Tein Coilovers

[Renegade_]

I am looking at picking up some Tein coilovers, a guy is selling em for a damn good price and I think I might jump on it... Let's say under half what they go for new.

Currently the ones I am looking to grab are Tein Type HAs and they have 15,000 miles on them. What I want to know is about how long are the rebuild intervals on Tein coilovers and how much does it cost to rebuild them? I've searched and no one has said something like "It costs $XXX dollars to rebuild all 4 corners...".

Anyone know?

*edit*

The rates on these are 392lbs/in. front and 336lbs/in. for rear... What is that in metric... I just like those numbers a bit better and don't know how to convert it exactly. Actually I do, I just don't feel like doing all that math right now if someone would just know a web page which says it...

[Signatus230]

I say go for it, providing that everything works out. Your suspension has been dead for a while now.

Edit: If you do get them, just bring the car over and we can do it in my driveway or the garage if the car is out by then.

[Renegade_]

In all honesty, my motor is healthy as hell as soon as timing belt, water pump, and tensioner is done. Coilovers are going on for sure, the price is damn good for em too....

[TROLL]

HA's are more of a track coilover and i think their rebuild intervals are shorter than SS, Flex, and Basics. 280 lbs is a 5kg spring and 560 lbs is a 10kg spring.
I honestly dont know if they'd be good for what you want, but maybe you'll know better than I will. I've purchased a few sets of Flexes in the 700-900 dollar range so they are out there and something like an SS or Flex is probably a better 'street' coilover.

[NOPSTNS]

392 lbs is 7 kg
336 pounds is 6 kg

roughly....its more like 7.0121312421 and 6.000021323414 for an exact, if u care.....but yeah 7 and 6, which is uber soft.....imo at least


to go from pounds to kb just divide the number by 55.8 or to go from kg to pounds multiply by 55.8......very simple.....

i havetype flex and they are 9 front and 7 rear which is around 509 front and 390 rear. still too soft even for my car that weighs exactly 3000lbs.....if u got a sube...im sure it weighs somethin like 8,000 lbs........ ur numbers are way softer than that so i dunno what kind the HA is....what do u want to do? do u want to have an extreme all out circuit car? or is it goin rally, sideways in the dirt at 90 mph then goin off a 5 foot drop? or is it a street car that will see NO track use and u just want it lower?

393 and 336 arent crazy stiff so it must not be a full on race coilover. i have the flex and 509 and 390 are like, not stiff at all, so those 300s are gonna bore u if u want a racecar....

as for rebuilds, i got 25,000 miles on my type flex and am not at that point yet, when they need work done u can opt to send them to tein and they can custom instal any spring rate u want...which is what ill be doing.....anything in kg in the single digits is for bitches!!!!!

glad to see ur gettin a deal tho, my flex were brand new and with edfc it came to just a hair under $2,000 good luck and have fun!

[TROLL]

oh and as far as rebuild prices go you acn actually find that on teins site... tehy have it listed. i think the HAs are more expensive because of the design of the strut, but i know flexes are $100/corner.
also look into whether you can have them rebuilt in the US or whether they need to be sent to Japan... difference is 2 weeks turnaround or 2-3 months turnaround.
and i got your PM... i think they sound good and think you should give them a shot...

[Renegade_]

my cars current weight is somewhere in the range of 2700 lbs. If I were to take the interior out I would be somewhere in the range of mid-low 2600. With driver and no interior count the car to be somewhere around like 2800. I am pretty sure that if I were to get these, full stiffness on them would be more than enough coming from blown suspension.

I do not want a race car, I want a car that I can autox with and replace factory suspension @ 118k. I just want a car that can handle well.

[Wiisass]

HA's aren't a race damper. They'll probably be fine for a street car as long as you don't whine too much or can't deal with the JDM too stiffly valved in compression ride quality.

