slutz4

Im just thinking about purchasing a set of tein coilovers and was wondering what opinions are about them, I plan on using them on my weekend car, that I will drift and autocross several times a year, but mainly just for fun. What would be the best to get the basics, ss, or flex, would I regret not getting one of the higher end tein products.?

Dicker

flex.

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clshrckr

get the flex
i wish i got flex

acejoker

Flex drops lower if you're planning on slamming it.

Pillow mount and damping adjustments with an EDFC option on the Flex makes life easier.

Tein's wrenchs also has a 1/2 inch drive to connect your breaker bar to save you sweat when you want to do adjustments =D>

For a peace of mind; every branch of Tein Inc. has received iso9001 certificate of quality. I use to work for them, very knowledgable staff and one of the few companies who actually have their sh!t together.

Shop around and ask if you can ride in other car's with diff setups. Seems like people either love or hate Tein.

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CrimsonMX5

flex


i wish i bought flex.

violation

other than what's been stated above... why?

(i'm also looking at the tein ss for around christmas time)

Dicker

crimson has SS and he bottoms out alot..

i've got stance and wish i had gone flex because i cant get low enough.

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clshrckr

yea thats the same reason i wish i went flex in the first place so i dont have to wait for parts

im sure with the new stance top hats (whenever we get em ) we can lower more
how much more im not sure

frictionfighter

flex is your best option with tein. its a fully adjustable coilover.

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slutz4

sounds like Im gonna have to start saving lol

Caldera

I'm going to go against the grain here and say no Flex.

I have HAs. (They were replaced with SS as i understand). My friend Mike has Flex.

...we both hate his Flex. I mean sure... the car can get lower, and on paper the 2 areas of adjustability are superior, but realistically, day to day mine rides better, stays out of the bumpstops more, is more controllable, and easier to drive, back to back.

I hate his car when I drive it, and want mine back. He drives mine, and wants his car back... with my HAs.

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-Matt
'05 Elise, '99 Neon. No more Miata... for now.

grippgoat

I am said friend (new member, Matt linked me here).

He hates my Flex more than I do. But I think I hate his depowered steering more than he hates my Flex. I *would* rather have HA's than flex, I think, though. It's also worth nothing, though, that my car has poly bushings that his doesn't. I'm not sure what his rates are (neither is he). He may be softer.

Anyway, I've also got Tein Flex on my STI, so I have some experience with their shortcomings.

The first issue is with the adjustable shock length (height separate from preload). Many people misunderstand this feature. Most people think it allows you to lower your car without losing travel. I used to be one of those people. It is true that it allows you to get your car very low and still have shock travel. The flip-side of that coin is that it forces you to have only as much shock travel as there is room for in a car that's extremely lowered. You do not have the option of raising the car to get travel back. It also means that you can't really run softer spring rates in order to improve your ride quality. That said, things are not completely hopeless.

The second problem is that the settings in the instructions that come with the coilovers are complete crap. With the STI, the front was deep into the bumpstops with out-of-box settings. On the miata, the rear was. On the STI, I cut over an inch off of my bumpstops, running only a total of 1/2", in order to keep the car off the bumpstops during normal driving and cornering. I'm on my 3rd setup on the STI (out of box, softer springs with some preload and cut bumpstops, regular springs with further cut bumpstops and only a little preload in front). It still has issues with picking up the rear tires, so I need to play around with tender springs back there. But it's way, way better now than it was with the out of box settings, and overall I'm pretty happy with it.

My current setup on the miata is 9kg front, 6kg rear (out-of-box is 7f/6r), which was Adrenaline Racing's recommended package. I'm almost positive that he recommends this spring package because the out-of-box settings have the car sitting on the bumpstops at static ride height, which of course dramatically increases the spring rate back there. Right now, I have a little preload in the front (don't remember how much), and over 1" of preload in the rear, and I'd be running more if the adjuster hadn't run out of room. All this preload helps keep it from hitting the bumpstop as much, but on the flipside it makes it very easy to unweight the rear, and it unweights very abrubptly. However, I still have yet to cut the bumpstops. The bumpstops are very long, and I'm going to cut about an inch off of them, which will yield 1.5-2" more wheel travel, which should help things immensely, possibly even giving me the option of going back to the 7/6 rates to improve overall ride quality.

The third problem is damping, where ride quality is concerned. There's just something that seems not quite right about them. They certainly don't have adequate damping to control body motion (general ride, putting handling to the side) when the bumpstops come into the picture, which is why it's extremely important to get them off the bumpstops. But even then, they still seem like maybe they're just a little slow to respond, giving you the "Tein Bounce (TM)" as I call it. I don't understand damping well enough to say exactly what the issue is, but I suspect it could be the nature of twin tube struts, which react slower than monotube. So while they look good on a shock dyno plot, it takes more movement to get them to build up the damping force. I'd love to try some JICs (but I think they'd be harsher on the street, and harder to keep off the bumpstops).

