Flyin Miatas new coilovers...
 

http://flyinmiata.com/index.php?dept...umber=13-16200

Looks promising, and good competition for 949's Monoflex and the new Ohlins suspension.

offered with a standard 450/300 spring rate but it sounds like these shocks can handle a lot more!

may have to start saving

$2k = fuck that
Why pay Keith's development costs so he can go play?

monoflex are 1700, ohlins are pretty much 2k as well.

i dont see the problem, aside from not liking FM so much...

unless of course, when the full details are released, they dont offer up the same features and advantages as the other setups...

interesting design, but i would prefer the 949 coilovers. those dont look too beefy to me, maybe good for lightweight savings?

i believe thats just a stock photo, if you read the description it says they wont have real photos until may when the production units are finished

very interesting indeed, arm/leg price tag, but look very promising

I think the major benefit of these shocks compared to the ohlins/jics/flex is the amount of droop and bump travel they have. Atleast that's what i assume from looking at the targamiata.com photos showing the amount of travel it had at full compression and droop.

That sounds like it. My JICs have only a few inches of droop. My full droop wheel gap with JICs in the air is smaller than my stock ride height wheel gap on the ground. I'll have to keep this in mind when the time comes to replace mine.

Interesting, if they are anywhere near as good as promised that's a fair price, and I'd strongly concider picking up a set. Especially with the high banking and, sharp rough transitions my local track has in 4 spots, I've lifted inside tires on stock suspension and old compound azenis before.

I'd bet the AFCOs are an honest 2k without too ridiculous of a markup. They're custom valved racing shocks. For a full miata compatible solution, that's pretty good.

Especially when you consider they were probably designed with lengths that are ideal for a miata. Not like the TEIN which are too short and not optimal in my opinion. I read his blog on how the lengths were tuned. It's interesting.

Honestly, if they are what they claim to be, I might consider trading in my FLEX / EFDC on these. I love the idea of using the full amount of travel. And aluminum shock bodies. Reminiscent of my previous Advance Designs but with a real company behind them. The A-Ds also had length issues. at 12.5" you were virtually on the bumps.

Anyway, shock sex.

I read through the shock development on targamiata.com a couple months ago. It looked quite interesting. Were there updates since a couple months ago?

exactly. being able to utilize all of the available shock travel is something im definitely interested in. im looking to change out my setup pretty soon so this looks like a great option...

rather get FatCat to custom build me something

The shocks he actually used on the car:
http://targamiata.com/images_lrg/IMG_7845.jpg
Full droop:
http://targamiata.com/images_lrg/IMG_7851.jpg
Full compression:
http://targamiata.com/images_lrg/IMG_7848.jpg
Can you say holy travel batman?

the secret is the raised bump stop thingy. It's the only real way to get more stroke out of the long shock suspension.

AD don't have length issues if you were using them with what they were designed for - the FM top hats. They were designed for max droop, and at full compression the tires would hit the wheel wells sooner than these go out of travel ...

Blah. Another ones which don't have floating perches but have the springs resting vs the chassis instead ... :barf:

Here is Miata suspension done right ...

Front lower:
http://k53.pbase.com/o6/23/66623/1/7...frontlower.JPG



Front upper:

http://i.pbase.com/g6/23/66623/2/78197223.VVIU5aIv.jpg

http://i.pbase.com/g6/23/66623/2/78197228.R5BoPpFA.jpg



Rear lower:

http://i.pbase.com/g6/23/66623/2/78197231.FssZCD8S.jpg


Rear upper:

http://k53.pbase.com/g6/23/66623/2/7...4.HcXrqfJN.jpg

Nice to see they have rear uppers that are raised

I'm pretty sure the AD shocks had nothing to do with the FM top hats--or if it did, it was a secret nobody told me. And I doubt FM would have sold them incomplete. And if they did, they suck.

Anyway, I used them with the NB top mounts which was almost a huge failure. Ground Control/FM sent me the shocks with 6" front springs. I guess as a joke. Because with the perch at the top and the NB mounts, the car was tucking about an inch and a half of tire up front. Fucking awesome.

Anyway the shocks behaved well but I decided to try the flex. I think I prefer the ride of the AD monotubes in general though. Hate the company behind them though (GC).

Jay Morris, the owner of Ground Control/Advance Design told me so in a phone call back then - that he did the lengths to work best with the FM top hats - the shocks are long so you have enough droop, but there is enough compression travel too. FM were selling a special version of their top hats with spherical bearings matching the AD shaft diameter.

