Interested to get some opinions on a suspension upgrade. My E90 is my DD & family car, so 100% street use. Main thing I'm looking for is better feel and agility (I miss my old sub-3100 lb car) without big NVH compromises. Not going to lower the car more than 10mm if at all.
Current favorite candidate is an Öhlins R&T kit with Swift springs and some kind of street camber plate (likely TMS Hybrid, maybe GC Street), all from Barry @ 3DM Motorsport. Also doing front tension arm monoballs. The thing I’m stuck on is spring rates.
I feel like I’d love to go for flat ride. That, plus stiffer springs all around and Öhlins’s DFV to control secondary ride, seems like a great match for my use. It'd also be cool to try this out and offer feedback that might be useful for the community. Looking at spring rates in Swift’s catalog, I could get flat ride with 228 lbs/in front and 800 rear springs (42-45% stiffer than stock). That’d nudge handling balance toward oversteer, but I wouldn't mind throwing in a front sway bar anyway.
AFAICT, the main downside is that 228 lbs/in is below the rule-of-thumb minimum for the front dampers’ out-of-the-box valving (and 800 is not far from the max in the rear). It'd be no issue to have the dampers revalved before the kit ships, but it’s not like Barry has tried-and-tested damper curves for this particular use case sitting around waiting to be used, and I don’t like the idea of spending a lot of time and money sending dampers back and forth until we find the perfect curve. We’d have to guess, and I don't know how to estimate the likelihood that we’d end up with a better result (for my use) than Öhlins’s out-of-the-box spring rates and damper valving.
Thoughts?
Current favorite candidate is an Öhlins R&T kit with Swift springs and some kind of street camber plate (likely TMS Hybrid, maybe GC Street), all from Barry @ 3DM Motorsport. Also doing front tension arm monoballs. The thing I’m stuck on is spring rates.
I feel like I’d love to go for flat ride. That, plus stiffer springs all around and Öhlins’s DFV to control secondary ride, seems like a great match for my use. It'd also be cool to try this out and offer feedback that might be useful for the community. Looking at spring rates in Swift’s catalog, I could get flat ride with 228 lbs/in front and 800 rear springs (42-45% stiffer than stock). That’d nudge handling balance toward oversteer, but I wouldn't mind throwing in a front sway bar anyway.
AFAICT, the main downside is that 228 lbs/in is below the rule-of-thumb minimum for the front dampers’ out-of-the-box valving (and 800 is not far from the max in the rear). It'd be no issue to have the dampers revalved before the kit ships, but it’s not like Barry has tried-and-tested damper curves for this particular use case sitting around waiting to be used, and I don’t like the idea of spending a lot of time and money sending dampers back and forth until we find the perfect curve. We’d have to guess, and I don't know how to estimate the likelihood that we’d end up with a better result (for my use) than Öhlins’s out-of-the-box spring rates and damper valving.
Thoughts?
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