A31 Suspension Set up

[OBJEXX]

Hi all

I am going to replace my worn out, unbranded coilovers shortly with the goal of improving the comfort of my ride. What i want to know is; is it worth spending the extra money on buying the adjustable upper/lower control arms, traction and castor arms while i'm there?

I have to ignore toe arms at the moment because i am running a Hicas lock bar. Am i going to to improve my ride quality that much more by having these or is it going to be wasted on what is essential going to be a daily drive car that see's the occasional cruise session or skid pan?

Cheers 

[GTSBoy]

Adjustable arms will do NOTHING to improve ride comfort, compared to stockers. Almost all of them either have spherical joints or harder rubber/urethane bushes, so will usually make it stiffer and noisier. Sphericals being the worst for that, and not particularly legal, either.

The reason** to put adjustable arms (on the rear) to be able to dial out excessive camber that may be there because the car is somewhat lower on dropped coilovers. You need upper arms and traction rods to be able to adjust that out. Note that this is not a trivial exercise. Search for words posted on these forums (by me and others) regarding bump steer.

**OK, there are other reasons, including just wanting to be able to choose how much camber you run, instead of being trapped with whatever you've got +/- 0.2°.

Adjustable lower arms at the rear are strictly unnecessary unless you are going all the way over the top race/drift spec.

If you didn't have HICAS, your stock toe arms would already be adjustable - that's what they're for!

At the front, I would run spherical jointed adjustable caster rods (despite the illegality) simply because of how much better they locate the lower arms. You have Mac struts in the front, yes? So there are no other arms that you need to change. Adjustable lower ones are only for drift spanking and you can get adjustable strut tops to give you enough camber & caster adjustment for most needs.