Suspension, hmm helps Options

[ae71piggie]

hey guys just wanting to know a few things I'm not very good with cars, my ae71 atm has chopped falcon springs rear and king lows in the front rides fine but i keep seeing different opinions from people...basically i see sigma lcas that people use just wondering what you guys have as your front suspension and arms and that jazz and different opinions as I'm a noob to this
cheers

[altezzaclub]

Yeah, slap on some Sigmas and get fully sick camber bro

You don't need the inside edge of the tyres, they can blow away in a few thousand Km and by then the cops would have crushed it.

What wheel aligment figures do you have at the moment, and what's the tyre wear like?

If you don't know, get an alignment done and post the figures up, then we can start a discussion.

[toyota_ae71]

Yeah, slap on some Sigmas and get fully sick camber bro

You don't need the inside edge of the tyres, they can blow away in a few thousand Km and by then the cops would have crushed it.

What wheel aligment figures do you have at the moment, and what's the tyre wear like?

If you don't know, get an alignment done and post the figures up, then we can start a discussion.

What he said!! It all depends on how you want the car to ride, steer and how many tyres you want to go through.
I'm running chopped heavy duty falcoon springs up front, with xt130 LCA's and shortened steering arms and its almost perfect for what I use it for.... khanacross/Motorkhana/Autocross etc etc.
Chopped springs do fail though, spend your money right, and do it once.

[ke70dave]

right well ke70/ae71, the stock setup is crap (mainly for the lack of shock absorber options, especially short stroke). and playing with cut springs is not advised, you do need proper springs with short stroke shocks to achieve a decent ride.

you got three popular "bolt in" options to achieve this,

s13 front end

corona front end

ae86 front end.

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s13 front end:

i had this in my car for the last 3 and a half years. its not to bad, i went through 3 sets of coilovers trying to find something that worked well, and unfortuantely didnt find it.

most s13 coilovers the damping is far to stiff for corollas, s13 gives you lots of track, which can be helped with R31 arms.

with stock s13 LCA's and stock ke70 guards, my 15x7 +23 @ -2.5deg camber only just fit.

i just sold my entire setup for 900 bucks, which isnt bad for what you get.

so:

pros: epic amounts of lock, quite cheap, great brake upgrade (250mm x 20?mm), large range of coilovers to choose from, 2nd hand parts are ubundant from nissansilvia.com

cons: not legal with s13 arms (to much track), steering is quite twitchy at times, steering tends to get tighter and tighter the more lock you wind on (interesting experience if your not used to it), hard to find suitable coilovers to get good grip.

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next setup is the xt130? (unconfirmed on that model, research!) corona setup:

not had any experience with this myself, but i hear its quite good. get large brakes but they are still just solid discs, decent upgrade over ke/ae stuff though.

main advantage of this setup is that the shock tube is the same diameter as an ae86, so you have a very good and very large choice of shock absorbers to choose from. i hear there is a very nice brake upgrade as well, which involves a hilux caliper and a peugeot disc (research it!, i have a nice PDF on this on my harddrive)

its a very simliar to ae86 setup, you can apply all the RCAs/LCA's that you would normally apply to the suspension, the only difference from ae86 is the brake caliper mounting is different.

so,

pros: cheap cheap cheap to buy a whole setup from the wreckers, simliar to ae86 stuff so you can use the LCA's/RCA's aftermarket parts

cons: standard brakes are only solid discs, thats about the only con i can think of.

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final setup:

ae86

main problem here is that alot of the gear is quite expensive. especially 2nd hand OEM parts, guys seem to crank up the prices a fair bit, but you can still find bargains.

though when you start talking about powersteering arms, lock spacers, the total price can start to get expensive, but thats cars!

struts are the same on both JDM and ADM items.

ADM is a 234mm solid disc (12mm?) with appropriate caliper
JDM is a 234mm vented disc (18mm?) with a very simliar caliper to ADM, its exact same except it is ~6mm wider. some guys use brake pads that are 6mm thinner to use ADM caliper on the vented disc (GSL rally sport can supply these)

large range of shocks available from all the performancy brands (KYB, bilstein, koni etc)

youll need a pair of RCAs if you intend to lower the car a bit (100 bucks 2nd hand, or 200 new)

you can apply a pair of xt130 control arms, which are about 10mm longer than standard items, give 1-1.5 deg of negative camber. sigma arms are far to long in my oppinion, the track looks quite rediculous if you have decent sized wheels.

last weekend i installed an essentially brand new ae86 front end into my ke70 (new shocks, bearings, jdm yo discs, reco'd jdm yo calipers, welded on coilover sleeve, camber tops, brake lines).

and although I'm still sorting out a few bugs, it is a 400% improvement over the s13 gear. and i should be getting a mod plate for it all to keep the po po (and my insurance company...) happy.

so pros: lots of good shocks available, aftermarket support is very large, good brakes standard. MANY large brake upgrades available (willwood, rx7 caliper conversion, etc)

cons: inital price can be very expensive, especially in ke70 where you need to buy the struts brakes/discs as well. both adm and jdm brakes i would consider a bit to small for proper track work (not drift, but full on hard continuous braking) but having said that lots of guys get away with it. but for street i reckon its plenty big enough.
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so thats three popular options explained to you briefly.

my suggestion, is dive into members rides threads and speak to some guys on what they have done. only way to learn is read!

This post has been edited by ke70dave: Jul 30 2010, 09:06 AM

[snot35]

Excellent, concise roundup. Might even be wiki worthy?

[Twinky]

Give AJPS a visit.
http://www.ajps.com.au/parts/ajps_coilovers.asp

Go through thier parts list.

http://www.ajps.com.au/parts_ajps.asp

I've had mixed responses to thier quality and performance, definately more positive than negative.
I think the negatives were just people who didn't fit the gear correctly.
One thing you must not do, DO NOT BUY ON IMPULSE!! this is how you will screw yourself over.
Talk with the guys at AJPS and get them to recommend a setup for you. You won't just be able to slot
in some different LCA's and chuck in some coilovers and expect it to handle well. Everything has to be done together.
The first step I'd say is to get rid of those chopped falcodore springs and get some short stroke springs.
Whatever you do DO NOT get those piece of shit progressive springs, get a continuous coil spring and remember it
needs to be a bit firmer because of the drop in spring travel due to hieght drop.
One of the most noticable differences, get all of your bushes replaced with some stiffer rubber.
Remember how old your car is and that those bushes are most likely still the ones that came out with that car.

Want more grip? Don't cheap out on tyres, all of the money you spend on suspension components you might as well
piss them out to the wind. Your suspension can only work with what grip your tyres give you. For a legal road tyre I have fallen in love
with Toyo T1R's and for track use can't go past R888 semi slicks. Mind you this is for a 195/50/15, depending on your tyre size you might find some better gear.

Getting grip always has this misconception that "I'll just chuck in some stiff springs, get some camber and I shall become king of the hill". Initially you will feel as though you have some better
handling aspects but infact be quite dangerous. Tell us how you want to drive your car and what types of roads you would like to blast through, different roads require different setups.

[ae71piggie]

thanks guys...basically reason i posted this is cos i don't understand things very well....with the run down a few of u have given me it makes it alot easier to work with
thanks heaps...