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I got many questions on coilovers asking me if coilovers are always stiff and bouncy. So, ... Not all coilovers are for racing only! Here is a list of coilover spring rates of some popular coilover systems All numbers are Kg/mm^2 and the lower the number, the softer the ride. I have listed them from softest (near stock) to stiffest. Generally, the dampening rates are matched to the springs (so soft dampening with soft springs) (from Near-stock ...) Tein CS: 8/6 Tanabe Sustec-Pro S-O: 8/6 HKS LS+: 8/8 Ohlins PCV: 9/7 Bridgestone NPG: 9/7 Tein Flex: 10/8 HKS HiperMax II: 10/9 C-One: 12/10 Tein HA: 12/12 Apexi N1 Type V: 14/9 Zeal Function-Zi: 14/10 HKS Hipermax Pro: 16/12 Tein RA: 18/16 (to Extremely stiff)

Just to echo previous comments... Pukka lads jolly :duh: I just got coilovers, rollbars and a bit of service work on the S/C. Oh and a laser alignment to finish off with. Some memories .... SatNavs battling it out and getting all knotted up I Spy - well until our walkie talkie battery crapped out. Johnny pooping as we slid completely sideways in the snow towards a ditch. V-Power !!!! Still a bit left too - this stuff is the mutts B) And of course ... Lowest hand wins - 3 wins and you're out

What a brilliant few days! Ifraz's write up was excellent - the week was full of cars, driving and drinking! Great to meet some Euro members and Mat again... TTE - great place, and excellent mechanics... And for those who keep asking - I had the following done at TTE: - TTE De-catted manifold fitted - TTE Coilovers - Japsai Under Chasis Braces - TTE Laser alignment - TTE Silver ECU - Blitz EGT Gauge plumbed in - Blitz Oil Temp Gauge Plumbed in - HKS Iridium Spark plugs fitted - Illuminated scuffs replaced FOC The phrases Ifraz put up were spot on - the whole trip was superb... Until the next one... :zee:

Tein NA are not coilovers, but a set of height adjustable shocks + springs. Tein S-Tech springs According to Tein's website there are 2 options for the Altezza (IS200 uses the same springs), soft and medium. Since most springs are progressive (means that they first appears to be relatively soft - and gradually become stiffer- when these are pressed), it is difficult to give a kg/mm figure.

how much for the tein RA, and what diameter springs are they.there for the race car. i dont think the TTE coilovers give me the options i would like

I am not sure what still can be ordered for the JZS147. The reason why I came up with these eyelids, exhaust, springs, ... was because some people asked me. I believe that TRD, TTE, Toms, Toyota do not offer any specific JZS147/GS MK1 aftermarket parts anymore. What probably can be get are: bodykits (only limited) eyelids spoilers shocks springs coilovers headlights/taillights intake (Aristo TT only) exhausts/mufflers grilles ... other parts, but need to check

The Apexi N1 are also stiff. N1 refers to the Japanese racing specs. The Tein NA , HA and HR are also very stiff, if you want more comfortable coilovers, either go for the Tein CS or Flex, or for something like the HKS LS+. Coilovers do not automatically mean stiff. I have the Apexi WS coilovers on my GS and these are very comfortable.

Well said Dave... It's just that the ride in my car has changed so much .. i.e the settings are maxed out to compensate for the Bouncyness... So the car feels so bumpy now and just ... not nice... I defo prefered the old set up... more comfy, and handling was o.k your confusing me now.... Maybe I just get a better set of coilovers ? People say you get what you paid for.... But I guess I never knew I paid for a Bouncy coilover kit nor noisy one

I'd go for coilovers if the shocks are knackered.................. play around with the ride height to your hearts content !

19's with the correct offset and a 35mm drop will fit no problem.... Duncan's done it (with coilovers mind)... You will DEFO need to get the arches rolled...

I have also noticed the really cheap deals for us due to the great exchange rate at the moment. coilovers, eibach's and teins, ( £500-£600 ) thats with the shipping over here your looking at £1000 - £1200. obviously with coliovers it doesnt matter about the engine being heavier.

