I went to the track a few days ago for an HPDE session. It was my second time with the previous being last summer/fall. This time around the car seemed very soft and had a lot of understeer. Seemed like more pushing and body roll than I remember, and I was even going slower this time!

The car has about 25K miles on it with all stock suspension and Bridgestone S-03s. I'm ready to upgrade the suspension to make it a bit more track worthy. Road course only here as I am NOT interesting in autocross, drifting, etc. The car is also my daily driver but I am not too concerned about degrading the comfort level. Even for daily driving I consider the stock suspension to be too soft.

The other consideration is cost. Right now I am not keen on spending $1500+ on fancy multi-adjustable coilovers. Maybe later I'll change my mind.

So far I have been looking at getting either the Mazdaspeed struts/springs, the Tein Basic coilovers, or the Koni struts with a good matching spring. All three of those options are around the $700 mark, and is what I am willing to spend at this point.

I am kind of leaning toward the Tein because of the adjustability of the ride height but am conserned about also altering the spring preload in the process. I am also concerned about the sugested drop of 1.6 in front and .8 in back. Whereas the MS springs have an equal drop all around. Will dropping the front more than the back create an oversteer situation? Are they a quality product?

I like the fact that the MS and Tein springs are siginificantly firmer than stock and Racing Beat springs. That will help reduce squat and dive, and body roll without having to resort to a huge sway bar.

Anyway, just wondering your thoughts are on this considering my budget and requirments.

-Dave

 

I've got the RB kit installed on my car, and I'm pretty happy with the handling, although it sounds like you'd prefer to go a different way.

Mainly what I wanted to mention is if you're dropping the car that much (and tilting it forward) you're likely to have a lot of encounters with the pavement. The RB kit only does a 0.5" all-around drop, and I still scrape the bottom lip of my nose with some frequency. Dropping the front more than the back will result in a little extra drop at the front bumper beyond the front suspension drop due to trigonometry....

Also, with just the 20% stiffness increase in the RB coils, my CD player skips with some frequency (although mostly when playing CD-RW's which are a little more sensitive to begin with)

 

dude
my group does fairly freq track days on a track with lots of elavation changes etc. I dont like coil overs because I would adjust my self to death! The price you are speaking of --in my mind-- would be this. Mazda speed sways, rb springs and koni shocks. The rb sways may be a little too stiff (especially the front) and what is going to play a big roll in the squat and dive part is your shocks. At speed the stock shocks suck. RB springs are good with koni shocks.Others may not be. Mazda speed shocks only work well with mazdaspeed springs and i will take koni over mazdaspeed anyday.i If you drop too much--- your alignments will really have to be adjusted and on the street you can bottom out pretty easily.
My package if you install yourself would be in the neighborhood of $1000.
have fun man (and get some better tires when you can)
olddragger

 

Go with the RB Springs and Koni shocks.

 

We have the Tein Basics on one car, and Konis with stock springs on the other. Tein and Koni both make very high quality products, as I'm sure MS does as well, so from a product quality standpoint I don't think you can go too wrong with any of your choices.

The Basics are really nice, and virtually eliminate squat and dive. There still is some body roll, but as you'd guess it's significantly reduced. We have them set at Tein's recommended setting, and they feel quite good. Certainly no untoward tendency to oversteer, and actually I think they keep the rear end better planted when you get into 11/10ths territory (where the stock car can get a little spooky if provoked). Chassis is simply balanced, more responsive, more controlled and more predictable. And my Tech Director (who drives it daily) doesn't report any undue curb-scraping with the lower front end, but he's a careful guy about that stuff in the first place. Also, despite nearly tripling the OEM spring rates, the ride really didn't suffer that much. Firmer for sure, but still more comfortable than a stock Evo or 350Z.

As our last track event was rained out (last Wednesday), we still don't have any track miles on the car with the Konis and stock springs. We can tell you that with a half turn up from full-soft (of ~2 full turns total) front and rear, the car is notably firmer. Really cleans up the slop in the rear under heavy cornering loads, and quickens the steering response in the front (which is already pretty darn responsive from the factory). We will be putting Tein springs on the car in a month or two, but can't report from experience how the Konis work with any aftermarket springs. I can say that I believe they'll work great with just about any spring, as with the adjustability they can clearly handle springs that are MUCH stiffer than stock. I've used Konis personally on three of my cars, and they always work great and don't seem to wear. One set had a bit over 70k of hard driving on it, and the car still felt new suspension-wise.

