front coilover weight = 14lbs each
rear coilover weight = 6lbs each
total coilover weight 40lbs.
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OK. I know there are already a few of these out here, but I wanted to share my experience since apparently none (if any) of those who posted actually do a lot of AutoX which would imply that they haven't pushed the suspension to it's limits. Anyway, this one's gonna be long and detailed, so here goes.
Reference
Whenever I refer to damper settings, 0 refers to full soft and 32 refers to full stiff.
First Impressions
The coilovers look beautiful. They appear to be well designed and are MUCH lighter than stock. In fact, I believe the coilovers are just over 40lbs whereas the stock ones are over 70lbs. So for AutoX this is great since I can change my suspension and get some significant weight reduction and still stay in the STS class for my SCCA runs. The SPC Rear Camber Kit looks and feels very strong, but then again, only time will tell.
Installation
I had my mechanic who does all my work install these coilovers and the camber kit. It took us a total of 5 hours with MANY breaks and disturbances in between. The actual install time was much much less. We were also in no rush so he carefully lubed ever part (except one critical piece which I will discuss later) and as far as the rear camber kit is concerned, we tried to make it the same length as the stock length since we had no idea where to begin. We had to adjust the ride height quite a bit but eventually ended up with about 1 finger gap front and rear. This took the most time since I wanted to get it just right. An alignment was needed ASAP since the car was pulling to the right. One more thing, these things are STIFF! When the car is on the lift, the wheels sag down by only an inch or two...very little lateral motion.
Test Drive
Drove the car around a few hours with the dampers set to 24 front and rear and let me tell you, if you drive in the vicinity of NYC, then this settings sucks. I hit my head on the roof many times and if I hit even a small bump in the road, the rear wheels feel like they're lifting off. I pulled over, set the dampers to full soft (32) and WOHOO....they drove just like my A-Spec did but with a tad bit more stiffness. Definitely driveable even in pothole-ridden environments...just need to make those dampers soft. This test drive culminated in a two-hour drive to NJ where I got my car aligned at Old Bridge Tire near the Englishtown raceway.
Alignment
The alignment shop that I went to was referred to me by fbpDC5-R. These guys regulary do alignment work for the Porche club before their track days at Watkins Glen. Anyway, the alignment cost was $100. After the drop, my front camber was approximately -0.75 and my rear was -2.2. The toe was going in all sorts of direction which is why it was pulling right. Anyhow, I decided that I wanted my camber to be -1 in the front and -1.5 in the rear and the guy had no problems adjusting it to my spec. The pillow ball mounts on the front suspension and the rear camber kit made this a trivial task.
Trial by fire
To me, the only way a suspension setup can truly be tested is by Autocross and today I had a chance to do just that. I didn't try to win anything. My objective was to find the right damper settings to get the car to handle the way I wanted. Here's the breakdown of settings that I tried:
Run 1: Front 8, Rear 0. This resulted in almost zero body roll and also resulted in MASSIVE understeer so much so that I thought my suspension was bad and made me wish I left my A-Spec on. I mean I couldn't control it at all. Even a simple slalom became impossible.
Run 2: Front 16, Rear 0. A bit more control but still understeering. I blamed this on the rear being too stiff which prevented it from giving just enough to allow for more control.
Run 3: Front 16, Rear 8. Much better. The car could at least turn but still lacked responsiveness.
Run 4: Front 24, Rear 16. Now we're talking. Slight understeer. Much more manageable. The car was rotating better.
Run 5: Front 24, Rear 10. Haha...now I've dialed in some serious oversteer. The car rotated A LOT to the point where I was fishtailing through slaloms.
Run 6 to last Front 22, Rear 10. PERFECT. Car handling is neutral with easily induced oversteer. Cut my time by 2 seconds and could take hairpins while hugging cones perfectly with little effort. The tail was sliding out ever so slightly and can easily be controlled by modulating throttle and steering. This is the setting I will be going with for a while. It's easy to remember...front is 10 clicks from full soft and rear is 10 clicks from full stiff.
Problems encountered
Like everyone else, popping on the drivers side. Drove it to my mechanic straight after AutoX and the lower perch was lose. This is attributed to it either being loose (i.e. hand tightening is not enough) or the ball bearings sticking once a while during a turn causing it to loosen (this is the only part we didn't lube before we installed it...bad call on my part...should've read all the other threads before installing). So far we've solved it by tighting the lower perch using the adjustment tool provided and hitting it with a hammer to make it super tight and greased the area around the bearings. It's gone now and hopefully will stay gone.
Final Thoughts
I love this suspension despite the popping issue that can be easily resolved anyway. Once you get the damper settings you want, it handles like a dream. Actually, the car dymanics have changed and I will need to re-learn how to drive the car since I tuned it to be at the border of oversteer and neutral. You can drop it any which way you want but if you drop as low as I did, I definitely recommend the rear camber kit unless you're happy with -2 camber in the rear. For those in previous posts asking how they are on bad roads. answer is simple, keep the dampers soft...not necessarily full soft, but soft. When going to autox or track, it all depends on how the surface is but hopefully my breakdown of tried settings will help others tune it out.
