Haha, posted just before me.

It'd definitely be a huge improvement in ride quality, and it'll definitely tune out some of your understeer bias because the rears would be stiffer relative to the fronts. What I'm not sure of is whether the increase in body roll will hurt response more than the spring rate change will help it. Then again, it seems that you took a lot of weight out of the overhanging parts of the car, so...

Anyway, yes. As qualified as I can be without actually having tested this, I vote for 7/5.

 

My car is very light to begin with though, add the reduction on top of that. You think i'll ruin my handling with 2kg drop?? Damn i didnt think it would affect it THAT much...As for the eibach springs(ERS?), you really think they'll be better quality? I mean...ksport isnt some cheapo ebay brand.


On another note....maybe i should first try to get the front springs, the 7kg, and after that see if i still need to get the rears? This would help create oversteer as well

 

baaah we keep posting right after each other

i want to see your responce the post above this one and then i'll decide

 

True. But even if it were 200 lbs off the standard weight of 3000 lbs, I still think 2 kg/mm is too much. You'd be knocking 22% off your front spring rate and 33% off your rear spring rate for only a 7% decrease in vehicle weight...


Yup. Think about it: The car has enough understeer in stock form. If you keep the same spring rates as stock but then massively stiffen the fronts, the understeer is going to be off the scale...


No, Ksport is not just some cheapo brand. But their springs are made by whatever decent steel product manufacturer will fill their orders with good quality control. Eibach, on the other hand, is one of the two best automotive spring manufacturers on the market...

 

Ok. What about the idea of swapping a 7kg spring in front only and seeing how that affects ride? If the softening/stiffening effects are as big as you say, then this will help create oversteer quite a bit.

 

Well, on a front-heavy, FWD family car with a rear beam suspension, adding understeer is a lot easier than adding oversteer. But yes, dropping down to 7 kg/mm springs in front should definitely help things.

Incidentally, 7/6 are the default rates for the Tein Basic coilover kit. If you know anyone with a 4th gen on Tein Basics and you do decide to drop down to 7/6, call him up and give us a comparison.

 

I'm going to order them next friday. Going to make this my last max mod, along with vafc2/wbo2. Need to stop this madness!

 

Wait, don't stop there! You need chassis stiffening....

 

it never stops

I know I could use some, I swear my car feels wobbly and weak . . .

 

Every Max needs chassis stiffening. Maxes with coilovers need it about 8 times more....

 

OH i meant last expensive mod. My friend has a welder, knows how to weld, and parts for SFC's are relatively cheap


I prolly won't get around to this till summer though.

 

A couple of questions for you Ksport Gurus:
I bought some used Ksports (about 3-4 months old) last weekend and threw them in monday morning..
When I went back to adjust the height on the rears it wouldn't budge....
Is there some kind of trick to get the lower housing to twist???

Also, i'm assuming these have the factory 9/7 spring rate.
I plan on switching the 7's to the front and getting two 6kg springs and putting those in the rear... I've gotta have a smoother ride than i'm at right now....
Has anyone gone with spring rates like that on their 5th gen???

Once I get everything installed and the height set exactly where I want it i'm going to get the car corner balanced....

Oh, and to those of you wondering.... I didn't jump off the D2 band wagon... I just got these for really cheap and Mike didn't have any A33's in stock at the moment and I couldn't wait........



EDIT: After scanning the thread, looks like you guys have already suggested using 7/5.
Getting a the springs isn't a problem for me.
I can go get 2-17 or something like that. The only thing is that they'll be D2 springs....
But at my cost for them, i'm not complaining :-)

 

That happened to me once and I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. Probably a consequence of lax maintenance... Since it was on a blown damper (which was my fault), I just ended up ordering a new lower mount with the new damper.

My best advice involves lots of penetrating lubricant, lots of care, and lots of patience. And whatever you do, DO NOT HEAT IT WITH A TORCH.


It's either that or 9/6. Probably 9/6.

Again, 7/6 is the same as Tein Basics. Should be comparable.

