spoolin2bars

iTrader: (1)

well i just finished my season running in NASA Tx. region time trial b class, and feel i can now talk about my coilover choice.

i started the search last winter. i had good luck with my kyb/qa1/nb tophat setup. but i was at the limit of the shock valving and spring rates with 205 ra1's, and nt-01's that i had been running. for 2010, 225/45 nt-01's on 15x9 were in the game plan and i needed something better, but still wanted adjustability. i had run some wet track days and different track surfaces where being able to adjust the shocks made a huge difference.
even though i couldn't find any reviews or info from miata owners with D2's, i did find plenty of positive reviews on forums for cars like G35/350z, honda/acura's, etc.. 1 of them on nsxprime forum, was actually over a year and a half of daily driving. even though he didn't track his car, i decided to take a risk on them.

i originally ordered them with 12k/8k rates. i tried them at a track that i hadn't been on in a while. even though i dropped 5sec. off my previously fastest lap, and it was awesome in the smooth corners, there were some dips and bumps on the straights that although the tires were staying planted,were trying to launch me through the hardtop! later i found out that track had settled creating some crazy dips and bumps that were affecting everybody. nevertheless, i decided to go down to 9k/6k before the first event of the season.

the 1st event was held at motorsport ranch houston. and the difference was awesome. the car felt planted at all times, and after a couple adjustments i had the frt./rear balance i wanted. i could give it as much gas as i wanted coming out of corners and had complete and easy control of the tail with throttle. it had been a few years since my last visit there, and i dropped 10seconds off my porevious best lap! now to be fair, some of that can be accounted for by my lsd and slightly better tires, but even being generous and attributing 5sec. to them, that still makes for a big improvement over shocks/coilover sleeves. one notable deal was during braking coming into turn1, i setup a little too far to the right and hit the start of the curbing. (the squared off part) even though my car is pretty low (11.75" hub to fender) and i was at maximum braking dive, the shock didn't bottom out, and the curb didn't upset the car or my line. i guess it was due to the fact that the shocks are independantly adjustable for height and preload. regardless of the fact that they worked great for me, i didn't wanna talk them up after the first track weekend and 1 separate track day only to have them break a few months later, so the jury was still out.

well, it's now been a whole racing season, several trackdays and alot of street miles, and i'm happy to report that i'm very pleased with their performance, especially considering the $$$ spent. i honestly won't be upgrading them for anything short of an AST or preferably a 949 racing set of XIDA S's. i don't think i'd be gaining much with anything else short of the XIDA's. i'm not saying these D2's are the best thing since the wheel, only that considering bang for the buck, i'm satisfied with my purchase.

lastly, please don't flame this thread. i'm just trying to provide some info on a viable option for those looking to track their cars, and want something better than the usual shock/spring, but less expensive than the tried and true tein's @ $1500.00 +, i'm not going to get into an argument about this shock or that, but if you have a legitimate question, i'll try to answer it. also, i'm not some 17yr. old jdm fan boy, and while not a pro driver by any means, i do have some experience including: auto-x since 2002 with a regional class championship in 2007. 50+ track days since 2006. Porsche Club of America nationally certified instructor 2008. cheif instructor for coastal bend PCA 2007-2008, finished 4th in a redline time attack event @ VIR, (lost to 3- $100k unlimited class cars that dropped down and ran modified also ) and finished 2nd in the 2010 NASA Tx. region TTB class. i also have many open trackday's, a few rally-x, drift events under my belt, and have tracked awd, fwd, and rwd (most fun) cars.

TheMcCoy14

iTrader: (1)

Great post! I'm glad someone tried these out.

Tim Broughton

iTrader: (3)

Not a bad review! Might be something to look into. Thanks for the info!

