Hi all,

New user, I’ve used EvoM as a tool for several years now, but never felt the need to make an account until recently.

As the subject indicates, I want to inquire on something rather different... specifically performance air suspension. 0.0 I’ve been doing some reading on it, and I am interested, not brave enough to buy it yet, but I haven’t been turned away yet. This year has been big for my car in the way of my wallet, but she is now sitting with a few more ponies, some fresh paint, and a bit of Voltex going all the way around. I would like to keep that Voltex where it is if you get me. That bumper sticks a waaaays out, and not too high off the pavement.

So I’m greedy. I want the best of both. The car isn’t my daily, but it isn’t soley a track car either. I want to be able to drive it with a little more worryless but I don’t want to sacrifice performance, not to mention all the hate I’d catch for it, but it seems like it could be the next step in suspension as a whole. I’m not a static guy, I never have been. I have ZERO desire to drop the car below a competition height. I’m already figuring I’m going to have to hide the control so that my buddy doesn’t slam the poor girl when I’m not looking!

What do you guys think? Any testimonies? I’m open to a conversation, and we can skip all the bus driving. Anyone who is open to put in their knowledge would be greatly appreciated, because I reeaaally don’t know if I could go through with it.

 

For the record, I have zero experience with trying to set any of this stuff up for actual performance driving. We begrudgingly sell air suspension on occasion at work I'm sure you can set it up to work well enough. In the words of Colin Chapman, "Any suspension will work if you don't let it."

Personally I'm way more a fan of a conventional coil spring. It's simple, it's reliable, it's lightweight, and generally it is pretty linear and if you are trying to go fast on the track the Evo community has already figured out what works. With the air, you are going to be going into somewhat uncharted territory trying to get it dialed in yourself, and it's usually more complicated, introducing more potential failure points, more difficult to troubleshoot and weighs more. The only real advantage I see here is that you'd be able to lift the nose for street driving, loading onto a trailer etc, and you can more easily experiment with different spring rates so long as your damper has the tuning range to support it.

I have a 2nd job working tech for a racing organization/sanctioning body for "historic" race cars, and one of our jobs is inspecting all the cars. It's gives an opportunity to look at a lot of different race cars, from a lot of different time periods. Over the last century people have definitely done some experimenting but last month @ the rolex historics @ laguna seca, out of the ~750 cars we saw over both weekends, every modern car runs a conventional coil spring. Go back a LONG time you will find some leaf springs and torsion bars, but even the fastest, least budget limited cars run conventional coil springs made of metal.

All these cars on coil springs. This was the fastest group of the event...mostly retired IMSA GT/GTP cars, covering nearly 40 years of top level sports car & prototype racing.


These cars not so much.


30 year old Comptech Spice Acura IMSA GTP lite car



Winning overall at 24LM with coil springs



All that said, I saw this guy out at the track back in 2013 and he was cutting some pretty good times. From what I can tell, he's stuck with the Air and the car still seems to be relatively competitive.

https://www.enjukuracing.com/blog/up...ks-speed-ring/

So, can you do it and still go fast? Sure. Is it going to be the easiest way to go fast? Probably not. But if you like experimenting and messing with stuff like this, you might have a lot of fun trying to get it to be fast. Good luck!

 

Apex,

Thank you for the promt input, I agree. Coilovers dominate the track right now for a reason. Obviously you understand the reason I’m curious, I’d like the best of both street and track.

All the reading I’ve done, that one guy with the Subaru always comes up, Cody. It parallels what you are saying though regarding uncharted territory. One kid decided to try and do Time Attack with it, and they made a partnership with him! What I’m hoping to see is maybe there is a little bit larger a consumer than that one guy.

I admit, the tinkering sounds kind of fun, but there is a lot of money riding on something like that, all of which I’d imagine would make for a pretty difficult resale if I want out of it.

Those are some pretty cool cars too, would be a helluva day to go watch those things run!

 

Hopefully some other people chime in here with actual experience messing with these kits. I'd totally be interested in playing with one at the track, it seems like it could be fun if nothing else.

If you move forward with the air, I hope that you keep us all updated, maybe start a thread to let us know how it goes!!

 

You answered your own question. No air kit comes with dampers that are even as good as say the Ohlins R/T's.

 

letsgetthisdone, that’s the thing, I don’t know. I may have answered my own question unwittingly, but I don’t think I did. I don’t know what’s out there, there is not much information on the matter, and as far as I’ve checked back in these forums and SoCal Evo there is nothing on the matter outside of the “Static Evo Show and Shine”, which is a no-go for me chief!

 

Hey, you had a question for sure & we appreciate ya posting up. Seems like the air suspensions are really geared for that STANCE group who like to vary the ride height & then go for that dumped looked (hard parked pics)

No way these air systems are going to have the adjustability, in valving & spring rates, that our coilovers have IMHO

 

You won't be able to make spring rate changes without replacing bags, so that's not really feasible, if you can even find bags with different rates that will fit.

Additionally, as stated, the dampers in these kits simply will not perform like the dampers that are used in a quality set of coilovers like Ohlins, AST, MCS, etc. so by you staying you "don't want to sacrifice performance" it's clear that you need to stay away from a bag setup.

Most coilovers can maintain a perfectly acceptable ride height for driving around town if you set them up that way.

My car on ohlins has no issues with 99% of "obstacles" on the street"

 

Well put. I won’t argue there. Thank you for your input on the matter. The plan originally was to go to my local shop, Feal Suspension and let them do their thing. I’m pretty sure that they can help me out. They have a pretty good line of coilovers that I’ve been eager too try.

 

Feal is just another cookie cutter Chinese multi position damper with "custom valving". I would choose Fortune Auto over them even though FA is basically the same thing.

However, I do highly suggest looking into Ohlins R/T's or a set of single adjustable non-reservoir AST's, Motons, or MCS's. You can contact Performance Shock Inc in Sonoma for all of those except MCS, IIRC..

https://performanceshock.com/index.p...f37807de07a9c7

 

Really? I have heard really good things about them. Their shop is just down the road, so it would have been nice. I’ll take a look at Ohlins and see what I find.

 

As with most car mods, people by one thing/brand and it works "fine" and since they don't k know that other stuff is available that is actually way better, that "fine" part gets rave reviews.

I've ridden in a lot of cars with "awesome" coilovers that fall into that 1000-2500 price range; nothing compares to the Ohlins for ride quality and performance. The only thing I haven't personally experienced around 2 amount are AST's or MCS.

A friend has Ohlins on his EvoX, and they ride better than his 2018 Infiniti Q60...

 

If you want to ride in a car with Feal 442 suspension let me know. FWIW - Feal changed up the 442s recently. They now use only a chinese body with all US internals and are way better then the last design. I am more then happy with mine on the street and track. Plus, I got 2 way adjustable for less then the price Ohlin 1 way (can probably get you a good deal too). For anyone to say Feal is garbage just means they have never used them before.

 

PSI, Performance Shock, is premier US suspension specialist. Their reputation is top with those that can afford, and need, their support.

"Hardly heard good things about them" is because they sell, service, and setup, professional grade suspension which is rather pricey. Their clients are accomplished racers and appreciating enthusiasts willing and able to afford high quality suspension.

Since 4 or so years ago Ohlins lowered price of their Road and Track, which were originally $3400+, to $2300 now, almost all other suspension setups PSI offers are much more expensive.

 

I am selling the Ohlins R/T suspension for Evo 8/9. It was recently completely rebuilt to "as new" condition by PSI. If you are interested go here https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/market/754944