Meet is about 12 I believe. I'm a doubtful at the moment........ My front tyres are getting too bald to drive on.........new tyres are @ TDi waiting to be fitted after the TEIN coilovers are done (c/w tracking)............. Dont want to put them on b4 as they will wear badly again......... was booked in for last wednesday but parts failed to arrive

Mat, I noticed the arrows on mine when I swapped the TTE coilovers (which retain the top mounts as you know). I marked them wirh a paint pen when I took them off sothat I'd know which way to put them back on again. Maybe thats why I'm not getting tyre wear !!!

nope, not mentioned in any fitting instructions, not so sure with Coilover fitting instructions..but the std top mounts are not used with coilovers well HKS ones anyway. but i was more refering to those with problems after just changing springs

ok...... this may go over a few of your heads. but ive been sat here reading this about camber problems, i sat back ponderd for a while, and then i realised i know what all your problems are..... and i will bet £50 now ....... when you had your springs/coilovers installed i will bet a pound to a pich of salt, that the top mounts have been installed incorrectly. the top mounts have 2 arrows on them which are supposed to point to the outside and slightly forward........so e.g the left ones will look like this....\\ and the right ones ....// of the car, when installed, if there not the Camber will be out, before any effects of the car being lowerd are taken into account, also the effects will be aggrivated whilst turning... unfortunatly the only way to check is to drop the front struts.

Im not saying that you are guilty of this?....its just that these will not help the settings. So then?....I have done nearly 1k of urban motoring(since H&R's went on) and there is NO tyre wear, and some members are having these problems? It cant be the fact that they have coilovers(many do),so where does the problem occur,or is it the people that say they can use laser equipment...i dont know.

I find this quite odd. I got mine done when I had the coilovers fitted, which is quite a while now, and the print out from the laser alignement thingy was showing the camber and tracking to be spot on, apart from the rear camber which was 1 degree out (wheels pointing in at the top) but this wasn't due to to the fact that they couldn't be adjusted up correctly, but that the tyres would have touched the arches so I left them at that setting. Not long after that there was a thread about camber angles on the rear and Mat C. said that the car handled better that way anyway. I should add, no tyre wear on mine and its been dropped 4.5 inches.

I think the 1998-2000 sport suspension upgrade was just shorter/stiffer springs over the existing shocks. I believe the new sport has uprated and matched springs and shocks and the anti-rollbars are uprated. Also the non sport 2001+ models ride better - don't know the differences maybe different bushes and different shocks. You may be better off getting coilovers - something like the Tein comfort coilovers. Probably cost the same and you have adjustment to set it up for your taste.

I sprayed all the belts.. i'll double check which one it is in the morning and let you know :) BTW i got nice set of coilovers on the way :D

Suppose it wouldn't do any harm to get the tracking checked to be on the safe side. Now let me check out options for coilovers.....!!!!

