db252
Equinsu Ocha
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Sharing my latest endeavor. Back story was I had Ford Racing struts/shocks along with Steeda ultralite springs and was completely happy with that setup for the longest time for street and road course events. However, along with other upgrades like anything, one area becomes weaker when you strengthen another. All other bits of my suspension are upgraded and I'm Whipple supercharged on E85 running a Magnum XL transmission, beefed up clutch, CF driveshaft and GeForce half shafts among a thousand other things. I'm now also switching to a square 19" setup with 305's on all four corners and completely rotatable. My suspension was now too weak to support this setup.
On to coilovers.......because a friend just wouldn't shut up about how his grass was greener with his coilovers. But he was right after I got all this working so it is I who eats crow. You know who you are so stop gloating.
This was the best option and I researched many brands and setups, and as the title states, ended up with the JRZ RS2's. I didn't want remote reservoirs regardless of their benefits but I did want double adjustability and that's what I went after. I also wanted a divorced rear spring setup as my personal opinion that a true coilover in the rear isn't good for our body mount strength capability. Yes some have them and they say they work great and I think that's great but not in my comfort zone. Also wanted something with great street manners as that's 90% of the driving and was highly functional for the other 10% road course time.
JRZ offers quite a few setups from single to three way adjustability, setups with camber plates or ones with the ability to mount to oem upper strut mounts. I bought the RS2 touring model which is a non external reservoir double adjustable made to mount to oem upper strut mount hardware, although I planned on using camber plates of my choice and spring rates included of 500 front and 900 rear.
Anyways, on to the pics and 'issues' with my install.
The parts......
Hard not to be happy with the visual quality and packaging provided.
The rear install. Other than initial install then wheel on, resting weight, jack up, wheel off, readjust height and repeating this plenty of times to get the overall setting the way you want it, this all went pretty good.
Except, FIRST problem. So, GeForce half shaft boots are in a different configuration than stock half shafts and come incredibly close to the shock body. I'm talking a millimeter of space when I had the Ford racing components on and per specs I received of the JRZ shock body it was going to be slightly larger which would be a major issue. This is also where a true coilover would be a nightmare.
This was the fix. I had to pull my half shafts and send them to Geforce to have outer racing boots installed. This is where they internalize the boot design and they look like this thereby making a huge space available for a larger shock body and yes even a true coilover most likely.
Previous
After
The rears together and you can also see the space now between the shock body and half shaft. Problem solved and rears complete. On a side note, I used to have Steeda upper shock mounts but they won't work with the adjustment setup so I switched to J&M shock mounts which are perfect and still have a bearing to eliminate shock bind as the Steedas did.
Off to the fronts. With my previous suspension setup I ran MM camber/caster plates and they worked great. They got me to -2.5 for track and I was always fine with that. For the new setup, and being coilovers, I wanted something more appropriate to unite with the coilover design for camber adjustability and I went to Vorshlag plates that matched perfectly to the 2.25 id spring.
I also decided to add new Steeda end links because my boots were damaged and worn on my earlier after market ones.
Now the install. Everything went together as one would expect all the way to full mounting.
I also enlarged the strut tower opening to have unrestrictive camber adjustability especially with the rebound knob in play. I used the Vorshlag kit to handle that job. The last pic is of a camber adjustment of -1.8 but I can get to a maximum of -3.0 on both sides without contact of knob to strut tower.
Ok now. Both sides installed, same process of adjust height and readjust and readjust and readjust. Finally done and now test drive as one would expect. For reference the settings for compression and rebound were set to street recommendations per JRZ. Go our for a drive and it is all great. Granted, I'm just street driving and finding some corner spots that are local and testing nose dive on hard braking blah blah blah and I'm all smiles. More driving just around the city running errands doing nothing crazy and just getting the initial settle taken care of just to get super excited about readjusting again and all of the oh so done with wheel off and on again required.
Before I progress to the awesome problems I found out with the front, let me make it clear that after all the contact with vendors and their products, all of these problems were a result of my recipe and by that I mean all of my after market parts involved with the front suspension not getting along are completely on me and my lack of checking some movements prior to road testing which still hits my wrenching ego now.
FIRST problem (yes technically the second problem because of the rear install but lets just keep this to the front). My Ford Racing front sway bar has no collars. Don't know why I never noticed it being a problem with my long past setup but it quickly became an issue now. The sway bar, as it is common to happen when no collars are present, walked from side to side but I caught it early. Yes I could have bought collars but I chose to move to a different sway bar that being the Steeda brand which of course had collars and would correct that problem.
