Hello !

I m looking for new suspension . What shiuld I choose for track days, drift days, street driving days ? lol where to find it ? and for how much ? thanks you by advance !

Julien.

Julien,

Loads of options here. There are already a number of topics about this so you can start by searching around. Couple of things we always advise.

First thing to start with are bushings. Bushings on your car are most likely warn out after 20 or so years. Toyota advises replacing your bushings every 10 years or so. Good and cheap upgrade are Prothane bushings, you can often find these on ebay. We should have these for sale hopefully by the end of the year ourselves. These are polyurathane bushings and give a slightly harder and more controlable ride.

You can also buy stock bushings from Toyota offcourse, more expensive but not recommended for track use. This is more the prefered option for people that want to stay with the stock car.

Another option is going for TRD rubber bushes, much more expensive then the Prothane, but you basically obtain the same goals. They say they wear less fast since they are made of rubber instead of polyurathane, can't really judge. You also can go for powerflex, again polyurathane but they say a higher quality, but probably the most expensive option of the bushings lot.

The very best solution, but most expensive however is to replace all the joints with uniball joints. This however is the ultimate sacrifice of comfort at the gain of control. T3 (http://www.technotoytuning.com) sells the battle version line of adjustable 4 links, panhard rods and controll arms. This is definately not recommended for street drivable cars (allthough people do use it on street cars, its just how much secrafice you are willing to make).
T3 is not the only seller of these products however, there is a guy in HongKong that was on this forum awhile ago that sells similar products and I believe Sym from Pass racing is working on a line of these products. Check out the commercial sales section for more detail.

Then suspention wise, loads of options here ranging from cheap to expensive, easy to difficult.

Easiest upgrade is just to go for new shocks and springs. You can get a pretty driftable car by just getting some good gas shocks and some good springs. Most people find that if you buy the right stuff you don't really need to go for all the adjustable mumbo jumbo, its just fun toys. It is recommended you go for a so called 'short stroke' setup. Often you find that if you go for stronger springs these come in a size that with the longer stroke shocks the springs will come loose when the car is lifted off, not a problem for everyone but in some countries this is MOT failure. Also you have to realize you can run into bump stop problems.
Read this more then excelent write up on club4ag about the difference between long stroke and short stroke shocks, why you would need short stroke, how you can convert standard struts to short stroke etc:
http://www.club4ag.com/faq%20and%20tech_...ersion.htm

It also talks about how to adjust the struts to accept adjustable sleeves for height adjustablity at the front. I definately recommend going short stroke if you are serious abotu going track or drift.

For non adjustable shocks in Europe your best choice is bilstein shocks, these actually require you to modify your front strut differently then the writeup on club4ag as the height adjustability is part of the bilstein shock.
In America KYB shocks can be found pretty cheaply and are just inserts, I think these come in long and short stroke.
Also very popular are TOKICO shocks, these have TOKICO blue shocks that I believe are insert, and TOKICO HP which I believe are bolt on but I'm not sure, Max (see commercial section on this board) sells these I believe and can give you more info on these.

If you do fancy adjustable shocks there are a couple of choices you have.
Within Europa KONI Yellows are the most popular choice. Very high quality oil based shocks. Note that the shocks for AE86 are long stroke and not adjustable on the car. There are no short stroke koni's for the rear, you can buy KONI's for AE92 KONI's which are short stroke for the front but you'll need to add some spacers. These shocks are adjustable on car.
AGX KYB also sells adjustable shocks, these are the cheapest adjustable shocks that I know of and are gas based. Most argue that they are best value for money but they aren't the best choice. T3 sells these if I am not mistaken.
Tokico HTS are probably the best choice around although many are divided between KONI and HTS. Most drifters in US and Japan including Keiichi are rumored to swear by HTS, these again are gas shocks, short stroke, fully adjustable but getting hard to get. Max sells these. I also believe Sym from Pass racing also can get them.

Springs there are alot of options aswell, there are alot of lowering springs available from APEX, KONI, INTRAX, etc but these are usually something like 3kg/mm front 2kg/mm rear which is nice for street but not for track or drift. There is alot of arguement about what is best for track and drift, you'll have to make up your own mind. I'm going for 6.25kg/mm front and 4.5kg/mm rear which should do nicely as a track setup that is still somewhat comfortable. Many swear by 8kg/mm front by 6kg/mm rear, but I've also heard from one drifting with a high success rate he likes a 6 by 6 ratio.
Note that many US based guys use the LBS notation, there is a formula for going from kg/mm to LBS in the technical FAQ.

There are two main lines of springs that are very popular, both really require a shortstroke setup. One is TRD, which I believe Max sells. The other are swift springs that Sym sells. Don't ask me which is best, I guess they are both good.

If you don't feel up to buying all the parts separately and putting it all together yourself, there are a few manufacturers that sell fully assembled shocks or even complete sets. Some of these even sell complete setups that also contain a rear coil over set (hachi are separate spring and shock setup rear). T3 is most popular in this case offering a great quality setup but also Paradise Racing offer a setup and Sym is busy on one I believe.