found this makes interesting reading although usa based! For the IS300, lowering may reduce your ride quality quite a bit. This is because just about all the Japanese-built springs/coilovers are actually calibrated for the lighter Altezza RS200/AS200. These RS200-calibrated rates are usually insufficent at keeping the front end of the IS300 from "soft crashing" on its bumpstops. (Some of you may volunteer that both ends feel worse, but the fact is that butt-dynoing which end of the suspension is causing the rough ride isn't as straighforward as one might imagine.) To reduce the suspension travel of the IS300 yet keep it off its bumpstops over common pavement irregularities, a much higher spring rate and/or higher rising rate is necessary. The only time the ride of a soft-sprung lowered car might feel acceptable is at-speed on a reasonably smooth road, where vehicle inertia is doing most of the body control. To deal with the "soft crashing" at low-to-medium speeds, one can turn up the damping adjustment (which is combined compression & rebound on most shocks and coilovers) to the point where the compression damping is overused in its body control capacity. While it is effective at reducing "soft-crashing" and endows the suspension with a feel of composure, it actually decreases grip and will send harsh vibrations right through the cabin over washboard-type surfaces. To be completely fair, turning up the compression damping past the optimal combination of body control and grip makes the breakaway characteristics much milder, hence why it's often regarded as a "drift tune". Not a lot of grip and hence not a lot of real speed, but extremely easy to manage breakaway and the body just about never misbehaves. Even apart from the damping overuse issue, lowering will usually also reduce your actual handling performance through excessive camber. This is because 1) the suspension features a fairly aggressive camber curve, and 2) there isn't much range to the camber adjusters found on the car. Lowering the car to any significant degree (1" perhaps?) will dial in so much negative camber that the car won't be able to put down a full contact patch in a straight line nor in the midst of even hard cornering. Any of you who might disagree with this can prove this to yourself if you spend ~$120 to obtain a tire pyrometer and learn how to use it. The excessive camber issue is worsened if the car is equipped with bigger sway bars. Body roll normally hurts performance on the stock car by putting the wheels into positive camber, but in this case the more positive camber to counter the lowered suspension's excessive negative camber the better. But the sways take that away too. Of course, this is all in addition to TLLTD effects. Lowering will also do a real job on your tire wear. The excessive negative camber will eat up the inside shoulders of your tires, worsening with higher-performance (read: firmer sidewall and softer tread compound) tires. While this effect may not be as profound with long-lasting, lower-performance tires, check out one of the Falken Azenis Sport that was mounted on my rear axle: (Don't worry too much on my behalf; this tire has 5 plys in the tread and 3 plies in the sidewall. As far as I could tell, I only ate completely through two plies before I chucked it. ) I think it's kinda funny how the tire is no longer a cylinder, but more of a truncated cone. For those of you who met me at the last car meet, note how mildly my car was lowered, if you even noticed that it was lowered at all. Since my installation of coilovers, my rear camber adjusters have always been maxed out to counter as much negative camber as possible. My static rear camber then was at around -1.1 degree. This undeniable evidence of a truly screwed-up contact patch prompted for the purchase of a tire pyrometer, which told me with surety of how much contact patch I was squandering. Being that I was already maxed-out at the end of the camber adjuster range, I started raising the car using the pyrometer to guage my progress in reclaiming my contact patches. By the time the pyrometer told me that my contact patches spanned across the entire tread width, the ride height was here: Not very lowered, is it? But it now grips like a mofo to the point the car's dynamic capabilities are currently beyond my ability to fully exploit it. But I'm working on it. Many people believe that lowering the IS300 enhances handling. This isn't false from a seat-of-the-pants perspective, since lowering the car changes the perception of speed (the lower you sit to the ground, the faster the apparent speed) and reduces the time it takes for the car to "take a set" during corner entry. This owes to two phenomenons: 1) the fact that there's a whole lot less suspension travel to dive through before the shock stops diving because it's sitting on the bumpstop, or 2) due to miscambering, there isn't much contact patch to really laterally accelerate the vehicle much, so the "set" arrives at an artifically low point. All this gives the impression of a quick "set" when you steer into a corner, like that of stiff sway bars. It feels sporty and nimble, but you'll probably get lower skidpad numbers than even a stock car. Another thing that leads people to believe that lowering enhance's the IS300's handling is the fact that the car seems understeer less. Remember my tire above? The reason the stock IS300 understeers as much as it does is because in maximal-performance cornering, the front wheels go into positive camber way before the rears if the car is aligned to factory specs. Good engineering places the "zero" (point equidistant from the ends of the range) of the camber adjusters at around the factory spec mark. Another way to understand what I'm saying is that the rear tires are simply negatively cambered more. Via lowering, adding a heckload of negative camber past the point of good performance on both ends produces front wheels that are excessively negative-cambered, but the rear wheels are even worse. (Remember that it was my rear tire that I showed you all for dramatic effect. My fronts weren't as bad.) The car seems more neutral because you're taking more contact patch away from the rear wheels.

:) I've seen it said many times with coilovers 'you get what you paid for' ! I just don't want to run it too low and have springy boppy ride.. so i assume i need damper and body to be pretty short to allow for this. I'm looking for kits.. looking across the pond (US) right now.. HKS and Tanabe.

How low was lowest setting in mm? did you get any pics? I'm looking for coilovers for my altezza.. needs to lower the car a fair bit with decent ride quality.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! I think I will be going for the coilovers now....you've helped my make up my mind :D >>>Jock, unfortunately, the bouns isn't gonna be big enough to cover the supercharger and insurance increase...that will have to come another day!! I'm thinking Tein NA kit now...whats the ride quality over the eibachs gonna be like? I don't want it to hard! Cheers - Neil

Want a mixture of performance + looking??? Stay with the 18'' and get coilovers ;) 19'' are too stiff for accelerating with much power. There should be some more rubber around the wheel to smooth the power traction down to the ground. Guess why dragster have such small wheels and much rubber. Also in curves your 19'' will have grip until the deadly border.... after that you're away from the street. So go with 18''... far enough... 19'' is for looking a bit better. And don't waste money on springs..... get some coilovers and you can lower your car by yourself for summer and higher it for winter (snow and huge snow balls from other cars and trucks which loose them while driving). :winky: I will receive my HKS coilovers in about 5 days......