I keep reading mixed reviews about GodSpeed suspension pieces. Some say “I beat the **** out of them @ the track and they’re still fine”, while others are like “stay away from them, stay stock”. I’m hoping that my car sees a lot of track time. It’s not going to be a daily. I’m torn between getting the GSP arms or redoing all of the bushings. Perhaps getting the bushings set would be the best way to go here for now. I can get the camber, toe and tractions rods later on just so I have some level of adjustability and skip getting the LCAs. I plan on running on 2 different tracks in NY so it’d be nice to be able to tune the suspension as needed.
if u stay close to stock ride height, bushings alone would be fine, but when u lower it much, your whole alignment will need the adjustable rods, but then u get into roll center correction adjustability from aftermarket control arms and ball joints to make the chassis react correctly to movement which most people do not consider when buying suspension parts…along with a lot of other things. I’d suggest poly/solid bushings (especially motor/trans), maybe stiffer springs/sway bars, nitto NT01s and some decent brakes then decide how u want to do the suspension after u actually drive the car which I doubt u remember much anymore at this point and suspension work is pretty easy on the s14.
my build is really similar to yours and your goals so LMK if u wanna check it out or anything.
Cool, thanks for the detailed & informative response. I’ll stick with the stock arms and stiffer bushings for now and go from there. I will probably beef the stock arms a bit with a few well placed braces because I can twist these things with my bare hands, that’s how flimsy they feel. The motor and trans have the stiffer Nismo mounts so I should be good there for a while. Yea man, I’d like to check out your setup. Maybe this weekend.
boxing the stock arms is a good idea. I have a feeling the Godspeed kit will work well for a while actually especially for the price, you get the camber and toe adjustment which is important on a naturally loose car. My previous owner did coilovers and UCAs so I just went with it from there with megan/godspeed rods and they’re fine so far even though I haven’t made it to the track yet, i have put some miles on them. I haven’t gone with the aftermarket LCAs yet, but without lowering it a ton, u can get a decent amount of (non-adjustable) roll center correction from greddy ball joints and outter tie rods to help without spending another $1-2k on fully adjustable LCAs/hubs.
Well, I pulled the trigger on the master kit from Energy Suspension. It includes the front and rear sway bar & end-link bushings as well as the front and rear arm bushings. I also saw a bushing set for the differential so I bought that too. Looking forward to see how much different the car will behave after these I’m going to get a set of new rear endlinks too. All my shit feels crusty and old. Might as well replace it all while it’s all out right? Eventually, I think I may save some $$$ and get some gear from here: http://www.gtfactory.jp/cms/page.php?14
I don’t know if you have mentioned whether or not you have the skills/equipment to box and reinforce the control arms as tommy2dollaz mentions, but if you DON’T, I’d be glad to help out.
Focusinprogress, I was going to have a buddy of mine weld it up for me. If he’s too swamped (which he usually is), I would love to get your help with this task. A welder is one tool I’m yet to acquire.
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holy $90 pivot ball, thanks nismo. I put a new stock one in and it seemed like overkill, but for $25 it was no biggie. I have the ACT HD pressure plate with 6 puck sprung disc which sounds close to the spec stage 2+ and it doesn’t seem to have anywhere close to a problem with the fork. My buddy has the ACT extreme pressure plate on his mazdaspeed and the difference in pedal pressure is noticeable there and may be the level that causes problems for the stock fork, but I’d skip this upgrade even for the sake of upgrading.
That’s what Im saying lol. I just can’t justify paying that much for something so small. I can use that $ elsewhere. I’ll check which one is in better shape on the 2 transmissions I have. I’ll clean it up, grease it up real good and call it a day. Again, thanks for your input man!
my previous owner (that proved to be rather questionable) told me the motor/trans mounts were nismo and i didn’t see any marking to confirm for sure and i liked the vibration level of them, but at least the trans mount was way too weak and the shifts were horrible. I switched to the peak performance trans mount (doesn’t retain that exhaust hanger on the trans mount) and the drift freaq 80 poly motor mounts…he makes a trans mount to maintain the hanger for more $ that I don’t see being necessary. There’s definitely some more vibration in my setup now, but it’s totally worth a quick/clean shift that’s not fighting an already questionable trans. I’m also staying SR/KA trans til I break my two as well since I’m not doing hard launches on Mickey Thompsons at the 1/4 mile with it and $1500 for the newer Z trans swap can go elsewhere for now…like tracktime.
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I don’t mean to sound like I’m telling u what to do, but I figured I’d share all my wonderful experiences so maybe u save yourself some time.
I’d be interested in taking u up on some of that good box action someday soon for my LCAs too nick.
Im not taking it that way at all. I wanted to hear from someone with experience in this on the same car. I’m glad you chimed in! I def want to check out your car someday.
we could start a shit storm of melodramatic time wasting bickering because we’re not at least semi-grown men here.
This weekend is kinda tough for me, maybe sunday night or an evening next week for sure…I’m not even done installing my suspension/diff parts yet either, but it’s pretty close however it’s not as clean as yours and I do plan on stealing your brake line banjo setup at the master cylinder to free up some room for my bottom mount turbo.
The sub-frame has been completely disassembled and inspected. I tore one of the main bushings as it was getting removed from the body. It was not fun getting the stuck and rusted sleeve off of that pin in the back! I scraped off any rubber I could off of it, slapped on a pair of locking pliers and went at it with a torch. It was a bit scary due to the gas tank being right there, but I managed to slip the old sleeve off of that pin - PHEW! I was really scared of breaking that off. I heard those are NOT fun to change. I just have a little bit of rubber to clean off and then everything is getting dropped off to get sand blasted and powder coated. Going to go black on the sub-frame and gold on the arms. The arms will be powder coated after they’re “boxed” for reinforcement
Got some more work done on the sub-frame. I torched out any left over rubber from the old bushings and cleaned the shit out of the bushing mount holes with a wire wheel attached to a 22K RPM die grinder. I used a air hammer to get the some of the sleeves out that Energy suspension calls for getting removed. This is great news because I can now take this whole damned thing to get sand blasted & powder coated! The arms and knuckles are getting dropped off @ NAPA to get the other bushings pressed out. Then I’ll be sandblasting these @ my friend’s house as he’s got a blasting cabinet in his shop - lucky me! I’ll need to find someone to box these arms for me…and then I can get them powder coated as well.
you got someone lined up to box in the arms for you? if not, PM me and I can work something out for you to stop by sometime this week and I’ll weld 'em up for you.
I was hoping you’d chime in! I just need to get these bushings out of these and get them blasted so you have some clean metal to work with. I’ll def hit you up man. You’re like 2 minutes away from me.
I also have a blasting cabinet, if they aren’t too big you can do that here too…just buy some sheet metal at the hardware store for the boxing and we’ll get it done in a jiff.
I’m going to get a set of new rear endlinks too. All my shit feels crusty and old. Might as well replace it all while it’s all out right? 