So while I have reservations about recommending the Flex, I don't think all is hopeless. But I think if I were doing it again, I *might* go for FM (or M2) tops with Koni shocks, some kind of spring that's not too stiff and doesn't lower too much (probably Ground Control coil-over adapters). Also, there's a vendor at Miata.net that offers some kind of smaller, progressive bumpstop for the Konis that seems like a really good move. The problem is, that alternative just ends up costing as much as Tein Flex, and you can't EDFC with it, and I didn't like the Koni's /that/ much when I had 'em on my NSX. I would also like to try the SS, because I think they will have more travel for a car at sane street-driven ride heights.

EDFC *is* the hotness. Being able to go "oooh, here's my favorite offramp *click*" and get racetrack settings, and click again for your street settings is awesome. And there's three presets, so you can have the third for "ugh, friggin' speedbumps". You can get EDFC for the SS, though (but you might have to pay a bit more for different tops).

And don't ask Eddie at Adrenaline Racing for setup advice. He'll tell you some settings for a nationally competetive CSP autocross car that are completely irrelevant to you. It'll just make you want to bang your head against your desk. DO buy from adrenaline racing if you're going to get the Teins, though, as his prices, customer service, and the support he gives the miata community are great.

-Mike

STS2

I disagree on the point being made that Eddie at AR is bad to ask for advice on setup. He's been of great help to me on clearing the air on how my HA's work, and how to adjust them for both street and autox, plus he's super quick on emails!

Just state to him what you want, and he'll offer his opinion, and it's not for setting up just a CSP car.

Now on the Flex, I'd say grab them! I kind of regret my HA purchase, but I got them cheap, so that makes me feel OK. Flex will allow more adjustability. Sometimes that's good, as it can fine tune much more than my HA's, but sometimes bad as it takes time to learn on how all of this suspension stuff works.

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grippgoat

What kind of problems did you have, though? What kind of questions did you ask? You have HA's, which pretty much leaves it up to ride height and damping adjustments. Based on my experience with Matt's HA's, they're not hard to get working well. The Flex are an ENTIRELY different situation. When I started bringing up issues with ride behavior travel, etc, all Eddie could say was "I dunno man, nobody else is complaining". I got very similar responses on miata.net, but I clearly had problems, and when people actually did some critical thinking about the dimensions involved, they realized it, too. Anyone who isn't having problems with their Flex either isn't running them with out-of-box settings, or doesn't know better.

Eddie does not own a miata right now, doesn't frequently drive them for extended periods (maybe a drive around the block here, or a track session there), and simply isn't picky and detail-oriented enough to really give anything useful, other than handling-oriented setup info from his customers who are hard-core autocrossers and consult with him about setups a lot. He can help you make tweaks to adjust balance for motorsports, but getting the car working well across the board requires a lot of day-to-day experience. The setup on my car is WAY better, both ride and handling, than what he told me to set it up to when I bought them, and he still admitted after actually driving my car (when he had it to do a motor swap) that the car wasn't working very well.

I'm not trying to simply bash on him here, he's actually a personal friend of mine, I'm just trying to be realistic and make people understand that the Flex is not all that and a bag of chips, and takes serious trial and error to get set up properly. I highly recommend him as a vendor, because he's extremely responsive and does everything he can to take care of his customers.

I really want to know, in very detailed and plain words, what you think you're missing by having HAs instead of Flex, because I'm willing to bet you're probably much better off with the HAs.

Here is a thread on miata.net where we work through some of the issues. My first post is #95, and was a little off-target at first (and hadn't gotten the Flex working acceptably on my STI yet). http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread...9&page=4&pp=25 There's plenty of info on there on how to get your shock length set such that you have the proportion of droop and bump travel you want. But in my experience, it's not possible to get it good without cutting the bumpstops. I'll hopefully get around to doing that in the next month or so, but I've got a lot going on with the holidays. :/

-Mike

Road Cone

I obtained a set of Flex with EDFC in trade from a friend who hated them.
Installed them on my '99 and I hated them.

Installed HA's w/EDFC on my '99 ...and now the same set is on my '90.
Love 'em.
Also installed a set of them on my SO's '92 and she loves them.
The only downside is it really needs sway bars due to the lower spring rates.
The HA's used lower rates than the SS.
IIRC 5kg and 4kg instead of 7kg and 6kg.

