really don't know. As far as the braces are concerned, I totally agree and have the same ones minus the rear lower. I have been going back and fourth about sway bars myself and ultimately I decided to stay with the stockers for now. I haven't really run into any situations where I feel i need one especially after upgrading to 17" wider wheels and lowering the car. Hopefully someone that actually knows what they're talking about will chime in

 

i am looking for some more advice from someone that is completely sure about what they are talking about will this set up help me out at all

 

first of all you need to decide why you are upgrading the suspension

is the car going to be used for auto-x? a specific track? are you looking for just better suspension for spirited driving?

the strut bars and cross braces stiffen the chassis from torsional flex whilst the sway bars add rigidity and can either oversteer or understeer the car depending on the bias.

in all honesty the s2000 has VERY good handling, from the unique suspension setup to the near perfect weight distribution.

one last thing lowering a car DOES NOT improve handling, if you lower the car too much instead of preventing body roll you can actually make the car more unstable.

if you want a basic suspension upgrade and don't want to break the back, a weighted spring/shock combo is just as effective as coilovers, except you dont have the option to adjust ride/height settings

if you have any ?'s PM me

 

Personally I've had the Cusco front X-brace with the 3 piece floor reinforcement bars, and they worked great. The car is A LOT more planted on the ground when you take a corner, and bump steer is decreased dramatically. Steering response is also improved a lot. The only concern, for some people, is the car becomes quite stiff and the interior might rattle when driving on uneven pavement. But overall I think the money is well worth it. Just my 2cents.

 

There are a lot of people who know what they are talking about.

Unless you want to change over/understeer characteristics of the car, I'd just install the Cusco 3 piece rear sub frame, and X brace up front. You'll have less flex.

You may want to read a little on oversteer and understeer, and try pushing the car in an empty parking lot on a Sunday morning to see how your car handles. Oversteer is something you don't want on a road car. Just adjusting tire pressure can adjust the car the way you probably want the sway bars to do. Changing the sway bars really alter the suspension setup and should be done in conjunction with spring and shocks so everything is balanced.

 

I'm no expert, but from experience with several other cars and setups...
the correct way to fix excess body roll, etc.. is not to add more stiffening devices such as tie bars, bigger sway bars, etc. Springs and struts do wonders for correcting sloppy suspension characteristics and should be taken into consideration long before you talk about adding things just to "stiffen" up your chasis.

If you want to be cheap and just buy some tie bars or beefier sway bars then you can eliminate a lot of the stock suspensions "problems", I guess. But the S has awesome suspension to start. It's going to be really hard to improve on Honda's research without changing spring rates and strut characteristics. But why spend 30k on a car just to go cheap on your suspension? You will regret it in the long run, I made the mistake once, and never again! It's kinda like trying to tune a $30k car with a cheap $300 VAFC. I just don't get it.

All things should start with suspension!!! If it won't stay on the road, it won't go.