If you're going to go that far, also make sure you don't drop it past 1.5". You do want at least some semblance of suspension geometry...

D2 and Ksport both get their springs from third party manufacturers. Functionally, they will be very similar if not identical. I strongly suspect that the springs are one of the few parts of the D2s and the Ksports that actually are identical (the other parts being the camber plates and brake line brackets).

 

Thanks man!
Yeah I got the car on a rack today to get some exhaust work done and noticed how the A-arms were past beyond parallel.........
I really like where it's sitting, but I guess i'm going to have to raise it up a bit.......

 

Do the softer springs cause faster damper wear?

 

Generally, a softer spring isn't quite as hard on any given damper, at least not in the rebound direction.

blackmaxx - unless you need to keep the ball joints in the stock locations - typically relative to the axle for a strut suspension - in order to satisfy some competition class ruleset, it may be possible to fit either taller balljoints or balljoint spacers (the sort of spacers that I'm thinking of do NOT simply relocate the mounting plane of the balljoint, which would not help the geometry at all, even though the inclination of the arm would suggest that things had been improved). Anyway, properly done, that will lower the control arm at the knuckle side without affecting ride height by enough to notice. While I have no idea whether anybody produces such parts for any generation of Maxima, I do know that such tricks have been used elsewhere. As a possible downside, I suspect that either mod would affect the bumpsteer somewhat.


Norm

 

Wheres the best place to get the ERS springs? And what is the diameter and length of the ksport springs?

 

Well I put the 7KG springs on the front, and I have 6KG springs on the rear.
I spent over 2 hours adjusting and measuring the suspension and all that.
I feel that I have the car at the perfect height, and the ride (comfort and performance wise) is absolutely INCREDIBLE.
No noise what soever.

Mike

 

Sounds good. Care to post a pic of the conrol arms? Maybe the springs changed something? Handling isn't optimal unless control arms are pointing down away from the car, and thats impossible with the ksports as far as i can see

 

The control arms are sitting pretty much parallel at this point.
I'm actually going to raise it just a TAD bit more for the autocross this weekend.
I'm also going to turn the pre-load up slightly more in the front.
The stance for the car is absolutely perfect.
I'll try to snag some pictures tomorrow for you guys.

Mike

 

Yours are parallel?!?!? What the heck is wrong with mine, i have the coilovers up to the safest high point and the control arms arent parallel....take some pics of the actual coilovers if you have a few extra minutes, thanks!

 

Same thing happened to me. I removed the lower mount, all the collars, and the spring, and put everything back together. I got a lot more height out of it after that.

To this day, I cannot figure out why...

 

i guess i know what im doing tomorrow!


before your post i didnt even realize that taking the spring out is as easy as unscrewing all the stuff on the bottom, i thought i would have to mess with the top part....



edit: yo d00d, do you have any pics of your fronts installed on the car?

 

I should have taken some, but I didn't. I should snap a few when I do my oil change in a week or so. Badger me by PM to remind me...

 

will do, if i remember

 

Hey, when you guys take everything apart, be sure to clean and re-grease the pillow ball mounts.
That's what causes the "unusual noise" 90% of the time.
It's not allowing the spring to twist around, because it binds up, then pops.

 

Ill try that. I was getting a groaning on my left front coilover when turning. I guess ill just use wheel bearing grease? That's what I got.

 

Yeah any synthetic packing/bearing grease will do.
Make sure you clean the mount really well and then pack a lot of grease in there

 

Latest failure stats according to a discussion with Ksport support:

For just Maxima kits, they claim to have done 14 total warranty replacements out of well over a thousand kits sold. Over a thousand kits is over four thousand dampers , so if 14 of those failed, that's a failure rate of less than 0.35% within one year.

As for out-of-warranty replacements, the person I spoke with seems to think they have done fewer than 10, but he wasn't sure. Let's be pessimists and assume it's 10. That would give a failure rate of 24 dampers out of over 4000, or less than 0.6%.