I also installed a new SS kit on my car but ended up liking the HA's better due to the lower spring rates.
When a set of mint HA's came up with the EDFC I jumped on it.

The Flex IMHO is too hard for a daily driver.
Sure if you're into a lot of racing, or if your roads are perfect I'd suggest the Flex but for real world use go with the SS or the HA.

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Caldera

...you got EDFC to work with HA? how? Tein says they're incompatible!

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'05 Elise, '99 Neon. No more Miata... for now.

Miatamoto

How is the flex too hard for daily driving. The spring rates on the Flex are the same as the SS (7kg F/6kg R). I'm running a Flex kit with 9kg F and 6kg R and with the damping turned down it's very comfortable.

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Caldera

Comfortable, sure... but controlled?

When I drove Mike's at 9/9 a few weeks ago, I found it good for most of my drive... but any time I came up on train tracks, concrete disturbances, etc the car couldn't control it's motion.

...but it had that exact problem with the damping turned up, too.

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'05 Elise, '99 Neon. No more Miata... for now.

grippgoat

Did you ever mess with preload or cut the bumpstops?

-Mike

Miatamoto

With the 9/6 spring rates it feels very controlled at both soft and stiff damper settings. One of the autocross sites that we use near Dallas is very rough and even with the damping cranked up, the suspension is very controlled. Even over big bumps.

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Dicker

5/4 is super soft...

i have 8/6 and i want to go to 9/7

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grippgoat

I thought we figured out that there's top-hats you can get that make them work. That said, the EDFC screws onto the shock, not the top-hat... We'll take a look at your car next week if you bring it up, and figure it out. I don't see how there could not be enough room for the motors.

Mine's 9/6, not 9/9.

-Mike

Road Cone

It's no big deal.
The HA's work perfectly with the EDFC.
I believe the issue is that the spare tire has to be ditched.

BTW if anyone is thinking of buying Tein's be sure to buy the EDFC.
Being able to change shock stiffness on the fly is the best part of the entire system.

I did not not mess around with the Flex in regards to preload or cutting bumpstops(why?) when I had them, I installed it and kept it just as Tein suggested and did not like it, just my 2¢.
I thought it would be the best since it was expensive but this was not the outcome in my case.
Different scenes for different folks.
Maybe the roads just suck up here in the North.

[/table]

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Caldera

I thought we determined it was an issue of whether the top of the shock could accept it? No matter, Eddie's leaving the Miata out for me this weekend; I'll collect it from his shop and drive it up.

And sorry for the confusion, when I said 9/9, I should have said 9-9, i was referring to settings, not springrate.

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-Matt
'05 Elise, '99 Neon. No more Miata... for now.

Agent935

Pardon while I side track the thread a bit:

How do the SS compare to the Basics? What are the differences? they come with the same spring ratesis it just adjustability that is the difference? better damping curve?

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Agent935

Anyone? Beuler? Beuler?

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Caldera

Wish I knew. Basics have no valving adjustability, but beyond that, i have no idea where on the adjuatability curve of the SS' they live.

Eddie had basics on teh Civic of Doom for a long long while, and I liked them at their default settings, they were very streetable and still got the job done on track, but I wish I had solid info for ya.

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-Matt
'05 Elise, '99 Neon. No more Miata... for now.

Agent935

Has he sold that civic yet? What's he running on it now? I remember he said the springs on it were ongodly powerful.

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ExHondaMan

Save up and get the FLEX.

I guess everyone's definition of what constitute "rides better" is different. My friend with a Koni race/Hypercoil set-up rides like a cement truck, but dayam can it corner. Another friend with the KYB/GC combo rides pretty smooth, but gets very unsettled mid-corner. They are both very happy with their set-ups. My FLEX at 9k/6k rides near stock 7clicks from full soft and lots of fun in the canyons. Very predictable and mid-corner dampening and rebounding is pretty darn good (for being one-way adjustables). There's this one corner with bumps right at the apex that I go WOT at 70mph. In my friend's miata with the (KYB/GC), the suspension would get unsettled and floaty and I was only able to go at 60mph. My friend with the Koni-Race/Hypercoil set-up can hang with me but as he says it, "It scares me shitless" because his car would lose traction and skid. Of course, when the road is smoother, he leaves me behind, but not very often

From a price-point, $1275, they are a good compromise between track and street. KYB/GC combo's can be had for as little as $600. Koni Race (250 EACH), with top hats, sleeves, bumpstops, and Hypercoil springs add up to over $1200 without the adjustability, but are da shit for all-out track performance.

Are the FLEXs the end-all best coilovers in the world? Hardly. But are the best compromise between aggressive street/track and everyday living? They are to me.

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