^ thanks alot, will do. now to make some $$$$$$ lol…too many projects in mind for the focus next season is owning my wallet
Are you going to drive this car in the winter? if so you had better grease the crap out of your barrel threads, and grease threw the winter. We get two cars a month with frozen adjusting nuts. most parts are for off road use, and don’t stand up to our winters. Just thought i would toss that out there before you spend 2,000 bucks for parts that won’t work after a winter.
o yea, this car hasnt seen winter since i bought it in '02. no worries, its going to slowly transition into a fullout street project car.
do you know of anybody on the focus boards running these D2’s? I tried searching but d2 is too short to search. I would not buy anything without seeing pictures of what you are actually getting. The strut pictured on that auction has nowhere to mount the front swaybar. The spring rate balance is also the reverse of anything I would want. I have heard of the nex kit but nothing good. I would not buy any coilover system for the focus offered regularly on ebay. There is an active group buy on focaljet right now for ksport coilovers. its 4 weeks old and nobody has bit, there is also no strong confirmation that they will actually fit a US focus.
K-sports are D2’s.
My advise… Spend the money now so you don’t have to do it over later.
Do research first. Don’t buy because they were cheap. You will be pissed when shit starts clunking all over the place, and you cant get a hold of the company that makes them.
If you want to be happy for a long time don’t buy a “budget” suspension cause in a year or so you find out what gets “budgeted”
This is one area that you pay for what you get. It will leave you wishing that you would have just spent the 2 grand to begin with.
It kind of funny how people will spend thousands for a turbo setup on thier car yet they arent willing to spend the same on suspension. You get bored of horsepower, handling is a new challenge every day. I think the problem is that its about improving your driving skill, not improving your ego. Alot of people rather stoke the latter.
To answer your questions:
-A pillowball is a spherical bearing.
-The nex kit does not have them becuase it is for a honda accord. A honda accord uses a dbl wishbone suspension and does not have or need a pillowball.
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If you have a strut suspension you either have a tophat with an axial bearing (stock) or a spherical bearing because a macpherson strut uses it as a pivot point.
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In macpherson setups it is technically better to change camber through the tophat for 2 reasons:
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If you are using an aftermarket camber cam bolt. These tend to slip or break which is bad news.
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By adjusting the camber (more negative presumably) through the tophat you also increase the KPI angle (Kingpin Inclination) aka SAI (Steering Axis Inclination). This leads to better dynamic camber changes. The more you steer the more camber it adds to the tire.
- If you want your car to handle dont lower your car much. Especially if it uses struts. A strut has a shitty camber curve to begin with. A little bit is OK but dont go overboard.
In a strut suspension. Once you lower it past where the lower control arms become parallel to the ground you impart a negative arc to the lower control arm and under compression this adds POSITIVE camber to your wheels decreasing grip and predictability.
If you really want to slam your car and still have it handle you need ball joint extenders for your lower control arm to idealize the suspension geometry.
Other than that your car will ride like shit because of the decreased suspension travel.
^ this is all great, and i appreciate your time to write it…im actually looking to upgrade FROM my budget suspension setup, which is cheapo sport springs and sport struts. i HATE the style of coilover kits that adjust hieght by shortening the strut travel, which is why i narrowed down to the D2’s and the NEX because they are the only two offered for my car that do it that way. and if you say the D2’s are the same as Ksport then yeah im buying the D2’s for $800 instead of the Ksport for $1200
also, the D2’s i posted only have ONE auction, and i havent seen them on ebay before that. i plan on reseraching who has them and whatnot before i buy them, i just wanted to know what to look for based on terminology and such. i know the part about not going past parallel, and i dont plan to, and if they make ball joint extenders i will def. be buying those as well…this car will eventually be a full out track/weekend car, im just doing it in baby steps
check out what i found…a guy on the focus forums is trying to offer a group buy on the Ksports for around $800 shipped…but he sucks at answering all our questions and the mounts for them look all wrong. and the rears are NOT coilover, they are like stock…which i CAN NOT use in my future :snky: setup
Can you use coilovers? Im not sure if the shock mounts on the car are strong enough to support the weight of the vehicle.
