suspension refresh

[Mangosmoothie]

175k miles. I bought this car for $3k so I wasn't looking to dump a ton of money into suspension, at least not yet.

Mine is spec'd with M030.

When doing exhaust, I noticed a drop of oil. Upon investigation the passenger rear is toast, leaking shock oil.

I was considering 2 piece coilovers (Cika, BC, FEAL, several other taiwanese brands), one piece coilovers (PSS9, H&R RSS or Street perf, TA Technix, MTS technic) or just replacing struts/shocks. Koni special actives seem well liked esp with M030 springs. B6 as an OEM+ type deal. Through various reading, it seemed people liked B6 for the street over Koni yellow.

The "pro" of the 2 piece coilovers was that they just bolt on. They should come with camber plates, mounts, etc. 2 piece can be useful for corner balancing because ride height is somewhat independent of preload. The "con" is that I'm not confident in what I'm buying (was this engineered for the car? or did they slap some different cup and shock bodies together until something sort of worked) and I don't enjoy the setup process. It also seems they need rebuilt every 2 years or so. I've seen reports of any of the cheaper coilovers failing prematurely, even H&R.

From my Miata days, I avoided 2 piece coilovers. My prefered way to set them up is to install them without a spring, and attach the wheel/tire. Then jack up the tire until it either compresses the bump stop, or the tire starts hitting a hard part that it shouldn't. You, ideally, adjust shock body length so you can maximize travel of the shock. You want to be able to fully compress the shock into the bumpstop without the tire hitting anything. Then you remove, put the spring on, then adjust the ride height with spring preload. If it's too low, you can unthread the lengthen the shock body from the mounting cup. Also can't preload too much, or you can get coil bind.

So... I ended up going with B6. I got all 4 delivered to my door for $1056. I'm going to reuse my M030 springs. They aren't corroded so I think they're still fine. They may have some sag, but this will be fine for now. There are also places than can revalve B6's if I want to get weird in the future. I'm going to hold off on the peripherals like bumpstops, bearings, bellows, mounts until I can inspect mine. I'd like to reuse what is good. I also don't have to mess with the 2 piece set up. H&R was a serious contender too. Fatcat motorsports can re-work these this was appealing. But I'm just not ready to invest that much money into this particular car. I opted to save the $600+ and just enjoy the car. I'm running DWS06+, not like I can get super crazy before running out of tire grip.

As far as the control and link arms.... I'm also going to leave them as is. This winter I'm going to invest in a press, and slam a bunch of powerflex bushings in. But that's phase 2 of the suspension overhaul. I may also experiment with some camber arms.

I'll report back impressions... eventually...