Tein "Street Basis" coilovers

Bingo! 63 t-bird. Just finished the front. Now I have to raise the rear 15mm. It's too low and bottoms out.

The weak link now is tires.

nader said:

Just finished the front.

Click to expand...

Cool - pretty standard for a front install, I assume? Probably not much harder than the rears. The biggest fun I always have when swapping out suspension bits is compressing the stock spring, but since we don't have to mess with that in this case...

nader said:

Now I have to raise the rear 15mm. It's too low and bottoms out.

Click to expand...

Bummer - what will the final ride height? What kind of bump-stop is there on the car?

nader said:

The weak link now is tires.

Click to expand...

Wasn't it always?

Looks good! Is the rear height set to where you want it? Appears to be a bit saggy, but hard to tell if that's an illusion or not thanks to the bulbous rear fender and small wheels...

Nader, your ride is coming along nicely.

So I raised the back all the way and dropped the front a tad. Now the fender gap is within 1/10" at all corners. I'm taking it to a friends on
Sunday to corner balance it. A few more pics after the car wash (headlights don't leak, woo hoo!). Pics are pre ride height adjustment.

Looks good! How is the ride and handling?

Classic car: checked. EV with coilovers: checked. All you need now is a decent camera!

Ya know, I am starting to feel that eye makeup mod. Looks good with the contrasting body color. Makes me wonder what Black Chrome would look like on a silver car....

eye makeup should be dramatic, make it redish pink fading to silver at the rear to go with the silver body.

Herm said:

eye makeup should be dramatic, make it redish pink fading to silver at the rear...

Click to expand...

Ya know, I now have a completely different image of Herm... in drag.

TRONZ said:

Makes me wonder what Black Chrome would look like on a silver car....

Click to expand...

I can also see it on all four corners. Mine is silver as well, and think it needs that tone down. In some climates, could the black painted surface get rather warm from solar gain...? I see it as a fine improvement.

drees said:

Looks good! How is the ride and handling?

Click to expand...

much firmer than stock. The steering is much more responsive and so is the throttle response. Since the ride is firmer there is less pitching action than before so it just goes. I haven't realigned it yet but it's much flatter in the turns and the torque steer in low speed, high throttle turns is pretty much gone.

The rear came with two sets of bump stops. The ones that came installed were about 3/8" thick. Not much of a bumpstop. More to prevent metal to metal contact on bottoming out. At the original lower ride height it was bottoming out in the rear pretty good so I swapped in the larger bumpstops. Then it was always riding on the bumpstop and no upward travel so to speak. So i raised the rear up and swapped bumpstops to the thin ones. I think now that it's raised up I need to swap in the larger, progressive bumpstops.

In this pic the rear bumpstops are actually on the rear shocks. They are so think that you can barely see them. The larger ones are in the plastic bag still.

drees said:

Looks good! Is the rear height set to where you want it? Appears to be a bit saggy, but hard to tell if that's an illusion or not thanks to the bulbous rear fender and small wheels...

Click to expand...

I would still like to get the rar about 5mm higher but I'm at max height in the rear. The threaded spring perch willl start to run off of the threads if I crank them up any more. So I compensated by bringing the front down a tad.

You are right about the rear. The rear fender it wider than the front so the rear wheels are set in the fender farther. The car can take about a 20mm deeper offset wheel out rear. If one were to lower and run the stock wheels I would get some H&R spacers to bring the rear wheels out farther.

Since I can't hammer the car and get any decent ride quality out of it I am reconsidering the wide wheel and low offset route. It just won't look ride unless it's hammered. So I may run a staggered 7.5"F/8.5"R or just 7.5"'s with a spacer out back.

I wondering now if the RS*R coilovers have more rear shock travel. Although they were 1500 plus freight. :shock:

TRONZ said:

Nader, your ride is coming along nicely.

Click to expand...

Gracias. I met with a vinyl shop today to discuss having a template made for the center part of the bumper. I want to try and black the center portion out with matte black vinyl. Not sure how to handle the chrome strip yet. I could wrap that too I guess, but I'm thinking it needs to be something different, but subtly different.

Looking at the pics, the larger bumpstops are "OEM style" - these are typically fairly progressive. I would definitely use these instead of the short ones as they'll prevent harsh bottoming better.

So it sounds like the rear shocks may actually be a bit long and/or the rear springs a bit short for the desired ride height? How does the Tein rear shock compare to the stock one in length and travel?

What are you fender/hub measurements now?

Have you tried contacting Tein USA with your experience so far? I bet they'd be surprised you have a set in the US already.

I'm taking our Leaf to an Autocross on Oct 8th, would like to get the suspension mods before then, but I'm not sure if I can get them delivered in time...

Anyone else ready to start thinking about a buying from Japan in the next few days?

I'm in the SF Bay Area, have a lift in the garage for DIY installation, perhaps a BayLeaf event

Adrian

It's possible. Once they shipped, they arrived in two days.

Thank you for sharing this information. Can you suggest how someone who doesn't wrench would get this installed in Southern California?

I like the look of the car with the lower ride height.

I was curious to see if I could find some documentation on the net that indicated if an efficiency gain could be had by lowering the car. All I found was lots of confusion. Some say yes lowering does help, some say it wont. I saw some information that there is a point where lowering will not improve but will start to hurt efficiency. Based on everything I found I tend to agree with this theory. The poster suggested that 6" (gap between road and bottom of the car) was optimum, but I don't believe that this is necessarily universal. I am curious if you have any gains from this modification, but I suspect any change is so small as to not be detectable, but if you do detect a change either way, I'd like to know.