WhiteLight

I'm in the market for a suspension set up, and after reading your write up the D2s are on my list of potential coilovers. I still have a lot of research to do but the price range and performance of these seems to be pretty hard to beat. Thanks for the info!

wannafbody

iTrader: (1)

No offense but for the price of D2s you can get Bernie to custom valve a set of Bilsteins and you know they are going to be good quality.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

He couldn't get that price back when he bought the D2's.

spoolin2bars

iTrader: (1)

maybe you didn't read the part about arguing over this and that shock. go back to the suspension heirarchy thread if you want a debate. i weighed my options and this turned out to be the best for my money. also the price listed for d2's in that thread should be $850.00 for $1,000 you would get valving and 2 sets of springs. also, i paid less than 850.00 since our shop got wholesale pricing. also, with bernies shocks, i would still have to buy coilovers, springs, pillowball top mounts and urethane alum. bottoms, and would still not be able to adjust the shocks for different track conditions, (like rain) or different tires. adding all that to bernies shocks would have cost much more money than i had. also, what hustler said. although revalving from bilstein was in the running.

gospeed81

iTrader: (51)

Thanks for posting up this write-up. Certainly looks like a good option. Not really another setup like this less than a grand, and it looks on par or better than the Tein SS setup.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

hmm,
8 posts and still no

"XIDA>everything"

spoolin2bars

iTrader: (1)

No ****? Dumbfuck. Buy me some xida's and I'll throw my d2's in the trash. Point is I didn't, and still don't have xida cash. Mods please lock thread. Didn't need any posts in this thread unless someone had a legitimate question.

wannafbody

iTrader: (1)

Wow, a bit defensive

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

I'm glad you wrote a review of these, since I couldn't find any info on our cars. I was looking at these instead of the Tein Mono Flex I was considering. For half the cash, I'd be willing to bet you get almost all of the performance. Is your car purely track, or have you been able to drive it on the street at all?

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

D2 thanks you for betting you hard earned cash and propagating the myth that pseudo-tuner Chinese coilovers are almost as good as genuine race shock companies products because they look kinda the same and their factory sponsored no-result drifter says they handle great.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

Were you talking to me?
If you are you are ******* retarded and completely misunderstood what I was trying to say.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

This is the only Miata related review of them I have seen, and I haven't done too much research outside of Miata, so I don't know. Just going by what the company claims, the limited specs I have seen, and what this guy says. You have experience with them?

Saying "almost all of the performance" may have been a bit much. I was really talking about for my situation anyway, which won't be living at the track, but probably 95% daily driving. I don't need a $2000 race setup, as long as the D2's would work decently well, being at least as comfortable as my Bilstein and FM spring setup (shouldn't be tough to accomplish) and improve the cars handling even a little, I would be happy. Considering I'm finding them all over the place for $850-$900 range, they couldn't be that bad for someone like myself, or maybe they are. I don't know.

Then again, I keep forgetting this car will only be daily driven for so long, it will eventually be promoted/demoted to track *****, so it would still probably be best to do the Flex like I was considering. Why buy twice.

wannafbody

iTrader: (1)

Considering that you already have high quality bilsteins, get Bernie to revalve them and you're way ahead of D2's valving wise and quality wise.

Opti

Has anyone actually torn one of these apart of have any substantiating evidence these are of bad quality.....No? thats what I figured.

This reminds me of the Cornwell guy today. Ive been waiting for the snap on truckt o come through, so I can buy their little 1/4" electric driver. Its like $150 and comes with a charger a battery and the driver. 7.2 volts and like 600 free speed rpm, not much torque.
Well cornwell guy comes through and I ask him if he has something comparable. I explain im only using it for small body bolts and trims pieces and stuff like that. He says yah I have a 14 volt 1/4" impact its 271 and it comes with a Flashlight and a driver. i say I dont need an impact or a flash light I have that I need a small, inexpensive, lightweight, cheap 1/4" electric driver.

he says well mine has a variable trigger, I say I dont care the Snap On one has a clutch that lets me adjust speed, works the same. He says well our will yank a block down. I say SO Im not pulling blocks down i have other tools for that, Im pulling 10mm bolts out that are torqued to like 20 in-lbs. I say sorry man I wanted to buy something from you and I will but this snap on fits my criteria better, so for my driver im gonna have to go through them.

He gets kinda mad and starts talking about durability and getting what you pay for and how the snap on one is junk.

