RePete wrote:In the 15 or so years I've owned SW20s (that's only 4 years short of your age ) I've had coils and a number of lowering springs/shocks too. Nothing comes close to a Koni/spring setup (preferably TRD which sits quite low) or the '93+ springs. You can carve up the track (and win) but still bring along your girlfriend to dinner without her getting annoyed because her tits keep bouncing up & down. Yes, it's quite entertaining, but not for her - believe me.
Yes, $1,200 is cheap for coils - the Chinese versions are crap, quite honestly. Living in Vancouver, you get to have lots of Asian friends who import this stuff and let you know that it costs less than $200 to manufacturer and ship an entire coil-over package. The associated hardware is OK, the shocks are not worthy to be on the car. The reason you keep reading good reviews is twofold:
First (and don't take offense to this please) is that most (not all) of those reviewers have very little driving experience and don't know a good setup if they tripped over it. And those owners storing their rides in the winter will give them 50% less driving experience with their deuce than drivers like me who've been driving an SW20 through all 4 seasons for years & years.
The second reason is, (again, don't take offense please), $1,200 is a lot to a young driver as you've already indicated. This is normal as most under 25 year-olds don't have their potential income yet. So when a couple or three paychecks go towards a complete suspension system, there's very little chance the owner will honestly review them - especially since he might not have ever drove his deuce with a really good suspension (see point one).
As for racing experience, the shocks I mentioned are on the winning-est cars in all sorts of classes for decades. Those German shock manufacturers have poured hundreds of millions into R&D over the decades and it shows in their shocks which still astound me even after all these years.
Again, thank you for the feedback.
No offence taken, I understand where you're coming from. I'm a student, and $1200 is a big deal for I don't have my reliable source of income yet...
Have you been running the shock/spring setup in the factory strut housings, or a different strut setup?
It's funny that you mention the girlfriend complaint issues, because i have received that complaint with my current spring/shock setup, and it's on a more road-friendly dampening setting.
As i mentioned earlier, I'll really leave it to when I drive my buddy's car, let the setup speak for itself. It sounds like after driving the koni setup I'll be placing an order...