Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Kings do standard replacement, low and superlow. They are all in different catalogues - superlow especially.

In general the only legal ones are standard replacement and low. The superlows are almost 100% illegally low across the whole range and in general are not good for handling anyway.

I don't know about Stageas specifically, but my recent experience (as in, this month) with Kings lows for R32 Skyline is that the KDFL-101 and KDRL-102 combo (being the normal low spring for most later R chassis cars) were far too low and I had to go to the equivalent GTR springs to get the ride height correct. When I say "far too low" I'm talking ~30mm lower than legal. I do not know if this is just a manufacturing batch problem, labelling problem or what it is. The result though is that I have ~5kg/mm springs in instead of ~3 kg/mm springs, and I actually damn well like it!

I would have thought that you match the spring with the dampening of the shocks.

Yes but no. Unless you're talking about adjustable coilovers, or about adjustable dampers (Konis, KYB AGX and a few others) then what you get when you buy a damper (be it Bilstein, KYB, Monroe, Koni, whatever) is the damping that the guy at that factory thought best suited that car. Those off the shelf dampers are intended for stock springs or not much heavier than stock.

If you go buy a Kings spring, you can get either a pure stock replacement, a stock replacement with high rate (so, heavy duty) or the various lowered ones. The lowered ones have to have a higher rate than stockers simply because they're lower, so obviously that makes them the place where we all start looking. Anyway, the rates of Kings lows are not very much higher than stock springs, so when you bundle off the shelf springs with off the shelf dampers, they work OK together. Sure, they may not be the epitome of good matching or handling, but they work.

If you want to be able to match dampers to a particular spring - say you're putting really heavy stock format springs onto a car, then yes, you probably have little option to either buy fully adjustable dampers (not just rebound adjustable), or at that point you're better off looking at coilovers - just not cheap nasty coilovers. Cheap coilovers have cheap dampers....doesn't matter how many adjustments they have if their damping performance is gross.

I talk about "matching the damping to the springs" a lot in suspension threads because commonly the question is "I've bought these coilovers with 11ty bajillion kg springs and the're too stiff and I want to put some 6/4 springs on there." In some case they could get away with it (if they're starting at maybe 8/6) but then they'd probably not notice the change anyway. If the springs are like 10/8 or 12/10 like some of the Jap kits, then trying to halve the spring rates against the same dampers, even with "adjustments" in the dampers could lead to ugliness. Overdamping is not as bad as underdamping, but it's still not nice.

An alternative, if you can afford to pay someone to do it, would be to get dampers revalved to suit the springs. It's a lot of time and effort to get it right though. Look at the SK thread up the top about dampers (again, even if you already have) to see why brands like Bilstein are able to put good dampers out in the market, just from a fundamental design point off view, let alone the fact that they actually seem to care about quality of damping.

Edited by GTSBoy
  • Like 1

dont bother unless its a track only car, far too hard springs and will require re-valving if you go softer

Yeah, no. Had them, now don't. Good if you like your kidneys bruised.

Ohlins DFV then? Planning on street/track kinda ride , and maybe once in a blue moon take it on long trips.

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


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • If you mean the alarm immobiliser; theyre internal to the alarm itself which makes that difficult; I couldnt even see where he put it; its not in the same place as last time; but with all black wiring it might be very challenging to trace  I had someone turn the key for me as I know it only primes for a couple of seconds As my post above; I am getting no voltage to the pump at all; but I am testing continuity of the power line (SB) from the pump plug to the relay fine. As well as the negative from the pump plug to a 12V constant.    Yeah; he blammed the no start on a bad battery; said I needed to get a new battery and it'll start. Turns out the battery drained because the tail lights had been on for half the day during the install (the rubber cushion on the brake switch gave out while he was testing it as I have a picture of the car from that morning with the tail lights off..i've replaced that). The battery was turning over the engine just fine for a long time; but got low since lights were draining it so it was too low to test a start after he finished. I bought a new one on his advice...$250 wasted. My original battery charged up just fine and is healthy.    It was running perfectly fine when I messed up the old alarm (programmed out the remotes). He couldnt start it after removing the old alarm; my assumption is that when he unhooked it; he didnt bridge the circuit back when trying to start it. Its always been perfectly fine. The ECU swap and pump were 2 years ago. It's never missed a beat in that time. 
    • This is a big issue for me without the diff. I just have zero drive from the passenger side when drivers side has no traction. Bec's parents place has a crazy steep driveway with odd camber and I have never been able to get up. My bro-in-law's 130i with an (unknown brand) LSD gets up fine as does their dad's Hiace. My car stays at the bottom. We have other odd camber roads around here as we're elevated a bit and if it's raining I can get totally stuck around some hairpins. 
    • Yeah, I am super excited for this.
    • Was the car running before he touched the car?
×
×
  • Create New...