Well a few of you have heard me talking about how I'm going to be running a cheap coilover setup on my car. I finally got around to installing everything yesterday.
I purchased an eBay coilover kit for a 90-94 Eclipse. It's a universal kit, fits AWD or FWD DSM's. Probably fits a shitload of other cars as well. Since I have 1g AWD struts on my Mirage, I figured this would be the easiest kit to adapt.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/89-90-94 ... ccessories
$50 shipped for this kit, really can't beat that.
I knew the springs that came with this kit would be WAY too stiff for my needs. I wanted to the car to be somewhat comfortable on the street. So thanks to some input from other members on the forum I decided to go with some QA1 coilover springs from summit racing. The springs are 2.5" in diameter, 7" tall in the front and 10" tall in the rear. I chose 250# springs for the front and 200# in the rear.
Front: http://store.summitracing.com/partdetai ... toview=sku
Rear: http://store.summitracing.com/partdetai ... toview=sku
Total was just over $160 shipped for these.
Here are some pics of everything put together:
Front
Rear
The installation couldn't be simpler. The sleeves just slip over the struts and sit on the existing spring perches. My buddy who was helping me with the install didn't have his cutoff wheel, so we couldn't trim the perches down. We'll probably do that next weekend.
As far as the ride height--I probably should have gone with a 6" tall spring up front. I couldn't find a 6" spring in a soft enough spring rate, that's why I went with a 7". I figured the coilovers would give me enough adjustment, but they didn't. I've got it as low as it can go, and it's about an inch higher than it was before. The rear was perfect from the get-go, about 2-fingers between the tire and fender, but we had to raise it up a bit to match the front. In general, we need to take it all back apart and spend a bit more time adjusting everything, the heights aren't perfect from corner-to-corner. No big deal.
Ride quality is better than it was running cut springs up front, but it's still a bit bouncy for my tastes. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I'm only running KYB GR2's right now. With a stiffer strut, it will be less bouncy. All-around though the car feels much better on the road. It's much more nimble and quick on its toes. I'm really liking it so far.
Here's the car before with the cut springs up front:
Here's the car now:
Like I said, I think I can get the front to go a taaaad lower once we trim down the GR2 spring perches more, and then the car should sit a little more even. For a total investment of just over $200, you CANNOT go wrong with this setup. I do not see any reason in getting a $1,000 coilover setup when you can run something like this and get practically the same results. Sure, you don't get cool camber plates and stuff, but big deal, my camber is right where it needs to be with this setup and I see no need for adjusting it.
Let me know if you have any additional questions!