If your car came with a seperate coil and shock setup in the rear, it means the shock mount was not meant to take the full load of the car.
good point, I was only going to question whether there is room for a coilover in the stock shock loaction.
there are some setups that use it no problem, i know it…i just cant figure out which ones. i also have no problem reinforcing my strut towers if that needs to be the case.
If you do that Be careful when choosing springrates then. By altering the action point of the supension you modify the lever ratio of the supension. Make sure these are NOT off the shelf valved dampers because it will now need to rebound dampen the spring in a 1:1 ratio rather than the lever ratio as stock. It will also have to bound dampen the car to the new wheel ratio you have created.
If you want to modify the stock action point heres what you need to do:
- Determine the Spring:Wheel rate of the car this is your spring lever ratio.
- Determine the Shock:Wheel rate of the car this is your shock lever ratio.
If you are using your shock mount points as your spring action point your shock lever ratio is what becomes important. The stock spring lever ratio is thrown out of the equation because you are not using the stock mounting points.
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If you are using a coil over setup your rebound valving should reflect the spring rate that you use and the weight of the car.
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If you are using a coil over set up your bound valving should reflect the WHEEL rate and the weight of your car.
DO NOT assume that suspension companies have done this for you already. Thier job as distributers is to put together a marketable kit. NOT test your car. Some coilovers are so rediculously underdampened or so rediculously overdampened that a drunken monkey would be able to tell the shocks were not valved for the car.
somehow I doubt you need more than H&R or Eibach + Koni or Bilstein, everyone’s obsessed with coilovers now that there’s cheap crap out there like D2 but at the end of the day, do you REALLY need that level of adjustability / corner balancing / etc? Do you even know the meaning of the words “installation angle” - frankly, I doubt it, not trying to be a dick but this recent trend is bogus, people pay more even though there is this “value” shit out there, and get less than they would w/ a simple spring/shock setup done RIGHT.
^ this is exactly why i started the thread…i WANT TO KNOW all of the terminology and how to set up a correct coil over setup…im obsessed with it for a reason, and YES i do need that level of adjustability, im going to be heavily competeing with this car sometime in the next two years depending on how fast funds come in and how fast i finish.
on another note:
can someone explain how i determine these?
- Determine the Spring:Wheel rate of the car this is your spring lever ratio.
- Determine the Shock:Wheel rate of the car this is your shock lever ratio.
I’d post in the road race/rally/autox forum on focaljet…you can physically figure out the spring leverage ratio and wheel rate by measuring the amount the wheel travels vs. the amount the spring compresses.
damn, how do i do that?
lol
i really want a good setup
word…ill take a Ground Control/Koni over anyday…if fact…i just might ovet the winter…just need the ground controls
i WOULD do koni yellows/GC’s but that kit for my car ALSO uses stock rear spring location.
and u have SNKY plans dont u
yes. im verrdy verrdy sneaky sir.
i think you are underestimating the sneakyness
lol
Before you calculate anything you need to figure out what you want from the car.
Do you want more over/understeer during transitions? You need to base your shock valving on this.
Do you want more over/understeer during steady state conditions? You need to base your spring rate/ swaybar on this.
Is your handling problem caused by less than optimal shock valving/ sping/ sway or is it caused by improper camber ect. ?
At what speed do you want the car to handle neutrally? A car that handles neutrally at auto-x speeds can be mighty loopy at high speeds.
If you maintain the stock mounting positions it is easier to tune to what you want. If you choose diffrent than stock mounting positions its more difficult to tune because you are starting from scratch.
When changing stock geometry be prepared to go through multiple sets of springs and shock revalves to get the car to handle the way you want it. It is in essence creating uncharted territory.
Im curious as to why you want to ditch the stock location? A good spring shock setup is just as good as a “coilover” setup. For the budget minded it will also yield better results.