Coilover Recommendations

[dhutton]

For clarity, as the former Director of Engineering for ridetech, I was responsible for managing nearly everything regarding the release of the Fox coil overs.
So my opinion is extremely biased, even though I no longer work for ridetech.

When we first decided to get into the coil over market we had to determine our priorities. . .ride quality, performance, etc.
We drove a lot of cars, new, old, anything we could get our hands on or purchase so we could feel what each car did well and not so well.
We hired a company to build a custom "ride quality monitor" that sat under the driver seat and provided a score. The lower the score the more "comfy" the ride quality. The guys who developed that for us used a lot of math NASA developed when they started putting humans atop rockets. Turns out there's a lot of frequencies the body really doesn't care for, and forces the average person would not appreciate.

Anyway, we decided our market was Pro-Touring and performance oriented vehicles, so we wanted a more firm ride without being overly harsh. The BMW M3 was one of the benchmarks. It just feels "sporty".



Unfortunately, what I consider sporty, someone else feels is too harsh. That's cool, we knew you cannot please all the people all the time.

Luckily there's a lot you can do to change the ride quality in a vehicle. . . springs being a big factor.
Think it's too harsh, get as little compression damping as you can from the shock and go down in spring rate. Lower spring rate will require more preload, but that's ok so long as you don't coil bind the spring or bottom out the suspension travel.
Fortunately the threads on the shocks are matched to the suggested spring lengths, so you even at full preload the spring will not surpass 80% compression (the point at which the metal in the spring begins to "break down", resulting in spring sag or "taking a set".)
If the vehicle bottoms out the suspension you can raise the height to provide the required suspension travel for your chosen spring rate.

Progressive springs are cool, and I really like them in ride quality first, performance second applications (which is why they are used in the Street Grip kits), but availability in 2.5" coil over rates/lengths are limited.

Just remember, these are all tuning tools (springs, shocks, bushings, etc). To dial in exactly what you desire may require a bit of time and testing, but it is absolutely achievable (within reason, of course).

Can you comment on the harsh bang that occurs when driving over an abrupt drop in the road? This is the jarring that a lot of folks complain about with Ridetech four link setups. I was never able to eliminate it with shock adjustments.

Don