Want that in plain English? Ksport does not have a problem with blowing dampers. It just so happens that EVERYONE out of the over one thousand customers who has blown a damper is on these forums and posts about it the instant it happens.

Unless, of course, they just lied to me... but I can't imagine they would risk it so brazenly. Besides, even if the actual numbers were three times what was quoted to me (1.05% within one year and 1.8% within two years), that still wouldn't indicate anything to be concerned about, especially given how much stress the dampers have to put up with.

 

Damn so I've been 3 out of the 14.

Btw got my ksports back on and lovin themmmmm. They work good when they do work hahahaha.

 

Mine clunk real loud over bumps....i dont know if this is normal or they are blown....i guess i will have to check them over spring break.

 

To be honest, I don't think you are analyzing this statistics correctly. Here's why:

*I think it would be more appropriate to calculate the KIT failure rate, not damper failure rate, because if one shock fails the whole kit stops functioning. (To put it another way, you are buying 4 dampers, which means that you are increasing the chances that you will have to worry about repairing at least one of your dampers by 4)

*We all know that the failure rate in the northern part of the country is much higher due to the cold weather and rough roads, so those who live in the north should expect significantly higher failure rate.

*Not everyone who buys k-sports is knowledgeable enough to realize that one of their shocks blew, and just keep driving on blown shocks.

*Many people who's shocks blow after the warranty expires just buy something else instead of sending a blown damper for a repair.

BTW, only k-sports can rebuild their dampers?

 

Fair enough. So, that makes the actual numbers less than 1.4% within one year and less than 2.4% within two years. Still, nothing abnormal for a coilover kit. See counterpoint below.

Good point... the corollary to which is that people not living in the north (actually the northeast) can expect a much lower failure rate. This says more about the suitability of the product than its durability...

If a tree falls in the woods....

Fair argument, but academic in the absence of figures.

Fair point, but again, academic until people come forward in significant numbers saying that they did so.


Here's a counterpoint: What about all those people who set their kits up poorly or make horrible mistakes? If you've been reading this thread and others like it, you've seen plenty of them: too much preload, poor damper settings, "negative preload" (a.k.a. artificial travel reduction)... One guy even removed the top nut on one of his struts trying to figure out how to adjust the damping. Those mistakes will cause premature failures that aren't Ksport's fault, and we know for a fact that Ksport's warranty replacement figures included at least one such incident.

The fact is, there are variables on both sides that are difficult or impossible to quantify. If you're going to make a global assessment of the quality of a product without at least having installed it and seen it used on dozens and dozens of cars, the only measures that might be reliable are available facts. Thus far, the facts do not show anything about which to be truly concerned.

...Unless, that is, you truly think you can buy a fully adjustable coilover kit for $800 and expect to have a totally brainless ownership experience no matter how you d*ck around with it. But if that's the case -- if you buy them, slap them in, and drive on them without knowing or caring how they function differently from a normal set of struts -- then you can't come crying to Ksport if something breaks.

If we start hearing a lot of bona fide stories from people who set their coilovers up correctly and still had a disproportionate number of premature failures, I will change my tune.


AFAIK, any good rebuilder should be able to do it, but they want their people to do it. They send their rebuilds to a race shop that does a lot of work for NASCAR and such.

The reason everyone is going to Ksport when things break is that it truly is cheaper and much quicker just to buy a new damper than to have yours rebuilt.

 

I did it! I made it through all FIFTY grueling pages of this thread!



FWIW, I learned a lot about them. They'll be on my doorstep on wednesday, so hopefully I can get a day off to install them, and fart around with settings.


My questions, though:

Say I go and get an alignment, and they set it for -1.5* camber in the front. That's pretty much going to be my daily driving setting, as I drive the car about 80 miles a day, all highway. I autocross the car a LOT, and I'd love to be able to jack up the front, change to race rubber, slam as much negative camber as I can for the event, race all day, and then reset it back to its original DD setting. If I make a mark on the camber plates, would this be logical? Or, am I gonna be at the alignment shop every other week, because I'll have -3.5* camber, on my street tires.

