nope i never had one neither tried one. I cant say anything about them. Not even my close friends tried ot or used it.
So i am clueless here.

 

I'll throw my $0.02 in on RS&SP since that's what I was going to buy for my car until I got presented with a screaming deal on my Ohlins. IMO, they're every bit as good as the Ohlins, and the reason for the huge price difference (at least back in 2007ish) was simply because of exchange rates.

The big issue I see with RS&SP is that I'm only aware of one importer for them, and I haven't heard anything good about that shop in the last couple of years. Orders taking way to long to come in, turnaround time on parts/service not all that great. Had two firends with them on thier Open Class GC8 imprezas.

IMO, a big component of your decision for proper rally stuff is whether or not you can get them serviced quickly and in the US. I'd pretty much put Ohlins, Reiger, Proflex, RS&SP all in the range of "much better than what the privateer in the US needs" category. Do we love 'em...sure do, but do we really need them...probably not. For the average privateer, consider that the bilstein type setups were commonly used on Group-A cars in the late 80s & early 90s. If it was good enough for the WRC back then, its probably good enough for all but a few of us now. A big part of the "need vs. want" agrument of comes from the fact that there's really only 3-4 teams in the US that go racing for their "job" while the rest of us are just out there to have a great time. Sure the fancy bits are cool...but if you spend $3k on suspension instead of $10k on suspension, how many more races could you go out and attend that year?

Dave

 

Thanks guys...I STILL WANT though. haha. I'm deciding between the RS&SP vs Bilstein. Hot bits gravel rally setup are the same price as the Bilsteins I was looking at but I'm wary of them.

Dave K you have a pm.

 

I do not think the suspension you use has to do anything with being privateer or not.
I have to disagree there. Its like why we have and additional upgrade on the car vs the completely stock with a necessarily safety upgrade? We could finish a rally with that car also. It is proven many times.
The good suspension is more important then any other thing in rally in my opinion.
There is an indescribable difference until you experienced it. Specially if its dialed in a right way.

Not to mention to have a great time is always better on "smoother more talking " roads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZeCu...eature=related


There is also an interesting fact. Just because one brand of suspension works great on one type of car, that doesnt necessarily means it will work a same way some other cars.
So as long as we talking about the Mitsubishi Evolution , i would stick with suspension are proven working a best in our car. And for that is the best source is indeed Europe.

I always get my ideas and infos from my Hungarian friends. WHy? because usually with our rally over 20 Evo runs, and not all the time the same 20... Also every month at least we have one rally somewhere in Hungary. so it is a huge experience and testing going on over there.

This is my home town rally last month entry list, just look it up....
if i did a good count should be over 30 Evo entry...

http://www.mikulasrallye.hu/entries

 

Rob - I don't think that anyone here (or anywhere around the world) would dissagree with you that proper rally suspension is worth every penny. I fully agree.

Here's the all important "but" though:

Rallying in the US is not popular. There are very few that rally to make a living, so at the end of the day, we are racing for fun. That's a major difference from racing to make a living, because once the costs creep up too much, someone doing this for fun will cut back and say whoa, this is getting out of hand.

Here in Denver I've seen 10+ guys get into the sport and get caught up in having the latest bells and whistles (myself included). Want to know what happens to most of those people? They lose interest as they perceive that they "need" to spend all this money and they eventually quit, selling their cars for 30-40 cents on the dollar.

To be fair, a lot of the people hearing about rallying now are subaru or KB fanbois who "have to" rally an AWD car and nothing else will do. These are the guys that will spend a ton of cash on a build, only to realize they forgot to leave money to actually go out and race.

Until the sponsors come (which you need a fan base, TV, etc.) what everyone in rally should be pushing for is sustainable rally so we can get car counts back up to where they were a decade ago. That means picking more reasonable platforms to race from a cost perspective and putting parts on the car that are good enough to survivie life on a rally car. Sure, some guys with the budget will always go for the best stuff, but for most of us, that's not sustainable for the long term. I also think it should mean more privateers ditching the uber expensive AWD turbo classes and at least run a few seasons in a 2wd car. If nothing else, wrecking a golf is much less painful that crashing an Evo.

Dave

 

Dave I absolutelly see your point of view.
The reason probably differ on the subject, since I tried "other" then proper suspension before in my X. And on tarmac you can get a way witha lesser set ups , just fine as you mentioned. Will bw a same as a real set up? No, but we both agree on that. Its like having a replica ferrari. From a distance looks and seems a same.

My big issue is when you actually going off road. My case was literally a struggle. I was seriously considering and getting ready to switch back to stock, just before my engine ecu went into unrecovarable limp mode on stage. So we had to quit the rally and we had no help through the nite so basically we had that rally DNF. what a waste of thousands thousands of dolar... And so on.

It was a real horrible experience, including a stage rally with a lesser set up.

Two things really makes the evo very hard on set ups which probabay oke in other carsn but they are failing to bring a same results with the Evo.
Number 1 is the weight and the distribution.
Number two is the power what the evo have even with restrictor (32 or 34)
With the evo you are really testing and feeling the difference between suspensions.

So the reason I put up my opinion hard othere in this case, I do not want anybody ( even those who don't like me) go through the same I had to. And getting coilovers 3 times in short 2 years with a very few events...
Because you can ending up paying eventually for a still lesser set up as you would if you buy a right one in the first place.
The evo is not the car which really accepts short cuts, and we all know the reasons.

We have to accept the fact , if you want to race with an Evo and look like a big shot, you have to reach deep in your pocket. And there is no way around, unless you are willing to struggle and accept the lesser results and fun etc.

This is my experience and I had to put it out there for fellow future rally buddies.
Also keep in mind this comming from me before. 7am traveling on bus and hungry + my BB...

Rob

 

Guys I went ahead and got the RS&SP top of the line gravel set. The deal was too good to pass up. I'll start a new thread about them once they arrive. I figured spend the money once rather than several sets like rob mentioned.

 

gooood decision!!!