Last but not least, there are a few more interesting things that you're going to need to complete your setup. Camber plates are important, they allow you to set up the camber on the front wheels. Very usefull on a drift car to increase grip on the front wheels. T3 sells a cool set, not sure about Max and Sym, do check their page. We're busy on something that might become available early next year.
Also very important on lowered cars are RCA, search on why and how on this board but believe me, you'll want these. Again T3 sells these, but we've also had some group buys before on this board for these. We're looking into having these made aswell.
There's some other tidbits aswell, I'm sure others will jump in, this is all that comes to my mind at the moment

T3: http://www.technotoytuning
Max and Sym are both on this board, check the commercial section, and offcourse keep an eye on me because in the coming months some developments from us should be coming along

Whoa Mux..thats quite a comprehensive post you have there..

darn...aspiring writer he is...our mux..[sorry bout the yoda talk]

Must be a quiet evening at the house ghe ghe ghee...Guess the wife is out working

Nopes, wife is studying these days, so I'm way boored....

I think everytime we have someone new on this board they ask the same question and I answer the same thing and my story just becomes bigger and bigger. A year from now I'll be writing a book about suspention settings on a hachi

Big question now is, did I get it right guys or did I write alot of bullocks?

T3 also sells this "Advanced Strut Tube Spacers". http://www.technotoytuning.com/productdetail.php?p=110
Which is a spacer for the bottom of a long strut. Then you won't have to cut your stock struts if you want to use shortstrokes.
(Don't know much about these btw, i know some pro's (like Mux with long posts ) here can provide more info!)

Does someone have experience with these? What are the pro/cons for this kind of setup?

Reminds me,

Totaly forgot one of the most important suspention upgrades

kungfumaster Wrote:T3 also sells this "Advanced Strut Tube Spacers". http://www.technotoytuning.com/productdetail.php?p=110
Which is a spacer for the bottom of a long strut. Then you won't have to cut your stock struts if you want to use shortstrokes.
(Don't know much about these btw, i know some pro's (like Mux with long posts ) here can provide more info!)

Does someone have experience with these? What are the pro/cons for this kind of setup?

One of the problems with stiffer springs is that there is no way to keep the springs captive while the suspension is at full droop (aka on the bridge at the MOT garage). One way of solving this problem is limiting the amount of droop you have available aka: mounting short stroke shocks in the stock position through the use of spacers under the shock.

Is this then a good solution to use instead of strut shortening?
In one word: NO, strut shortening was never meant to prevent the springs from becoming non-captive. When you use lower springs, in effect what happens is that the car rests lower with regard to the shock. Now if originally the car rested at 50% droop and 50% bump travel, then it now rests somewhere at 80% droop available and 20% bump.
So you have just reduced suspension motion in one direction by 60%. By using short stroke shocks in this setup, basically what you do is set the available range from 80/20 to about 30/20. The springs keep seated.
The problem is that with the new reduced travel, the shock will impact on the bumpstops a lot earlier..if there wasnt a bumpstop, the entire car would bang onto the strut-top, so be carefull about removing them.
That is the reason that most lowered cars, including those of tons of people on the forums here, have a miserable ride. People claim that it is the stiffer springs and that they are getting a sporty ride, while in fact it is the car slamming into the bumpstops over every small sharp bump in the road.
I have driven cars with 10F/6R kg/mm that were perfectly comfortable. ITS NOT THE SPRINGS THAT RUIN THE RIDE!!
The solution is gaining back some of the suspension travel that we lost through lowering. The only way to do that is to lower the entire shock top..aka using shorter stroke shocks and shortening the struts to match. Not only have you now gained some much need comfort, the car will be better able to follow the road and the tires will not experience the shockloads induced from hitting the bumpstops. That translates directly into real world performance.

Furthermore: Bumpstops rule. Basically they are what allows you to construct a setup that works not only on the track but also on the street. On sticky tires and very fast corners the car gently drops onto the bumpstops effectively raising the springrate linearly from 12 to about 18 kg/mm. That means that if you have a good match between springs and bumpstops, you can use slightly weaker springs for max. traction and corner on the bumpstops.

NoHachi,

Isn't that the point Moto-P is trying to make with his Addendum in the technical articel I posted a link to in my post when I talked about shortening the struts? He has got some nice diagrams to clarify it

Anyways nice info anyways, clearifies it from a more technical standpoint Indeed, using short stroke shocks with stock length struts and spacers, or using long stroke struts and lowering springs (or really any setup where you lower the car more then a couple of cm and you keep the stock struts lenght) is asking for trouble in the long run.

Don't go crazy though, if you got some nice APEX, KONI, INTRAX whatever sporty lowering springs that lower the car 2cm or so, you really don't loose enough travel to worry about these things. Generally speaking you're talking about lowering more then 4cm on a hachi when you're getting into trouble with travel (with TRD or Swift springs you will encounter this so defo shorten your struts!).