Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

In short... lowered springs with matching shocks, or coilovers, sway bars, and don't understimate the tyres ability to get power to the ground as well as stop the car. Depending on what the car is used for will also determine what tyre to get. eg. is it a daily driver where you want good handling both in wet and dry conditions, or does the car predominantly see the track/weekend driver?

Lowering the cars centre of gravity is what you want to achieve, note though that if you go too low you'll achieve the opposite of what you want. sway bars and strut braces help distribute the load between the sides of the car and keep the car flatter around corners. This means the car maintains traction around corners which equals more power to the ground around the twists and more control and less oversteer. Corners and curves are where you will really notice the difference when upgrading suspension in the ability to enter and exit the apex quickly. If all you're after is straightline speed (ie. drag racing) correct me if i'm wrong but stiffening up the suspension isn't necessarily the best thing? I read somewhere that in some cases the softer factory suspension is better for straightline speed/drags.

Whiteline sway bars are a good way to go. Also look at adjustable camber and castor bushings to replace old worn ones, and also get the camber right all around after lowering.

If you're not taking it on the track, springs are probably a better way to go as a daily. I haven't used coilovers myself, but I've heard that you'll be in for a bumpy ride if it's mainly a daily driver. Lowered king springs on my R34 is bumpy enough.

Have a read of the articles on the Whiteline web site, that will be a good starting point in addition to the threads in the suspension forum.

Well being an R34 N/A I dont think you will have trouble getting power to the ground. Invest in a good set of tyres and you should be fine. No need to go all balls out on mods you don't require

The best modification you will EVER do to ANY car is a good set of rubber. I know it can be expensive but its well worth the money. This will decrese braking distances, allow you to carry more speed through the corners and let you put the power down earlier.

Once you have a good set of tyres you can look at upgrading suspension parts.

Strut bars are a cheap, easy and effective first mod. They will stiffen the chassis up, give you a better feel of what the car is doing and stop a little of the body roll. Get yourself a set of adjustable strut bars and you can help cancel our understeer or enduce more oversteer. At $200 for a set of front and rear second hand items, well worth the money and awesome bang for the buck.

Sway bars are also a good option of you dont want to go down the expensive and uncomfortable path of coilovers. They will lessen body roll and combat weight transfer with no massive down side. Prices do very, but general concensis is about $250 per sway bar. The thickness of the sway bar will also deretmin how flex it will cope with and hence aloow for more or less bodyroll. Adjustable ones are the best as you can customise how the car handels around your driving style.

Sping are shockie set ups are readily available with many big name Jap brands (Nismo, Blitz etc.) releasing suspension items. Have a look around the forums and ebay because you can pick up a second hand set of spring and shokies for less $400 quite easily. The spring rates on these are also far less harsh than coilovers. Far cheaper too. There are also products out there with damper adjustability (but no where near as many levels as coilovers)

On a quick side note, not many people use, for some extremley strange reason, (but are AWESOME) are progressive springs. Where the further the spring is compressed (ie, on a bump or during cornering) the stiffer the spring rate becomes. These are optimum for steet use as they are fairly soft over general roads, but once you begin sticking the car into corners and the weight begins to transfer further, the spring compresses further and becomes stiffer, slowing down and stopping the weight transfer once there is enough of it on one side of the car. Id go as far as saying that a good set of progressive springs and shokies on a steet car would be better (and quicker) around twistie roads vs the same car with a set of coilovers as they do offer a some bump absorbtion and weight transfer. These are also very comfortable to drive on.

Your last option are coilovers. Very expensive (in the thousands of dollars) but do very depending on brand. These are generally pretty harsh on the road (you do get used to it after a while though) and offer the best handeling characteristics but at the cost of comfort. Added bonuses include; damper adjustments and hight adjustment on most products. On a track though, these are the pick of the lot, you wont see better gains than sticking in a set of good coilovers over a set of springs and shockies.

And yes, as Nath pointed out, if your going drag racing a softer spring is a better option.

if your going drfting its pretty simple from there - just set everything to F.T (fugn tight) and go for broke.

Hope this helps

Edited by GTS4WD

Thanks for the help guys but can anyone comment on king springs they are a pretty cheap option to go for at $300, though im looking for good quality + r34's already come with strut bars

Edited by gabzr34

I'm running king springs 30mm lowered from factory height. Generally look between King Springs and Whiteline.

Back when I got mine done, I actually asked a local suspension place what they recommend, whiteline or king springs. There answer was simply both are good, but we support the Queensland brand which is king springs.

I didn't end up getting them from that place though...I actually got quoted believe it or not around $600 less from Fulcrum Suspension. So shop around when you get your suspension done. Sydney Kid's got a list of recommended suspension work shops.

To answer your question on how much better time you will get... the sway bars, coilovers and good rubber are all going to help stiffen up the chassis and keep the car flatter particularly around corners which will all help in maintaining power and speed...but what time you manage to get will depend on your driving skill. Practice makes perfect and your car will handle differently after those modifications. Once you adjust to the way your car drives and handles, you can improve your times. Don't just expect to get out there with new suspension parts and suddenly pull of ripper times from the word go.

It's good to see someone trying to improve their cars handling and power through suspension and handling before looking for more performance power gains.

another question with sway bars, coil overs and great tires how much of a better time will i get 0.5 or something

How long is a piece of string?

Are you looking for times on the track? Because in that case you could smash your times by simply slapping on a set of semi slicks.. and I mean by several seconds..

