List your experiences with el cheapo coilovers
 

What is the generally acceptable price point for where cheap coilovers become halfway decent quality for a weekend car?

$500?

Depends on the end user's definition of "halfway decent quality".

Should cost more than the total of the drugs, alcohol and hookers the OP claims to spend per day.

$500/corner is about right.

Cheap coilovers mean you need to replace the set more often, so you pay more in labour and rebuild costs.. and have more chances "embarrassing" episodes while showing off, but I am sure OP is used to that.

ive had raceland coilovers on my miata. cheap as fuck and performed fantastic. rode smooth and not too stiff. didn't really bottom out. for the price? 9/10

for your e36, theres a few guys on bcbimmers who run the raceland ultimo coilovers on their drift cars on the island. they kept saying "dont knock them until you try them". ive had other raceland products like the header for my miata and build quality far exceeded what i expected for a $150 header.

BMW E36 Coilovers By Raceland

you dont track your car, i assume you just wanna go low. so these are all you need.



**disclaimer** im not saying this is a great product to go auto crossing or to mission raceway with. im just stating that if all someone wants to do is slam the car and go low, these are the perfect set to do it with. why spend $1500 on some tien monoflex if youre just gonna spin them all the way down**

oh god don't get race lands....

your better off cutting your stock springs.

semisrs

I'd say 700-800 for decent entry level ones. Bought a set of neuspeed coilovers at around 700 brand new from garage five as my first set of coilovers and they're pretty good. It's sold as neuspeed but I think the coilovers are made by bilstein and springs by neuspeed. No dampening but there isn't much bounce. Only thing I can think of as a downside to this set is that it can only lower a little bit over 2 inches.

For those who are bashing raceland coils, I've talked to a few and their experiences has been good. I know online there's people saying they suck and break and what not. Here's the thing there's people online saying the same thing about other coilovers as well. Before I got my setup (Tein ss) I read online that people have rust issues, 4 years later even thru salty winters the coils were fine.

TL;DR: don't trust everything you see on the interwebs.

tho that being said I still won't go for raceland on my car ;P, Looking at BC Racing

Depends on who you talked to then. Cause the worse miata I have driven was one with racelands. But I gotta agree with is that if you just want to go slammed, can't beat the price.

I'm going on 5 years with my KW coilovers. Stainless, with high quality hardware makes for all weather reliability. Cost is close to $500/ corner, but they perform admirably on the road or track. In fact, I'll probably get another 5 trouble free years out of them. Cheap coil overs will rust, seize, and end up pissing you off in the long run.

Go for quality when it comes to your suspension. Don't mod with cheap pasts, la.

If you want to simply go low, you don't necessarily need coilovers. My old Koni Yellow/Eibach Sportline setup dropped the car lower than any available coilover kit at the time. They were also semi-adjustable, so when you wanted to raise the car, you just had to pop the set off and adjust the perch to a different level. The kit was definitely more expensive than cheap coilovers, but I thought it was a great compromise between price, adjustability and quality.

why?

Honestly, if your just looking at getting a spring, with an adjustable spring perch(Ala Ground Control), get anything you want. Grease the shit out of it and call it a day. Your not racing, your money is spent on good struts. If it breaks, buy a new one. I doubt it will. This is coming from a guy with a Bilstein PSS system. Within a year i've also blown out both rear struts. So even the good brands have bad stories to go with the good ones.

If your talking about a full adjustable coil over system I might be tempted to spend a little more money. They have a little more going on, then a spring and some threaded sleeves.

I just had the worst experience with them, they sag, make clunking noises, make squeaky noises, seize....The ones that were made for the RSX (my car) were welded improperly so in order for them to be installed properly you needed to get extended tie rod ends and then cut them which is fine w.e tie rod ends are like 50 bucks but i really wish they would tell you before you bought them. The funny thing is you only needed to do it on one side. The other side was fine.

They claim to have warranty for 3 years but don't worry the coil overs life span is like 6 months.

Raceland is not as bad as people think! They're soft so don't expect to run aggressive wheel fitment on it. But at the right height, they feel great! I autocrossed on my Miata and kept up with the others.

Oh and keep them lubricated, they'll hold up just fine haha

i wud jus cut the oem spring

shhh boatcaptain, you're not allowed to talk with us raceland running miata guys :P


and swft, i ran some really aggressive wheels on my miata (not counting flares) i had 15x10.5 -19 in the rear and 15x9.5 -6 if i rememer correctly out front

I remember that! I had some 195/50 on my 15x8+0 and it rubbed so hard. I guess I got greedy trying to tuck tire. But I reckon it'll handle great when raised to optimal height. Stance sucksssss

I was running the same wheel/tire specs as above, and had no issues with rubbing. Wasn't as low as you guys were though, but still managed to polish the frame rails over every speed bump...

On the topic of Racelands however, sure, they're better than blown shocks and saggy springs but they ride far too soft however and I found that I'd constantly hit the bump stomps on my old car. If all you want is low and don't care about ride quality, then by all means, Raceland/Rokkor is the way to go. The previous owner of my old car bought them for something like $150 used so definitely can't go wrong for the price. The key to a good car IMO is balance, and you sure can't get that with shitty suspension...

I need to identify the springs on my car currently then find some decent shocks to pair them with and get'em installed. The car needs to get the suspension + brakes 100% sorted out before I add any power for sure!


Right now it is so out of balance with the 5.0 power and blown shocks on lowering springs, drives like a noodle shot out of a cannon

hmm...ok maybe this is why it didn't fit your RSX

Raceland Coilovers - Club RSX Message Board
"First of all these are made for an ep3 and if you dont know, you need to do some extra steps to fit them on the car. "

I guess you have to consider correlation/causation, so many variables on how an old car can feel from worn bushings to bad tie rod ends to simply having a shitty alignment or crappy tires. Would not be surprised that someone with $350 coils would overlook some essential part of maintenance/not bother spending the money

i used to have bc coilovers on my past car. out of all the "cheap brands" out there (d2, ksport, megans), i asked richard from garage five which was the best around the $800-1000 and he said bc coilovers. but he strongly recommended teins after they fixed the past rust issues and did not recommend megans.

bc coilovers have great adjustability like camber, dampers, and fully rebuildable.

+1 on BC racing. I've been running them on my RSX for almost a year now and so far, its been good to me

my suspension will be for sale in a bit if you can wait I'll PM you

Besides what has already been mentioned I find that the "cheaper" coilovers can suffer from improper damper valving relative to the spring rate. They can be bouncy as the damper isn't doing it's job properly and the spring takes on the brunt of the work. Just my $0.02.