Are all aftermarket suspension kits better than OEM?

[BuyPirelli]

Talking about regular springs, dampers and the likes; the way I see it, manufacturers spend millions of pounds in research and development to make their vehicles "handle" as best as possible. (Lets define handling as the balance of a car, the feedback it offers, and the mixture between comfort and grip).

 

With this in mind, how come boy george engineering ltd can come along and offer "uprated" dampers and springs? Are they actually better than standard, or is it all a bit of a scam?

 

I use to own a HSV R8 but sold it because I didn't like the handling, I was tempted to spend thousands on damprs, springs, bushes and anti roll bars, but I really didn't know how much of an improvement it would have made. Do these companies like Eibach, Pedders, Bilstein etc spend thousands of hours on test tracks and the likes, or is it all guess work?

 

Opinions and experiences welcome please

[phipck]

personal opinion, the manufacturers spend hours finding a suspension balance that is right for the image they want the car to portray. A family saloon with stiff suspension might give a different image of a car that then might effect sales figures.

 

but there is leeway, for instance take the ford focus, its ride height and spring and shock rates are different between the standard model and an st or rs model. So i believe that most cars have a technological scope to accept suspension that differs from the manufaturers prefered option.

 

with that oportunity in mind, suspension manufacturers will supply to the demand, what might not have felt right on your old hsv r8 might have been perfected in your personal preferences by altered suspension charactoristics, it might not be to Audi's prefered ideals but the R8 might happily take the different setup.

 

with such a demand for personalising cars more and more manufactures appear to try and get their share of the market and eventually you will have every tom d*** and harry trying their luck to get your money, I believe thats why WIM have a trusted manufacturer whos reputation speaks for itself.

[Tony]

It would take many pages to answer that question in full and even then it would be argumentative without valid evidence.

 

The aftermarket offers many products for many reasons so a wider question is why do you want to modify the chassis?

 

If you intention was to lower the sprung chassis then your market place would know the OEM coil rate, the damper stroke on bump and droop.

 

If you intention was to track the car, then the OEM build is going to need massive change. At this point it would be up to you and recommendation to find the correct mix of products, uneducated errors will happen so this is where others past experiences come into play.

 

Model specific forums are a great reading ground coupled with sound calibration advice.

[hms]

Yes they do lots of research, but then they build a car to a price so then have to compromise somewhere.

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[Tony]

Our GAZ/wim Mazda MK3 coilovers took a year testing in the field before we was happy. The donor cars get the suspension/ install/ geo free as donor cars. We can cad designs and dyno builds but in truth this does not reflect real world.

[BuyPirelli]

Very interesting. I guess my fear is that the handling would still remain compromised in someway, there are only a number occassions where I have been in a car with modified suspension and thought "this is good".

 

For what its worth, I'd be talking about improving the stock setup for the road, but that doesn't mean I simply want comfort. The R8 uses very sloppy dampers with moderate springs, infact the lowering kit for them only increases the spring rate by 10%.

 

The ARB's are incredibly thin too, 18mm iirc, uprated ones are 22/24mm I think.

[parthiban]

I think companies like Eibach do a fair amount of R&D before putting products out to market - I'd trust suspension from those types of businesses but wouldn't bother with some random stuff on ebay.

 

Yes to a certain extent manufacturers will build the best thing but as above they are often a compromise between handling, comfort and cost. Modern adaptive suspension (audi's magnetic ride is one example) is slowly eliminating this but it's still there in many cars, so if you want sharper handling and don't mind losing ride quality then aftermarket is the way to go.

 

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of "OEM performance parts" come from these companies - I'm not sure about every brand but taking the IS200 as an example, the lowering springs and coilover kits that were offered by Toyota's tuning division (TTE) were actually just rebadged Eibach parts. So there is a chance that there was development input from TTE as well as being good enough to have been given the TTE seal of approval.

 

That Evo review I posted suggested that the MP4-12C could outperform a Ferrari 458 yet had a ride more comfortable than an E-class Merc - it obviously comes at a cost but that's my kind of suspension