And you can't compare spring weights and car weights without taking other things into consideration. Suspension geometry will change how stiff the springs actually feel. So saying one car has x rate spring and weighs y pounds doesn't really mean anything without more information.

As for rebuilds, I don't know. You can call tein and find out how much it costs and turn around time. You should probably factor that into the amount your saving by picking these up used and compare to other offerings on the market just to keep things in perspective. As for how long they'll last, that's hard to say. They're sold to be used on the street so they should last a little while. But depending on driving conditions and a million other variables, they could have problems anywhere from 100mi to 10k miles.

[Signatus230]

Originally Posted by Wiisass

And you can't compare spring weights and car weights without taking other things into consideration. Suspension geometry will change how stiff the springs actually feel. So saying one car has x rate spring and weighs y pounds doesn't really mean anything without more information.

So for instance, the spring rate, would change with upgraded sway bars, control arms, etc?

[Wiisass]

I'm not even considering that. To just analyze the spring and the ride of the car, you need to look at the geometry. There is a installation ratio which is how much the spring moves versus how much the wheels moves. For most cars it is below 1. So the spring will move less than the wheel. And what you are actually interested in when talking about spring rates is the wheel rate which is the amount of force it takes to move the wheel one unit. So pounds force per inch or newton per meter. (BTW, that kg/mm spring rate stuff is not the correct way to represent stiffness. Stiffness is a force over a distance and kilograms are not a force they are a mass.) Anyway, back on topic, the spring rate is modified by the installation ratio squared to determine the wheel rate.

For example, you could have one car with a 1000lb/in spring in the front and another with a 500lb/in spring in the front and they can both take the same amount of force to move the wheel one inch due to different suspension geometry.

Another thing that needs to be taken into consideration is the weight of the vehicle in relation to the wheel rate. And how to actually define "stiff". How does stiff actually feel and where is it coming from. When most people talk about a stiff suspension it is usually due mainly to compression damping. I mean, you could valve a stock damper to have a higher compression damping coefficient and even with stock springs the ride will feel rough and stiff. But also as you increase spring rate, the ride can feel stiffer. Stiff really depends on how fast the load is transferred from the road to the driver. So stiffer anything transmits load faster than soft stuff, so as you stiffen up the damper and the spring the load will get transmitted faster. But depending on the valving, you can also in a way cancel out the load that will upset the tire and the driver and soften up the damping. A simple way would be with a digressive damping curve. The more complicated way is with something similar to Koni's FSD.

Anyway, we're getting a little off topic.

So keep in mind that stiffness is relative to both spring rate (both suspension spring and tire spring play into this), suspension geometry, and weight. And of course, everything else factors in as well, it doesn't come down to just one thing.

[Renegade_]

Anything is better than what I am riding on right now. I do not know exactly what I am looking for in a suspension setup mainly because I have not driven a car daily which had coilovers. I have driven cars with coilovers so I know what to expect but I can't tell you exactly what the rates are.

Basically what I am looking for with this mod is to replace the worn stuff in the car and to get better handling. Yeah, these might not be the most hardcore out there but that is not what I am looking for, I don't want some crazy track suspension at 18k/14k that will jarr my teeth out at every single crease in the road.

What I hope to get from buying these is to learn more about how the car responds to suspension work. By the time these need a rebuild I should be able to concretely know what exactly I am looking for in suspension. The Tein website says that during rebuilds they can make rates to spec on these models if I give it to them so I could easily opt for a 14/12 or something in that range if I wanted. I don't know if I want that though.

If these are ~7k/6k like you guys mentioned I really think that it is a nice starting point for me as it isn't high end but will give significant better performance than most strut/springs setups that I know of. I have no problem with a lot of harshness.

And since basically the sale is finalized, the price on them was 650 shipped. No rust, no leaking, nothing. They looked really clean in the pictures. Hypothetically if they were to go out on me I still have more than enough money to send em out right away to get rebuilt so that is not a concern with me right now.