Author Topic: Weird Issue After Fitting New Coilovers  (Read 3296 times)

Offline OSR

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Weird Issue After Fitting New Coilovers
« on: 23 January 2018, 15:18 »
I've read quite a few older posts around the internet regarding differing ride heights and issues with the same cheapo coilover kits (JOM's, etc) but I've encountered a bit of a weird issue and I have a theory but the couple of people I've spoken to have simply said they think I've been sent the wrong kit for my car, here goes... :whistle:

Car jacked up for about 3-4weeks on axle stands at the rear. Car was supported by the stands at the "jacking points" which are the little lumps on the chassis just forwards of the rear beam mounts and the rear beam was pretty much hanging under its own weight for the entire time whilst I stripped and painted with red oxide then black as it was looking a bit crusty.

- Old coilovers were AP - the kit with the blue anodised bits and the rubbish (IMO) grub screw secured adjustment collars. Ride height was set about 30-40mm low with the adjusters not even halfway down.

- New coilovers are the Stance+ kit from Venom which are a £200 kit and seem to be very similar to the JOM kits etc. Adjusters wound all the way down on installation.

Basically I wanted a kit that offered a large drop (Stance+ claim 90-100mm drop) as I want to go as low as I can with a static setup and no chassis notch.

Looking at the old vs new kits, the rear dampers are about 20mm longer on the Stance+ kit, and the springs considerably longer, maybe 100mm or so (I didn't measure at the time). I did wonder about this, but the AP springs seem to be shorter and stiffer, whereas the Stance+ are longer but not as stiff and with more coils, so overall I expected the new kit to compress more for ultimately the same drop as before (Hooke's law, F=-kx).

It would appear this is not the case, with rear adjusters wound all the way down, the car is sitting at about stock height, and about 1" higher than on the previous AP setup with loads of thread left on the adjuster?

My theory is that the rear beam has "crept" and worked it's way round at the polybush mounts when it was hanging under its own weight? I recall having to push the cups aware to get the old AP ((shorter) spring out, but the Stance+ (longer) spring seemed to drop straight in after about a 3 week period. This leads me to believe that the spring cups have dropped by about 1" in over this period - is this feasible?

Any other suggestions welcome?!

Offline Ajamesc

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Re: Weird Issue After Fitting New Coilovers
« Reply #1 on: 27 January 2018, 10:31 »
Ap’s are a quality expensive make lol jom are cheap sh!t. Nothing wrong with a grub screw to lock the adjuster a little copper slip on it and they undo fine every time. But to be fair it don’t matter what suspension kit you fit if your going to stupidly lower it the car will ride horrendously anyway lol

Offline OSR

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Re: Weird Issue After Fitting New Coilovers
« Reply #2 on: 28 January 2018, 18:30 »
Yep, well aware of that but I’ve had the car about 10 years now and it’s no longer a daily driver so thought I’d do something daft with it as I was getting bored and not really using it.  £200 didn’t seem like a lot to reinject a bit of interest but even though they’re a cheap kit, the fact that on their lowest setting and it’s sitting about stock height still can’t be right regardless?