In my car in front the tires touch the wheel wells metal before the AD shock runs out of travel, in the rear the tires touch the wheel well and the the A-arm runs out of motion range while there is still travel in the shock left (this is with the FM mounts as Jay suggested).

Lame that I never heard about that. Every time I called GC they were elitist and unhelpful.

they were cool to me.

:jerkit:

I have fatcat shit on my car, but nothing he can revalve can compare.

You have to either go way upmarket (penske's, etc) or wait for 949racing's XIDA to come out to compare.

Are you joking? So all those national competition winning cars on Afco, Advance Design, JRZ, Ohlins, etc. similarly priced kits are so inferior to the FatCats stuff, that one has to go way upmarket to compare? :D How many national champions on FatCats stuff? Or reading too much mnet hype? ;)

You obviously misread my post. The fatcat stuff is garbage compared to the 2000$ shock setups.

The ETC was for the high class shocks, such as the ones you posted.

What do you think the effect fixed perches will have on a Miata suspension compared to floating mounts? How are your AD's set up, floating, inverted?

FM's appear to be based on T2's = twin tube. Not sure though. SRP for the T2 is about $440 each for the base model, not including any tweaks or additional mounting hardware FM may have added. The description mentions spherical bearings used in upper mounts but the stock photo is a stud mount. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

The XIDA's will be a somewhat different animal.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Stance Coilovers. They are very nice for the price range, (aka a good 700 cheaper). I wish I knew what the droop was, but the travel is good if you have the new rear top hats (upper mounts) which does seem necessary to get full travel for the miata. I think the stance's are nice due to the shear beefiness to them, monotube and built to take a beating.

Attachment 214398

what did i miss? i couldnt find any info on XIDAs?

http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.c...86_1986_286432

stance shock dyno i found

http://flyinmiata.com/Store/images/13-16200-front.jpg

flyin miata

here's keith's blog about the shocks. I think this page covers most of the entries.
http://targamiata.com/diary.php?start=300
here's the shocks after a revision:
http://targamiata.com/diary.php?UID=331

And while we're on the subject, FatCat may have something interesting coming out in the next few months. I can't give you more because he asked me not to share.

Stance:
front stroke ~104mm
rear stroke ~76mm

Stance doesn't have facilities to dyno any of their product. They have asked me if I wanted to sell their kits a few times over the last year or so. The dyno teknikscian posted was done by the factory in Asia. It's the same dyno they send no matter what application you ask about. I asked Rob, one of the sales guys who so happens to drift a Miata, about this and he said and I quote "..they're basically the same". So I asked him to send me a set to dyno. I'll post the results in a few weeks. Some of the staff at Stance are real car guys so that's a good sign.

Comparing Stance to Tein, Afco, Koni, Bilstein, Koni, Ohlins, Penske et. al. is an apples to oranges comparison though. Every one of these established companies has engineers working directly with top teams in world class motorsports events. Tein actually ships an ocean container to each WRC event, inside is a full shop. The bigger players have been showing up to top level events with semi's holding a full R&D lab for decades.

Stance is a tiny marketing company selling products designed and engineered by someone else. The engineers doing the production design in Asia are not involved in motorsports. There is no long history of involvement with motorsports, just a few sponsored drifters in the last two years that say "they're great". They may be built very well, certainly pretty, they may even have good looking dyno curves but are just not in the same league.

There is a lot more to building a high performance damper than the external apperance. Like Shaikh has observed, once you get a chance to see what's inside different brands of dampers you get a much better picture. Go to SEMA show and you will see row after row of Chinese "racing coilovers" that are gorgeous. ..Right next to their display of control arms, I/C pipes, BOV's, hub rings and anything else you can machine/form out of aluminum. There is a reason dampers like this can be purchased for less than half what the established brands sell them for. Not saying you shouldn't buy them, just advising realistic expectations.

Not hard to find, click the link on the bottom of my posts. XIDA's, like the FM and whatever FCM is working on, still in development. Looks like FM might have production units soonest.

I understand that the larger companies have more R&D but I also think they tend to forget about the small end of things. Their ability to sell large quantities to the masses results in little care about individual results. Sure if you pay for their top of the line service you may be able to get someone to take care of you, but at stance since they are small company if there is an issue they work to take care of it right away.

