Suspension setup

[Chris]

Been reading a bit of mixed reviews lately over what determines a properly setup suspension...

Now I'm fitting Bilstein coilovers soon, as I would like to improve the handling of the car and to get the car lower than it is (not really interested in lowering springs tbh). Now obviously when you get suspension fitted you get fitting & alignment, but then you also have geometry (rake, camber etc etc) then you have corner weighting.

Just looking to find out what would be best for me personally, I'm not going to be using the car for track (maybe one or two a year when its a bit drier!) so I'm not looking for lap times or racing or anything like that, just if I do track it will be a bit of fun.

Obviously a 'normal' garage (I'm not talking about kwikfit here) would be able to fit these but what would actually be the pros of going to a specialist and would I see much of a difference for day to day road, blasts out in the country and the rare track day...??


Any help appreciated.

 

[Yiannis197]

You don't need a specialist to fit 4 shocks Chris, some people do it on their driveway. I could do it myself if I had the space and trust me, If I can do it anyone can

By the sounds of it (road use and all that) you don't need corner balancing either (I haven't had my car corner balanced and I'm obsessed with handling), just swap the shocks and do the tracking. The suspension you are fitting has fixed damping, camber and caster are not adjustable, rear is fixed so all you need is to sort out the height and toe.

First decide on the height (again, very easy, just a case of winding or unwinding the spring platform, I would recommend 10-15 mm lower at the front) then put toe in parallel (or even slightly out, like 10 minutes or something) and you are done. Definitely no need to pay specialist prices for this kind of job

 

[Chris_200CUP]

Make sure have some rake in the car. The rears set higher then front so transferring the weight over the front end. For just every day no need go too extreme like yanis says 15mm.

 

[Chris]

Cheers guys, pretty much just as I thought