It's so simple it's painful to type. A decent set of tires will yield major improvments in handling. Very simple and cheap fix to a Mitsu mistake!!!

 

I think coilovers are also good for the winter time becuase you could raise your car easily.

 

I am not going to go on at ad nauseum on why coil overs are not the solution for all if you want to improve handling. Nor the fact you can lower your car too much - decreasing handling.

Not all Evo specific, I suggest reading up on what your suspension does if you want to maximize it.

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...ead-links.html

 

IMO coilovers are better, why? because with springs you still retain your oem shocks, shocks that were meant to be paired with oem springs, thus if you do it wrong you may blow out the shocks prematurely. Sure you can lower your car too much, thats why you must find the right height and thats why its adjustable. Springs dont increase the handling any more than what coilovers would do, from personal experience the difference of handling/ride comfort when switching from springs to coilovers was night and day.

 

Better and Bigger wheels and tires will improve the car's handling, but you still get body roll.
If you really want to improve the handling. Get Robispec springs and sway bar combination. It make the car handle flatter. Meaning, the car will turn...and not roll into the corner...

I will be doing the Robispec package and some 235's after I get my fenders rolled. I just want the car to give me more confidence to drive it harder. It's too scary to push it!

The suspension does not match the motor and transmission at all...

 

1. Sway bars- sway bars are great because unless you go with a massive setup (like 29 mm bars), they don't increase the static stiffness of the car meaning it rides like stock. However, when you enter a corner, you notice the difference instantly. The rear tends to make the most noticeable difference and is probably enough for a street car. A front sway bar is nice if you track the car (I noticed increase steering response but only when pushed and even then it's subtle) but that's about it.

2. Coilovers- I'm of the opinion that you get what you pay for. Cheap coilovers are just that, cheap. They come with a lot of trade offs and it's debatable whether they're useful. To make this clearer, if we take a 1000$ set of coilovers and do a price breakdown, you can see they can't possibly be using high quality pieces. If we say only 10% of the cost is profit (unlikely), the actual cost of the coilovers is 900$. That means roughly 225$ a corner. There's likely a front:rear bias so we'll say the fronts are 300$ a corner and the rears are 150$ a corner. You also have front camber plates in the front so we'll bang 50$ of the cost of those making it 250$ for the front and 150$ for the rear. Well now you have adjustable struts for less than the cost of decent fixed struts, which logically means a reduction in quality. We didn't even take into account labor costs here. If you want coilovers (and aren't building a pure race car that be spine rattling stiff), look for systems made by Ohlin, Bilstein, KW, etc. If they sound cheap, they likely are.

3. Tires- tires are the best mod you can do. Given the weight of the Ralliart, I'd probably go to an 18x8 wheel with high quality 235 tires. The Star Specs might be worth looking into but I'm not sure how well they handle weight.

4. Strut bars, etc- Given how stiff the stock chassis is, these products are unlikely to do much. Stiffening the chassis can help the suspension do it's job (less energy is wasted with flex, think of it as the difference between lifting with your legs and lifting with your back) but until you have a serious suspension setup, it's not necessary. Other things to look into are anti-lift kits but I haven't seen any yet. Upgrading bushings is helpful as are things like adjustable control arms, etc.

 

Robispec has a combo of both?

 

hmm so from what i'm gathering the cheapest but with still noticeable gains alternative is to get rear sway bars? Although everyone seems to agree with tires, but they are both expensive for me (right now anyway) plus i'd rather get my moneys worth from the OEMs.

 

The rear sway bar will likely be the most noticeable (apart from coilovers but those can be 2000$+ for a decent set) mod if you aren't including tires at all.

 

Coil overs - can and do rust or seize in the winter. What is the shock dyno (compression and rebound) on those lower level coil overs, I doubt they are matched for their rates and I bet they have a lot of variance in them.

Springs - proper, note my term, springs are matched to the valving of the strut. The strut does not care where it strokes from. Too soft and too low rates will cause a strut to bottom out, which is the most harmful part to it.

I agree, springs or coil overs will increase the cars ability. I do not agree that its the end-all answer across the board. Nor do I agree that the lower level coil overs are any good. I had Megan Tracks previously and on top of the poor ride, was not impressed with the handling. My personal experience is in the opposite direction. Matched struts, springs, sways > lower level coil overs.

I posted a link to suspension discussions. Not a link to product reviews. Read up on the principles on what the suspension does before getting a c/o or spring/sway set. My recommendation is to read, read, read, then buy.

 

I completely agree, unless you're willing to drop big bucks on coilovers, a matched strut and spring setup is far better. If you have the option of aftermarket struts, you can generally shop around a bit and find springs that not only work well the struts but that cater a bit more towards your personal preferences (stiffer, softer, lower, higher, etc). Moreover, less adjustability means less things to go wrong.
Too stiff springs can blow struts as well correct? What is the reason for this since stiff springs shouldn't bottom out.

 

Age of strut, damage to strut (bottom out, potholes) -- most reasons why struts blow.

 

Yeah I'm just wonder why really stiff springs that shouldn't bottom out blow struts quickly.

 

Well overly stiff struts can cause the seals to rip internally if their valving is not stiff enough to handle the spring (again proper spring engineering/design/thought does play into this). I am running one if the stiffest springs out there (6.4k/6.8k) on Bilstein HD struts. But many run the same spring on the OE KYB (which I am right now since I sent my front HD's out for custom valving -- then UPS lost one of them... )

 

i think the key phrase here is "you get what you pay for"