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To Those Who Have/Used To Have KSport Coilovers On The Contour

R

rexxdoggy

Hard-core CEG'er
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Jul 14, 2007
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Location
Crestview, Florida
Okay, I talked with CSVT#49 about his experience with them. He told me the following.

"The front struts are not coilovers. All they allow you to do is expanded or compress the coil springs to obtain the ride height you want. What's the problem with that you ask?... simple, you compress the coil spring so much to get the correct ride height in the front and the spring is no longer a spring. It just becomes a spacer as at this point the springs are compressed so much that the coils in the spring touch each other. As you drive down the road the coils in the spring are grinding into each other (even if you don't have it compressed all the way). Not sure if you went to SZ last year, but the other memeber that had the Ksports was bragging about how the stance of his car looked... that was until I pointed out to him that his coil springs were compressed so much that he was grinding the springs, at which point he said oh... so that's what that noise is. This is the main reason why I sold my Ksport kit and went to the BAT kit."

I'm looking for a few things. One being pictures of the fronts to those who have them installed right now, and two, to those who have them and who used to have them, did you have this same experience as CSVT#49?
 
Who else had Ksports at SZ besides me? If he is talking about me, he didnt say anything to me about noise or grinding or anything.
I think they are alright but the ride is real rough IMO for a DD, so I dont DD the car, I think this year I put maybe 1k on it.
 
Do you have the problem that the spring has been compressed so much that the coils touch each other on the car? I'm not exactly worried about how harsh the ride is. I've ridden in many cars with stiff coilovers and they didn't seem bad to me.
 
I dont think I have had the problems of the coils touching. I got the RR kit, I dunno if that makes a difference or not from the standard one.
 
starjammir said:
Who else had Ksports at SZ besides me? If he is talking about me, he didnt say anything to me about noise or grinding or anything.
I think they are alright but the ride is real rough IMO for a DD, so I dont DD the car, I think this year I put maybe 1k on it.
Click to expand...

It wasn't you... it was the car that had the checkered decals on the front half of the car.

You can do a little searching to find out a great deal of information... here are the two threads I started.

suspension selection questions

Ksport purchase and install
 
First, I want to correct the comment about them not being coilovers. Heck, even the stock suspension is technically coilover. All coilover means is that the spring is a coil that fits over the shock/strut. That's all.

Now that the semantics are out of the way, lol, the matter of coilbind, which can be pretty serious, is easily fixable when using a standard spring size, like the Ksports do. You can simply get a different spring of the same (or even different) rate that uses less coils, or you can get a spring with a shorter free length.

You guys have to remember, once you get to this level of suspension changes, you NEED to do your own homework, because most of the aftermarket companies don't do it properly. YOU need to figure out what spring rates you should be running, and what preload they should have, and what shock curves you need (and Goumba has provided evidence in the past that Ksport's QC is terrible in regard to dyno curves) and what you are doing about suspension geometry, either fix it right, or run some ridiculously stiff springs to limit the movement and minimize the negative affects of crappy camber curves.
 
Well, damn. This makes me want to rethink going with the Ksports. I might end up going with some BAT struts and some springs. I really wanted the Ksports, too
 
What are you doing with the car that you need this level of suspension adjust-ability?

Folks buy coilovers and think "Man, I'm going to mess with the ride height, spring preloads, corner weighting, blah, blah, blah." I got to tell you, it's really hard work to set up a chassis when you have this level of adjust-ability. Hell, just having bump and rebound adjustments on my SVO Mustang track car about doubled the amount of suspension setup time. Now I have to think about "Is this track smooth or bumpy in the corners? Do I want more bump damping and less rebound...? What spring rates do I have in the car, did I even bring the right springs for this track?"

I'm not trying to bust your chops, but most people who install coilovers don't have access to the suspension setup tools and knowledge to make the chassis work to it's full potential. They install some expensive bright-colored blingy parts, slam the car down to the pavement, and then they drive it that way, handling good or bad, for years.

Give some thought about what you're doing with the car, and if it's a nice DD, perhaps coilovers aren't the right choice. I'm just sayin... :laugh:

Rara speaks the truth about poorly engineered coilover kits. I spent over a year of engineering time and several thousand dollars developing coilovers for my Taurus SHO track car. They're still not perfect, but they're head-and-shoulders above anything else that others have come up with for that car. You have to consider spring rates, spring free length, spring travel, available suspension travel, suspension motion ratio, is there enough damping for the spring rates I want to run? And that's just the beginning. After that there's strength of materials, yields, changing suspension load paths from what the OEM intended, how do I keep these pretty parts from corroding all to Hell and becoming unadjustable?

Here's the rears for my SHO.
New_rear_strut_assys.jpg
 
Crap! You engineered your own set?! Nice. And now that I think about it, I think I've just been ignorant about what I want in the car. Yes, it is a DD. What I've been looking for was looks, and never really considered all this talk about geometry of suspension and all.

All in all, I'm looking for something that one, obviously handles much better, and two, a really nice drop. I not TOO into a handling beast, as I really want it to look good. Something like blu fuz's stance in his SE.

I guess I've been stuck in my friends' world of imports and being slammed and tucked. Although, I REALLY like the look of that, I can see where the whole messing with the geometry thing comes into play.
 
FWIW, ive done the measurements and dropping the contour any more than about 1.5" starts to really screw with the suspension geometry in extremely bad ways.
 
i will second this. ive got D2's and im basically 1/4" lower than stock and it handles like a dream. i had it lowered 2" and had problems rubbing on the fender and inner fender liner, AND it didnt handle as well as it does now
 
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