Also... is 2.5" drop all around too much? I'd love to go 4" down, but I have the LTB2, so that lowers my ground clearance a LOT, and I don't want the ill effects of the upward pointing LCA's. What's the measurement of the entire assembly for a 2.5" drop? My install time is highly limited... so I'd like to be able to get it all pre-assembled and ready to go on the car all in one shot. I realize there will be some tweaking, but nothing major.

Luckily, the roads that I typically drive on are in decent shape, here in downtown Chicago. Coupled with my ~40 mile highway commute each way to /from work, I should be ok with d00d's recommended setting of one turn from full soft for DD... and I'll crank it to full stiff at the track.


--Evan

 

You should be able to work off marks accurately enough, as the distance between the strut top and the ball joint is large enough that one mm or so error will not represent an excessive "error" in camber angle.

But I think that using a "gauge block" approach would be faster and more accurate. Just a piece (or pieces) of metal that fits between something that moves when you adjust and something that doesn't. Bottom the moveable part and the block against the fixed part and tighten. No judgement in matching up marks is involved at all. You'll only need to make the "fussy" measurement once, after which you can even forget what it was.


Norm

 

One problem: Changing your camber will also affect your toe...



(edited for spelling)

 

And, unfortunately, the toe change with camber curve goes the "wrong" way for optimizing cornering with most rear steer setups. More negative camber gives more toe in.

The best easy compromise for a non-Stock category car such as Evan's is probably to use hard LCA bushings - they should let you get away with a minimal toe setting for daily use. At least then, your competition toe isn't compensating for bushing compliance that's been selected with NVH having priority over pinpoint accuracy of the steering geometry.

Better, but involving more work, is to also switch toe between daily and competition settings. I'm not at all sure that a "gauge block" approach will work as well for this. Marking the tierods and the jam nuts in some fashion and keeping notes regarding the number of turns for a given camber change is probably the better method there.


Norm

 

So, basically, I'd be better off just getting the alignment, and not mess around with the camber plates, then?



I haven't had the opportunity to race at the Chicago Region SCCA events yet, but the Central Illinois Region SCCA events would open their gates at 9am, and the first car was out at 10am. So, basically, I would have an hour to get the car jacked up, change out tires, walk the course 2, maybe 3 times, and then have drivers' meeting. It's a lot of scrambling.

If Chicago Region SCCA is anything like CIR, then I'll be lucky to have time to get the tires swapped, let alone make camber changes. And considering I work 12-14 hour days, 6 days a week, setting up the car the night before isn't much of an option.


I hadn't thought about the toe changing with the camber. Makes sense, though. My teammate's WRX has the AGX/Eibach setup with Cusco camber plates, and he tried putting a sh*t-ton of camber, but ended up having some NASTY toe problems afterwards. Ended up just leaving it at the DD setting he had it.


FWIW, I'm making a BIG jump from G-Stock to E-Prepared. It took me 4 events to even figure out how to race a front heavy FWD car (coming from a 2100 lb., 300hp, 14K rpm redline, stripped, caged, and bias-ply-tires-sticking-out-2 inches-from-the fenders 1985 Mazda RX-7) again. Unfortunately, there was only one more event for the season, and it got snowed out. So, I'm essentially going back this season with an almost completely new car... y-pipe, exhaust, brakes, LTB2, coilovers, RSB, FSTB, MAYBE a CAI, some weight reduction for race day (back seat removal, stripping of trunk), and new race rubber (Toyo RA-1's).

 

Pretty much.

I second the motion for stiffer LCA bushings if you don't already have them.

As for setting your alignment, if your car is a frequent autocrosser I would recommend between -1.5 and -2.0 degrees camber. Dial in as much as possible using the elongated upper spindle bolt hole, and then use the camber plates for the rest. That will keep your kingpin inclination angle as low as possible, which will minimize positive camber gain on the outside wheel as you steer. Then get your alignment and see how you like it.

 

d00d... any measurements for the entire assembly, for a ~2.5" drop?


LCA bushings are ordered, but it'll be a little bit before they get installed.