If your valving is good the ride should not be too harsh. I put 35K miles on my last EVO with the Ohlins on it . . . .

 

Who did your valving?

 

That set was a custom valving setup per Andy and John revalved by MSI, Motorsport Spares in Indy.

 

Good thread.

I guess I will share my anxiety over choosing my suspension setup to run this year. I thought LONG and hard on picking up John's 12k/16k Tein Super Racing coilovers, but I just didn't have the knowledge at the time to make the jump and buy them.

I've already invested in getting the power in my car on a 93 octane tune to 301whp with a leaking BOV. Going back up to bishops soon for a retune w/ the new BOV and some IC piping. I also will remap for 100 octane at the events utilizing the tactrix cable, etc. I need a lesson on this stuff bad..

now, I can't decide if I want to drive down to GTWorx and go for a KW setup, or beg zzyzx to make another production run of their EM Sports.

I tried messing with my toe/camber last year (running in A-Stock). I foudn that running 1/8 toe out total w/ 0 toe rear helped me rotate the car well, but I don't know if that setup was ideal or not..


Any input from Kekek or from anyone else on camber/toe?

 

For the Evo, camber is more important than toe. You need as much front camber as you can get. In BSP, -3.5 or more.

That being said, front toe out is always helpful to assist with quick turn in, and rear toe out is helpful with making the car loose. But too much rear toe-out will make it impossible to get through the slalom without hitting cones, so a balance must be found there.

I use anywhere from 1/16" to 4/16" toe out up front, and try to get the rear toe to somewhere around 1/16" toe out. But other people will tell you you should be at zero toe in the rear. That's part of the fun of racing: tuning the alignment to be optimal for your driving style.

 

cool. I look forward to messing around w/ my toe this year definitely. I am still clueless as to the coilover setup I'm going to run this year also..

what are you guys running for rotors/pads?

 

I would go with the ZZYZX setup over KWs any day. If you can't get a set for this year, I would "run what you brung" until you can get a set built. They're by far the best bang for the buck in Evo suspensions out there.

Schedule some dyno time for your 100 octane tune. You'll be running the car at 100%, you want your tune for that one to be spot on. When I do mine, I'm gonna try to shoot for a day where the temperature is around the average for Topeka in September.

Buy a set of these if you want to mess around with toe settings. It'll save you a ****load of money at the alignment shop.

As far as rotors, I'm running a set of slotted rotors from StopTech, but there are several National level competitors on the stock brake setup. The one thing I want to do is go with SS brake lines.

 

If for nothing else, the SS lines are easier to fit behind the strut after adding -3 degrees of camber or more.

 

The Zzyzx system is getting a lot of buzz and we have not even put them on yet. I should have my set on inside two weeks and will be happy to bring info back to the masses. I know Steve has said that he wants to have a few sets of EMs "on the shelf" at any given time to ship out to folks who want them. If I had to guess I would think he may be building a few extra sets now but with only 2 of the first twenty being for Evos I doubt an extra set or two would be for us.

If your interested drop him a line but it may take a day or two for him to reply as he is elbow deep in getting our the first sets.

 

That's because they're from a proven suspension shop and they put premium shocks under the car for a less than premium price. Prior to these, the only way to get that kind of suspension quality under an Evo would cost over $3k. At least the Subaru guys had Ground Control.

We want pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

 

While I'm thinking about it, I'll go ahead and post this here.

Since the the coilovers were delayed, I had time to tackle a few other projects on the car. This week I made my own adjustable swaybar endlinks. I just measured the stock ones and ordered parts from mcmaster-carr (heim joints, aluminum rods, corrosion-proof bolts). Parts for all four ran ~$100.

I'll install them and post pictures when the zzyzx parts arrive. They look basically the same as the perrin and are rediculously overkill for the loads they see.

d

 

I think i'll stick with 14k/12k Megan Track coilovers until I can get my heads on those EM sports.

Kekek, you mentioned having 14k coilovers in the front and you hated it. What characteristics of the 14k front did you not like? I'm not sure what to look for here.

 

I bet understeer...

 

Me too. It seems to take a 3-to-4 spring rate ratio, (front-to-rear) to get the Evo loose enough for autocross. And at the stiffness levels required to reduce roll, the rear sway bar doesn't have much to do with it. You're just going to lift your inside rear wheel off the ground with that 25mm bar. (Mine does that at the softest setting.)

 

Honestly though, I know people running that stiff who are happy with their spring choice and their cars are fast. It really comes down to personal preference and what works for each individual setup. This is why some people have absolutely no problem disclosing information, take Mark Daddio as a big example of that. He'll tell you almost anything you ask, but unless you can make your system (driver+car) work well it doesn't matter.

John