ARTICLE BY: Industry Insider, Frank Michaux, MD
ON BEHALF OF POTN;
Spax Suspension
Are coilovers right for you?
For a lot of tuners, a coilover suspension has become the must have setup. I’ll dispel one myth about coilovers right now:
FACT: coilovers are not the perfect suspension for everybody!
The bad news:
Initially designed for race cars, coilovers are much stiffer than standard, even when adjusted all the way down. If you spend all day trawling up and down motorways coilovers would be a waste of money, far less comfortable than a standard setup or an normal aftermarket kit.
The good news:
If your priority is for incredible handling, once you’ve tried a set of coilovers there’s no looking back. After all, you're riding on race car quality handling. Hitting a roundabout with a well setup car on coilovers is a fantastic, life changing experience, the feedback you get and the confidence they give is outrageous.
So if you’re like me and love the feel of a fantastic handling car, you want to have the option of tweaking the suspension just how you like it, or if you're doing a track day, coilovers will get you round corners much quicker than a standard setup.
5 facts about coilovers:
Coilovers adjust the vehicles ride height by raising or lowering the lower spring seat.
Custom lowering between front and rear can be achieved. A real benefit if you have a big sound systems in the boot.
With better quality units like the SPAX RSX there’s also the option to adjust the stiffness on car. An adjustable valve inside the unit restricts the oil flow through the shock, this affects how quickly the unit will compress and rebound.
The best coilover setups will have a "wet damper" system where the shock oil is in contact with the outer casing. This makes sure the heat generated is dissipated faster. Giving you awesome performance when you need it most - at high loadings and high speeds.
Track based coilovers often have not only one valve for stiffness, but one valve for compression and one valve for rebound damping.