The Basic coilovers are probably slightly easier to install since you don't have to compress the springs to install the strut tops (just spin the coilovers down), but I don't know that I'd choose one or the other based on that. I wouldn't think too much of the height adjustability though; we've played with it a bit, and if you go much above their recommended setting height-wise they start to lose some feel. We're going to try going a bit lower soon, but frankly I think most folks would set them at the recommended height and not touch them for years and be quite happy. Consider it a suspension kit with well matched shocks and springs, moreso than a coilover that you'll be playing around with a bunch.

Adjustable damping is another story though, as it helps you fine-tune chassis balance and/or match the shock to basically any spring. Not so great that the rears have to come off to be adjusted, but at least the fronts are a turn of a **** from being rock-hard to nearly stock-soft.

Not giving recommendations, just conveying what we know from experience. You also might want to check out our vendor forum, as we have a special going on Konis and Tein springs when purchased together. And we do have two Tein Basic kits in stock as well. Hope that helps!

Regards,

 

Thanks for the good info. I'm kind of thinking of droping my original cost requirement and going for full on adjustable coilovers. Something like Tein Flex or JIC so that I can get the car corner balanced without affecting spring preload, and be able to adjust damping.

Today I put my car on jackstands to bleed the brakes and do a little recon. I found that the front sway endlinks were completely bent and twisted. And I have totally stock suspension! Maybe the RB endlinks are in order here too.

I also found that the drivers side was about 0.5" lower than the passenger side. I guess 2 years of daily driving have sacked the springs a bit.

- Olddrager, what tires would you recommend? To me the S-03 give me more understeer than the original Bridgestones. Maybe an R-compound might be the way to go.

-Dave

 

What about damping? Aren't the Koni's better at that?

 

I don't know exactly. I haven't heard anyone say that the Konis are better with damping than the JIC, or vice-versa. I like the idea of being able to precisly set the ride height and get the car corner balanced to my weight at the time of the alignment.

Since I am still in research mode, I'm all ears. Would really like to hear someone that has driven different setups, but that's hard to come by...

-Dave

 

I auto-x'ed on JIC FLT-A2S for a year before switching to TEIN Basics. I miss the JICs. The rear spring rate seemed better matched for our car then the TEIN. And there was more damping even on the softest setting. The car felt much more stable through the twisties with the JICs.

The JICs are now on dannobre's car and I'm pretty sure he is happy with them.

 

as far as tires i am leaning toward the faulkin 615's although for the money the avons are hard to beat. The faulkins ( i am trying to save for them!) reportively have a softer sidewall than the 040 but the end grip is MUCH higher and more forgiving. Have to adjust driving style a little. go with at LEAST a 235-40-18 ( i know I know thats still almost a miata tire but I'm talking about everyday driving and the occasional track day). a 235 will be plenty of tire until your time on the track has increased. And remember leave the dsc on until you KNOW you car and have a good amount of track time. THEN take the time to RELEARN your car without the dsc.
for my type of situation i still prefer the koni's and rb springs. (with sways of course) I am not saying other set ups are not good just that is the one I like.

have fun dude. the 8 on the track is a blast!
olddragger

 

Well, I'll add my $.02 to the mix. I haven't autocrossed with the Basics, but I have had it at the track a couple of times with Basics on and drive daily on them.

First, I saw you mentioned understeer, Dave. One thing I've found is that with stickier tires is that you can actually exacerbate an understeering car's tendency to understeer. I don't think this is a natural tendency for the RX-8, so maybe the worn suspension can introduce it and the stickier rubber makes it even worse... I'm not sure. I can say that as my Bridgestones wore down (I have gone through the OEM tires already) and hardened with age and heat cycles, they caused the car to oversteer more on track due to less grip overall, though I was able to offset that to some degree with tire pressures. With a simple tire pressure change, you may be able to fix a bit of understeer resulting from worn suspension parts. Or, possibly with an alignment change if tire pressures don't cut it (e.g. slightly more negative camber up front). You might even be able to alter it with driving style or technique. I have found that throttle-induced yaw control works quite well in the RX-8.

In daily driving, I traverse plenty of pothole-ridden midwestern roads, so I appreciate that the Basics aren't super firm. The stock suspension is decent, but definitely soft. The Basics do cure that. I have driven the car on some road trips and it remains plenty comfortable. That the engineers at Mazda have given the car such a good GT/sportscar blend is a testament to their chassis tuning prowess, but there were obviously compromises made. The Basics get rid of those compromises, mostly without making any compromises of their own in harshness. I'm pretty impressed by that. That said, I can see them maybe not being the perfect companion for autox since agility and responsiveness are highly valuable in that setting, and I can see that some would prefer more damping (namely, rebound in the rear, at least in my observations) even in the Basics.