You can see the difference after a drive where the bar was heavily favoring the left side and just barely made some contact to the strut. NOT MY NEW STRUT!!
New sway bar in.
Aaaaaaaaaand all back together for more driving into a parking lot and just light testing turn to turn and all that goes with that. Feels good and back home to check and reevaluate. Again with the fricken tire removal.
Sooooooo, what's going on here?? Right side and left side respectively.
If you could see my face now. This is why I'm not a good cook. JRZ end link mount is different than most being a large bracket as you can see. Steeda end links and many other brands are completely different than stock end links. New sway bar has multiple mounting points each one changing the geometry of end link alignment and action. Just by looking at the last pic above, the bracket on the JRZ makes contact with the end link giving it nowhere to go other than a yoga pose it's incapable of thereby breaking. Drawing you a mental picture, stock end links have quite a bit of stand off which allows more articulation and JRZ testing was done with stock end links and a stock sway bar allowing only one point of attachment. So the result of my various products produced this end result. NOT MY NEW END LINKS!!
So off to the computer to buy another exact same set of end links with a plan in my head and a talk with Steeda engineers to see if my idea was safe and effective and those results below.
New set of end links in hand and four jam nuts. I added the jam nuts to the studs of the end links to create stand offs that would prevent my mistake from happening again. Steeda was good with what I came up with. Here you can see what the end result was and the action of turning the wheel lock to lock in both directions.
Problem(s) solved. No contact from lock to lock and of course there will be more driving with more concentrated testing to see if more arise but as of a couple weeks later, all is fine. Track will be the ultimate test and I'll know more then.
The ride is indescribable how much better it is even with 'street' settings in play. I'm not the one to say how every little thing you add to the car is this amazing change but this falls into that category. Really looking forward to the next road course day and increasing the settings to see what those results are. Also looking forward to the new wheel and tire setup I mentioned earlier to compliment the new suspension.
Anyone going after a quality coilover setup always boasts about the improvement and I'm on that list now. This isn't for everyone but if you really are one to push your car to limits and want to give it the right tools, this is a great way to go. Lots of brands will offer great results and some brands not so great results so do your do diligence if this is a route you're looking into and learn from my mistakes wether its brand based or just a lack of checking appropriate parts working together.
This pic with 6GR wheels and Cup2 tires - 20x11 rear with 305/30 and 20x10 front with 285/30
On to coilovers.......because a friend just wouldn't shut up about how his grass was greener with his coilovers. But he was right after I got all this working so it is I who eats crow. You know who you are so stop gloating.
This was the best option and I researched many brands and setups, and as the title states, ended up with the JRZ RS2's. I didn't want remote reservoirs regardless of their benefits but I did want double adjustability and that's what I went after. I also wanted a divorced rear spring setup as my personal opinion that a true coilover in the rear isn't good for our body mount strength capability. Yes some have them and they say they work great and I think that's great but not in my comfort zone. Also wanted something with great street manners as that's 90% of the driving and was highly functional for the other 10% road course time.
JRZ offers quite a few setups from single to three way adjustability, setups with camber plates or ones with the ability to mount to oem upper strut mounts. I bought the RS2 touring model which is a non external reservoir double adjustable made to mount to oem upper strut mount hardware, although I planned on using camber plates of my choice and spring rates included of 500 front and 900 rear.
Anyways, on to the pics and 'issues' with my install.
The parts......
Hard not to be happy with the visual quality and packaging provided.
The rear install. Other than initial install then wheel on, resting weight, jack up, wheel off, readjust height and repeating this plenty of times to get the overall setting the way you want it, this all went pretty good.
Except, FIRST problem. So, GeForce half shaft boots are in a different configuration than stock half shafts and come incredibly close to the shock body. I'm talking a millimeter of space when I had the Ford racing components on and per specs I received of the JRZ shock body it was going to be slightly larger which would be a major issue. This is also where a true coilover would be a nightmare.
This was the fix. I had to pull my half shafts and send them to Geforce to have outer racing boots installed. This is where they internalize the boot design and they look like this thereby making a huge space available for a larger shock body and yes even a true coilover most likely.
Previous
After
The rears together and you can also see the space now between the shock body and half shaft. Problem solved and rears complete. On a side note, I used to have Steeda upper shock mounts but they won't work with the adjustment setup so I switched to J&M shock mounts which are perfect and still have a bearing to eliminate shock bind as the Steedas did.