Well considering ive been using a 5 year old one and it does everything ive ever asked it to, longevity is the least of my worries.

What I was trying to say in a very long winded way was you dont need a PRG to kill a fly. These shocks fit what the OP wanted, Congrats. He never said they where better than X combo. He just his personal experience backed by some quantitative data about there performance. I think its sad that people come in here and instead of acting like a adults, they choose to bash him. If you have proof or data that shows the oppositte of the OPs experience, POST IT, that willl actually help the miata.

spoolin2bars

iTrader: (1)

it was completely mis-understood i'm really sorry about that. i just didn't want the thread to become what it's becoming. i get what you meant now. i posted what i've experienced and let whoever reads it decide for themselves what to make of it. fact of the matter is xida's are greater than anything. even stuff like penske's and moton's when you consider the fact that you don't need a racecrew with a dedicated shock man and in trailer dyno to set them up.
i just don't have the cash, and i know there's plenty of ocassional track drivers that have no need to spend $$$$ on something that good. to answer somebody's question, yes i have driven many street miles and while not plush like fcm's they are a million times less harsh than my agx's and 350/250 qa1 springs were. i was comfortable driving to oklahoma (12hrs. straight) in my alum. race seat with these d2's as an example.

opti: thanks for the help, but it's not necessary as it will probably provoke a parts hate war. lol... anyway's, someone has taken these apart, as a matter of fact, that's another thing that pushed me to try them out. it was from a few years ago on a set for a honda. but the shock guy made a long review about it. basically he said he was surprised to see quality parts inside and that it basically looked just like a bilstein design wise. he said that he could see a modification he could do to make the adjusters work over a wider range, (or work at all). although i don't know if something has changed because i can definitely feel a change with just a couple clicks (out of 36) on the track, and 3-4 clicks on the street. one other thing i noticed about range of adjustment, on our shop car, we upgraded the ebay sleeves to ground control's (on a crx) and went with tockico illumina's since everyone says they are better. well, they have five levels of adjustment and everybody claims that they actually do something as opposed to the agx which don't. well the illumina's have such a broad range that with the std. gc springs (350/250) the first 2 settings are completely useless. i can literally dribble the rear of our crx like a basketball with it set on the softest settings. the first one that works is 3 and really the only i can imagine using are 4-5 on a track. the agx on my miata (same rates) were usuable on all settings and i could feel the difference. anyway, point is, we know bernie @ stewart development uses the best internal parts regadless of manufacturer on his rebuilds. we also know that he has a ton of experience on miata rebuilds. i'm thinking if i decide to later on, i might have him try these. i think it could use better low speed rebound valving to smooth out these soft dips, although there's only 1 track i've been to that has anything like that. even then, with the shop pricing i picked these up for, and bernies custom valving, i'll be at about $1,000.

/thread please. pm me if you have questions.

spoolin2bars

iTrader: (1)

back from the dead for an update.

Just finished my 2nd full year of driving, tracking on these coilovers. Including a full season of Tx Miata Challenge and Nasa Time Trial (TTA class) Coilovers still working great. They Still look pretty new too. i sprayed a light coating of wd40 on them to prevent corosion and seems to have worked. I still have a track record for TTB class from last year. I set a new TTA class track record at a track this year but it was short lived as the guy i beat returned the favor an hour later in the next session. I'm not mad though as i was 5 sec. behind him at the start of the year. I held the fastest miata lap at another track for a few months before a buddy with an ls1 swap beat me out. I came in second at a NARRA event (the group that puts on the viper cup) against a track full of modded weekend/race prepped vipers and vettes where i was the only miata. The only other car 4cyl. was a 450whp srt-4 race car, luckily he was in another class. I managed to do really well, even winning the championship in TxMC against other miata's that were turbo'd, sc'd, or ls1 swapped and were on coilovers from ast, koni race, tein, etc.... I'm not saying the D2's are better, the AST especially, i would trade for in a heartbeat. But they were good enough that i was able to compete with those guys and not lose due to terrible shocks. Still very happy i chose these.