The car with the OEM suspension has a tendency to get a bit of a wiggly butt on track when really pushed deep into a corner under trail braking, and it also has a bit more roll than I personally care for on track. Nothing horrendous, but it could be better. Under hard braking deep into a corner, it seems to me (keeping in mind that I'm not a suspension engineer) that the rear suspension unloads to such a great degree due to lack of rebound control in the rear and softness in the front that you can actually get a fair amount of change in alignment that creates some instability in the rear of the car at the absolute limits (think positive camber and maybe even a positive toe change). The amount of suspension softness actually is good up to about 8-9/10 in my opinion, because it aids in grip to a point and gives a little bit of margin for error before giving up grip and spinning. For most drivers, this is probably a good safety net. At about 10/10 (and especially at 11+/10!), things get considerably dicier on track. In several driving events on the stock suspension, I found that the car gets a bit spooky when really pushed to the limit. We're talking driving really deep into a turn, and frankly overdriving the car, but that was a bit of the point, to try to find the car's weaknesses.

So, on track with the OEM suspension, one can definitely overdrive the car into an oversteering state, albeit a state that is recoverable - in my experience, anyway. After getting the Basics on, I found that the positive traits of the car remained in daily driving, but it really came alive on track. In fact, the car became a lot more entertaining on track. The chassis feels more balanced and more alive. The untoward dive and roll has been tempered a lot. There is still some roll, but it's lessened. Might still want sway bars, but that's a lot about preference.

I have found the car to be supremely balanced with the Basics on track, more so than stock, and I have found that I can balance the car exactly how I want it with the throttle now, whereas throttle induced yaw corrections were less precise on the stock suspension. The car is much more planted in the rear in hard braking and trail braking, which is much appreciated at the limit, without gaining understeer. The car is a whole lot of fun stock on track, but with the Basics it really has gone to a new level when driven hard. It has shown no tendency to give up on me like it did as stock when driven really hard, remains balanced, has sharper reflexes, and yet still allows enough body motion to keep someone like me, with no F1 contract as of yet (I suspect with good reason, but I'm still open to offers...), on the road course and out of the weeds.

So, the Basics might not be perfect for everyone, but I have been very pleased with them. We'll have more to report as time goes on and other developments take place with other product pairings, but so far I can't find much to fault in the Basics for a car that is daily driven and occasionally tracked. If you do autocross also, I could see going with something adjustable being a huge benefit, since the settings for autocross vs. road course would probably need to differ a bit. But, so far so good with the Basics for me. And, frankly, the lack of access to the rear shocks (you have to remove them to adjust the damping on the Konis, anyway) is a bit of a turn-off for me in an adjustable setup. The way to go would be the TEIN Flex with EDFC if you were really into adjustability, I would think. If you adjust the settings in the rear and get it wrong on something like the Konis, then you have to remove them and adjust them and reinstall and try again. Not conducive to trial-and-error. I like that the Basics do a lot well for the money and have dampers matched to the springs. They won't be as good as fully adjustable coilovers that are setup perfectly for whatever venue you're in, but they're a heck of a lot less work and deliver, in my opinion, very commendable results that elevate the car on track from really fun up to 9/10 to a car that's a blast all the way to the limit and even more controllable when you go beyond its limits.

That said, a lot of the products out there are high quality and will be an improvement. Just depends on what you're looking for. Good luck in finding what works best for you.

Regards,
Craig

 

I spent my first day yesterday on the track with the JIC coilovers, RB sways and endlinks and a more radical alignment
The car was a dream to drive. It was very planted, and neutral, and the body roll was almost non-existant. I was partnered with another 8 driver to share instructors....and the instructors were all very impressed with the difference in the handling between the two cars. They said the stock car handled well...but that mine was much more "tight". They liked the sharp turn in...and how well it stayed neutral. Even with the DSC off...it wasn't real tail happy...just seemed to take anything I threw at it in stride. It was very confidence inspiring....stable and predictable...but fast. I made a few M3 drivers, and a STI driver look like turtles in the corners.....and they all liked the high flow CAAT and Greddy Exaust on the straight. It was a great day...and I am very happy with the handling of the car.

I would recomend a track day for everyone...it's he best $150 I have spent on the car yet!

 

You know after owning this car since 12/2003 it is finally a pleasure to have a VARIETY of good options. I remember when there were none! thanks for all the info guys.
olddragger

 

Would you mind elaborating on what your alignment settings were (both front and rear)?

 

-1.5 CAMBER frnt/rear... 0 toe frnt/rear .....7 deg caster

 

Sounds familiar.... :D

 

They should :D