Originally posted by IamFODI
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All about perspective indeed.
IMO, the key to understanding BC is to understand what real suspension development takes. If you poke around on the websites of Bilstein, KW, Öhlins, Koni, etc., you'll get a glimpse of how complicated it is. Shaker rigs, sophisticated CAD tools, extensive road and track testing, high-tier motorsports, TÜV approvals, the list goes on.
There's a whole tier of coilovers that are based on little to none of that. It's basically just ballparking dimensions/spring rates/damping, running prototypes to make sure nothing’s hideously wrong, and shipping the kit. They might sponsor a small-time race/drift team here and there, and they'll do show cars all day, but you won't find them anywhere near F1, WEC, WRC, NASCAR, etc.
BC is basically the king of that lower tier. Their advantage over other low-tier brands is that they manufacture a lot of those other brands’ kits, so they have a ton of scale and lots of ideas to draw from (steal?). But fundamentally, they're just a better version of the same thing.
What difference does that make in practice? Most of the time, it's hard to tell unless you know what to feel for and are paying attention; BCs aren't so horrific that most people can tell right away in normal-ish driving. So, most people don't notice the deficiencies of a BC kit vs. something legit – or, if they do, they chalk it up to "coilovers are stiff" or the road being bad, or they just add “for the price” onto everything they say.
However, if you get real seat time with cars on legit-brand coilovers, and if you pay attention, you’ll notice a significantly better mix of body control and compliance than you’d get with BC; usually better body control for the same level of compliance, sometimes advantages in both areas. No amount of knob twiddling on the BCs will fix that. “30 clicks of adjustable damping” really means “at least 29 incorrect damper settings.” All you can do is find the least-bad one.
You might also notice that, as long as a legit kit has been set up within the designer’s guidelines, the car is very well behaved. You’d be hard pressed to unsettle it or make it respond unpredictably. This means the designer went to great lengths to find all possible edge cases and make the coilovers work at least reasonably in all of them.
No such luck with BC and the other low-effort brands. When you read reviews of their stuff – not always informative because, again, most people don't know what to feel for – you’ll occasionally see people admit their car had some weird handling tendency or ride quality quirk that only shows up in certain situations (e.g. you have to be careful hitting bumps at high speed – actual feedback from a BC BR user here). Everything’s fine… until it isn’t. The lack of thorough development means those kinks don't get ironed out, and you might not know what they are until it’s too late. And, again, this isn’t something that can be tuned out. All the adjustability in the world doesn’t help when all the settings suck because the basic design is mediocre. It just has to be lived with. All of this is less of a problem for BC than for other low-effort brands, but “less of a problem” is nowhere near as good as “not a problem” – which is what you get with the big brands.
Longevity is usually better for the big brands, too. Sometimes vastly better. Again, not something most people would likely notice on a test drive, but quite important and hard to do well.
This is why BC can sell you a “fully adjustable” coilover kit for close to the same price as a minimally adjustable Bilstein PSS kit. It’s not hard to offer a ton of features on paper. What’s hard is to make a product that works well, offers reasonable tradeoffs, lasts a long time, and doesn’t tend to make the car do anything stupid.
It’s also how BC can seem good in Honda world and crappy here. Both perspectives are reasonable. This is a niche community, with a critical mass of people who have both the discernment and the means to pursue fully engineered products. Such people certainly exist in Honda land, but they’re massively outnumbered and tend to move on to other platforms anyway, as you did – with obvious implications for the kinds of products that companies are willing to make. So, yes, BCs can be hard to take seriously when you know what to look for and have a chassis that's great to begin with – but they’re still better than most of the products available in many markets.
FWIW.
IMO, the key to understanding BC is to understand what real suspension development takes. If you poke around on the websites of Bilstein, KW, Öhlins, Koni, etc., you'll get a glimpse of how complicated it is. Shaker rigs, sophisticated CAD tools, extensive road and track testing, high-tier motorsports, TÜV approvals, the list goes on.
There's a whole tier of coilovers that are based on little to none of that. It's basically just ballparking dimensions/spring rates/damping, running prototypes to make sure nothing’s hideously wrong, and shipping the kit. They might sponsor a small-time race/drift team here and there, and they'll do show cars all day, but you won't find them anywhere near F1, WEC, WRC, NASCAR, etc.
BC is basically the king of that lower tier. Their advantage over other low-tier brands is that they manufacture a lot of those other brands’ kits, so they have a ton of scale and lots of ideas to draw from (steal?). But fundamentally, they're just a better version of the same thing.
What difference does that make in practice? Most of the time, it's hard to tell unless you know what to feel for and are paying attention; BCs aren't so horrific that most people can tell right away in normal-ish driving. So, most people don't notice the deficiencies of a BC kit vs. something legit – or, if they do, they chalk it up to "coilovers are stiff" or the road being bad, or they just add “for the price” onto everything they say.
However, if you get real seat time with cars on legit-brand coilovers, and if you pay attention, you’ll notice a significantly better mix of body control and compliance than you’d get with BC; usually better body control for the same level of compliance, sometimes advantages in both areas. No amount of knob twiddling on the BCs will fix that. “30 clicks of adjustable damping” really means “at least 29 incorrect damper settings.” All you can do is find the least-bad one.
You might also notice that, as long as a legit kit has been set up within the designer’s guidelines, the car is very well behaved. You’d be hard pressed to unsettle it or make it respond unpredictably. This means the designer went to great lengths to find all possible edge cases and make the coilovers work at least reasonably in all of them.
No such luck with BC and the other low-effort brands. When you read reviews of their stuff – not always informative because, again, most people don't know what to feel for – you’ll occasionally see people admit their car had some weird handling tendency or ride quality quirk that only shows up in certain situations (e.g. you have to be careful hitting bumps at high speed – actual feedback from a BC BR user here). Everything’s fine… until it isn’t. The lack of thorough development means those kinks don't get ironed out, and you might not know what they are until it’s too late. And, again, this isn’t something that can be tuned out. All the adjustability in the world doesn’t help when all the settings suck because the basic design is mediocre. It just has to be lived with. All of this is less of a problem for BC than for other low-effort brands, but “less of a problem” is nowhere near as good as “not a problem” – which is what you get with the big brands.
Longevity is usually better for the big brands, too. Sometimes vastly better. Again, not something most people would likely notice on a test drive, but quite important and hard to do well.
This is why BC can sell you a “fully adjustable” coilover kit for close to the same price as a minimally adjustable Bilstein PSS kit. It’s not hard to offer a ton of features on paper. What’s hard is to make a product that works well, offers reasonable tradeoffs, lasts a long time, and doesn’t tend to make the car do anything stupid.
It’s also how BC can seem good in Honda world and crappy here. Both perspectives are reasonable. This is a niche community, with a critical mass of people who have both the discernment and the means to pursue fully engineered products. Such people certainly exist in Honda land, but they’re massively outnumbered and tend to move on to other platforms anyway, as you did – with obvious implications for the kinds of products that companies are willing to make. So, yes, BCs can be hard to take seriously when you know what to look for and have a chassis that's great to begin with – but they’re still better than most of the products available in many markets.
FWIW.
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