There was an add on the forums where an Evo was fitted with a set of HSD HR coilovers and simply from that cut their lap time down by another second.

There are many many variables in this though. Can it you hit the mark on every corner every lap?

another question with sway bars, coil overs and great tires how much of a better time will i get 0.5 or something

If you're only interested in a straight line (I've got no idea what "0.5" means, aside from lowering your ET) then sway bars will do pretty much nothing.

Of course, if you're only interested in a straight line you bought the wrong car.

Simplest mod is tyres. Pop a set of cheater slicks on the car and you'll be able to dump it from a much higher RPM.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Latest Posts

    • The average previous owner for these cars were basically S-chassis owners in the US. Teenagers or teenager-adjacent. I often tell people that neglect is easier to fix than something that was actively "repaired" by previous owners.
    • Update 3: Hi all It's been a while. Quite a lot of things happened in the meantime, among other things the car is (almost) back together and ready to be started again. Things that I fixed or changed: Full turbo removal, fitting back the OEM turbo oil hardlines. Had to do quite a bit of research and parts shopping to get every last piece that I need and make it work with the GT2860 turbos, but it does work and is not hard to do. Proves that the previous owner(s) just did not want to. While I was there I set the preload for the wastegates to 0,9bar to hopefully make it easier for the tuner to hit the 370hp I need for the legal inspections that will follow later on. Boost can always go up if necessary. Fitted a AN10 line from the catch can to the intake hose to make the catchcan and hopefully the cam covers a slight vacuum to have less restrictive oil returns from the head and not have mud build up as harshly in the lines and catch can. Removed the entire front interior just shy of the dashboard itself to clean up some of the absolutely horrendous wiring, (hopefully) fix the bumpy tacho and put in LED bulbs while I was there. Also put in bulbs where there was none before, like the airbag one. I also used that chance to remove the LED rpm gauge on the steering column, which was also wired in absolute horror show fashion. Moved the 4in1 Prosport gauge from sitting in front of the OEM oil pressure gauge to the center console vents, I used a 3D printed vent piece to hold that gauge there. The HKB steering wheel boss was likely on incorrectly as I sometimes noticed the indicator reset being uneven for left vs. right. In the meantime also installed an airbag delete resistor, as one should. Installed Cube Speed premium short shifter. Feels pretty nice, hope it'll work great too when I actually get to drive. Also put on a fancy Dragon Ball shift knob, cause why not. My buddy was kind enough to weld the rust hole in the back, it was basically rusted through in the lowermost corner of the passenger side trunk area where the wheel arch, trunk panel and rear quarter all meet. Obviously there is still a lot of crustiness in various areas but as long as it's not rusted out I'll just treat and isolate the corrosion and pretend it's not there. Also had to put down a new ground wire for the rear subframe as the original one was BARELY there. Probably a bit controversial depending on who you ask about this... but I ended up just covering the crack in the side of the engine block, the one above the oil feed, with JB Weld. I used a generous amount and roughed up the whole area with a Dremel before, so I hope this will hold the coolant where it should be for the foreseeable future. Did a cam cover gasket job as the half moons were a bit leaky, and there too one could see the people who worked on this car before me were absolute tools. The same half moons were probably used like 3 times without even cleaning the old RTV off. Dremeled out the inside of the flange where the turbine housing mates onto the exhaust manifolds so the diameter matches, as the OEM exhaust manifolds are even narrower than the turbine housings as we all know. Even if this doesn't do much, I had them out anyways, so can't harm. Ideally one would port-match both the turbo and the manifold to the gasket size but I really didn't feel up to disassembling the turbine housings. Wrapped turbo outlet dumps in heat wrap band. Will do the frontpipe again as well as now the oil leak which promted me to tear apart half the engine in the first place is hopefully fixed. Fitted an ATI super damper to get rid of the worn old harmonic balancer. Surely one of the easiest and most worth to do mods. But torquing that ARP bolt to spec was a bitch without being able to lock the flywheel. Did some minor adjustments in the ECU tables to change some things I didn't like, like the launch control that was ALWAYS active. Treated rusty spots and surface corrosion on places I could get to and on many spots under the car, not pretty or ideal but good enough for now. Removed the N1 rear spats and the carbon surrounding for the tailpipe to put them back on with new adhesive as the old one was lifting in many spots, not pretty. Took out the passenger rear lamp housing... what do you know. Amateur work screwed me again here as they were glued in hard and removing it took a lot of force, so I broke one of the housing bolts off. And when removing the adhesive from the chassis the paint came right off too. Thankfully all the damaged area won't be visible later, but whoever did the very limited bodywork on this car needs to have their limbs chopped off piece by piece.   Quite a list if I do say so myself, but a lot of time was spent just discovering new shit that is wrong with the car and finding a solution or parts to fix it. My last problem that I now have the headache of dealing with is that the exhaust studs on the turbo outlets are M10x1.25 threaded, but the previous owner already put on regular M10 nuts so the threads are... weird. I only found this out the hard way. So now I will just try if I can in any way fit the front pipe regardless, if not I'll have to redo the studs with the turbos installed. Lesson learned for the future: Redo ALL studs you put your hands on, especially if they are old and the previous owners were inept maniacs. Thanks for reading if you did, will update when the engine runs again. Hope nothing breaks or leaks and I can do a test drive.
    • No those pads are DBA too  but they have colors too. I look at the and imo the green "street" are the best.
    • I’m not sure what happened I told them about sonic tunes free OTS tune and the next the I know .. I was booted..   To funny 
×
×
  • Create New...