Which setup for drifting...?

[Mux213]

nohachi, hey don't be so hard man

hamsupjai, be carefull about what you read, to many people in this world have once heard what is real, write it down in their own limited words, and fantoms get created

Stiffening up the rear suspention can help in making the rear a bit looser but in a sence you are just making your rear suspention work less good. There are some threads around that explain some of the dynamics if you are really interesting, I don't pretent to understand even half of it.

All AE86's have coilover front suspention factory standard. Coil over simply means the springs are placed over the shocks. What most people mean when they say you should have coilovers is that you should have adjustable coilovers. That is a common conversion alot of people do where the stock spring setup is replaced by a threaded sleeve with an adjustable perch on which the spring rests. This makes the ride height adjustable.
Making your ride height adjustable just allows you to fine tune the suspention setup and get that extra bit of grip you may want.

Ideally you want to be able to adjust the rear ride height aswell. In the rear our cars have a separate spring and seperate shock and this setup does not allow to install an adjustable system (allthough you can work with shorter springs and add spacer to tune it rudementary and fine tune with the front setup) There are adjustable coil over kits for the rear that basically mount the spring over the strut and keep the strut where it is now. This works fine but it is true that the stock mounts for the rear struts can let you down if you really use your car to the fullest.

What you need to keep in mind with these things though is that going to a generally stiffer suspention all round with a good shock set is an improvement on the handling of the car over stock in any right, whether you drift, drive track or drive on the street. The stock setup is for comfort, not necesairilly handling.

However going beyond that and looking into adjustable coil overs, adjustable shocks and whatnot really is only interesting if you either like tinkering with the setup of your car, or if you want to get that extra tenths of a second off of your laptime. For the rest of us, its more a case of being able to say to the next guy at a meeting: look at what cool toys I have to play with then that we really know what to do with them.

Good drifting is about technique, its about knowing your car, its about practicing. Buy a good set of springs (your old ones are probably warn out anyways), buy a good set of shocks (your old ones are probably warn out aswell) and go out and have fun. The rest you really don't need to bother with until you really know how to handle the car as it is.

In the end a better car setup does not make you a better drifter (or a better track driver, or better driver all round). The best upgrade you can give any car, is practicing.