Off to the fronts. With my previous suspension setup I ran MM camber/caster plates and they worked great. They got me to -2.5 for track and I was always fine with that. For the new setup, and being coilovers, I wanted something more appropriate to unite with the coilover design for camber adjustability and I went to Vorshlag plates that matched perfectly to the 2.25 id spring.
I also decided to add new Steeda end links because my boots were damaged and worn on my earlier after market ones.
Now the install. Everything went together as one would expect all the way to full mounting.
I also enlarged the strut tower opening to have unrestrictive camber adjustability especially with the rebound knob in play. I used the Vorshlag kit to handle that job. The last pic is of a camber adjustment of -1.8 but I can get to a maximum of -3.0 on both sides without contact of knob to strut tower.
Ok now. Both sides installed, same process of adjust height and readjust and readjust and readjust. Finally done and now test drive as one would expect. For reference the settings for compression and rebound were set to street recommendations per JRZ. Go our for a drive and it is all great. Granted, I'm just street driving and finding some corner spots that are local and testing nose dive on hard braking blah blah blah and I'm all smiles. More driving just around the city running errands doing nothing crazy and just getting the initial settle taken care of just to get super excited about readjusting again and all of the oh so done with wheel off and on again required.
Before I progress to the awesome problems I found out with the front, let me make it clear that after all the contact with vendors and their products, all of these problems were a result of my recipe and by that I mean all of my after market parts involved with the front suspension not getting along are completely on me and my lack of checking some movements prior to road testing which still hits my wrenching ego now.
FIRST problem (yes technically the second problem because of the rear install but lets just keep this to the front). My Ford Racing front sway bar has no collars. Don't know why I never noticed it being a problem with my long past setup but it quickly became an issue now. The sway bar, as it is common to happen when no collars are present, walked from side to side but I caught it early. Yes I could have bought collars but I chose to move to a different sway bar that being the Steeda brand which of course had collars and would correct that problem.
You can see the difference after a drive where the bar was heavily favoring the left side and just barely made some contact to the strut. NOT MY NEW STRUT!!
New sway bar in.
Aaaaaaaaaand all back together for more driving into a parking lot and just light testing turn to turn and all that goes with that. Feels good and back home to check and reevaluate. Again with the fricken tire removal.
Sooooooo, what's going on here?? Right side and left side respectively.
If you could see my face now. This is why I'm not a good cook. JRZ end link mount is different than most being a large bracket as you can see. Steeda end links and many other brands are completely different than stock end links. New sway bar has multiple mounting points each one changing the geometry of end link alignment and action. Just by looking at the last pic above, the bracket on the JRZ makes contact with the end link giving it nowhere to go other than a yoga pose it's incapable of thereby breaking. Drawing you a mental picture, stock end links have quite a bit of stand off which allows more articulation and JRZ testing was done with stock end links and a stock sway bar allowing only one point of attachment. So the result of my various products produced this end result. NOT MY NEW END LINKS!!
So off to the computer to buy another exact same set of end links with a plan in my head and a talk with Steeda engineers to see if my idea was safe and effective and those results below.
New set of end links in hand and four jam nuts. I added the jam nuts to the studs of the end links to create stand offs that would prevent my mistake from happening again. Steeda was good with what I came up with. Here you can see what the end result was and the action of turning the wheel lock to lock in both directions.
Problem(s) solved. No contact from lock to lock and of course there will be more driving with more concentrated testing to see if more arise but as of a couple weeks later, all is fine. Track will be the ultimate test and I'll know more then.
The ride is indescribable how much better it is even with 'street' settings in play. I'm not the one to say how every little thing you add to the car is this amazing change but this falls into that category. Really looking forward to the next road course day and increasing the settings to see what those results are. Also looking forward to the new wheel and tire setup I mentioned earlier to compliment the new suspension.
Anyone going after a quality coilover setup always boasts about the improvement and I'm on that list now. This isn't for everyone but if you really are one to push your car to limits and want to give it the right tools, this is a great way to go. Lots of brands will offer great results and some brands not so great results so do your do diligence if this is a route you're looking into and learn from my mistakes wether its brand based or just a lack of checking appropriate parts working together.
This pic with 6GR wheels and Cup2 tires - 20x11 rear with 305/30 and 20x10 front with 285/30
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