In any case, as more people pick up on using stance the more I've heard people enjoying them far more than their previous Tein Flex, Silk Road, or other similarly priced Coilovers. This doesn't speak for coilover systems costing significantly more. However, I don't see that much improvement in the FM coils specifically. It does seem to have a lot of attention paid to travel and stroke, but for those prices I'd expect to see things like remote reservoirs and maybe a reverse monotube design...certainly not a twin tube.

Do you mean the ability to solve "small" problems with the product? The ability to design and produce a product with attention to "small" details? Not sure what you mean.

From experience in the design, R&D and marketing divisions of some multi hundred million dollar companies and some tiny companies, trust me there is no advantage to not having the resources to do what needs to be done either way.

Emilio how can you tell from the exterior if it's twin or mono tube, for my information? Also, what performance differences are there between the two designs, as well as with a remote reservoir compared to a shock without one? Thanks.

"FM's appear to be based on T2's". The stock photo shows no remote. Afco's OTS monotube uses remotes, the twin tube OTS have no remote. Tne there is the retail price that wouldn't fit if they were monotubes. Just a guess really.

Remotes allow a larger oil and nitrogen volume. Everything else being equal this larger nitrogen volume lowers the useful pressure that user can tune with and improves the linearity between adjuster steps in the lower middle pressure ranges. The XIDA will have that adjustable canister pressure but probably only a handful of users will ever use, have the tools for or know how for that tuning capability. As always though, I design the parts I want for my cars and go from there.

A minor issue is that remotes can sometimes make actually reaching the adjuster quite a bit easier. Note the compression clicker on the 8700 series Penske JMan posted. Yuck.

Everything else being equal, a monotube might have more hysteresis in small piston displacements compared to a twin tube. That's what the Tein MSV and Ohlins DFV hardware addresses. In a perfect world, suspensions using monotube dampers without compensatory hardware would have fairly high motion ratios to hide that built in weakness. In practice, unless you are in a full spherical bearing race car or high end sportbike, you probably won't be able to tell the difference.

The flip side is that fundamentally, a monotube can reject a bunch more heat than a twin tube damper. When damper heat is an issue, this makes monotubes the clear choice. In practice, very few Miatas are driven fast enough, long enough with enough shaft excursion for that to be an issue either way.

There are all sorts of theoretical benefits from different design features but one has to really look at the application and decide what's the best configuration, whether it's sexy or not. I choose monotube because the configuration is ideal for my use:)

I confess I drive my car primarily on the street, but the monotubes rode so much better than the twin tubes. bilstein better than koni, A-D better than TEIN.

And none of the monotubes had the MSV or HSV or whatever high speed / low amplitude valve.

So no direct comparisons then?

The theoretical difference in damping function between the two is precision at tiny shaft movements and hysteresis, not necessarily ride quality. Past any shaft movements large enough to flow oil through the orifices instead of compressing the nitrogen charge, the monotube will absolutely have higher performance potential.

Another concern for a performance damper is that twin tubes only operate when oriented vertically so shaking them around in a high G environment is more likely to generate aeration of the damping fluid.

Anyway, no suprise that $3500 AD's rode better than $1300 Tein's and also not suprising that any Bilstein rode better than any Koni.

lots of good info on this thread, helping be decide where i want to go with my next setup. these KYBs have to go.. *ron burgendy voice* KYBs were a BAAAAAAD choice...

all the shit in this thread is why I bought Bilstein / GC. I'm not a fucking engineer, so I wanted a good pairing at 450/375 lb/in that someone could set up without an accelerometer and calculus...which I swore off since college.

To be fair the AD were 399 plus springs at 50 each. Not significantly different than other retail high end coilover kits.

I did do a direct comparison between the TEIN HA on Jason C's car and my ADs. We sat them side by side and opened the doors and pushed down. The TEINs were cadillac soft and the AD barely moved. I think I had more tire flex. I think my rates were 375/225 compared to his 7/5--fairly close.

His car had better traction on rough surfaces but mine had better body control.

I think this is Turn 8 @ Thunderhill with the AD setup

http://gallery.y8s.com/d/116-3/HT4U1707.jpg

Don't forget tire pyrometer, tire pressure gauge, data aquisition with GPS, in car video and of course propeller beanie cap :)

whatever, overated. Turbos + stock suspension = winner:

http://www.boostedmiata.com/autox/autox4.jpg

Even better are the LS1 conversions on stock shocks. I LOVE THAT!

I actually have a tire pyrometer, the circle of friends has 3 GPS based loggers, and a few cams floating around...but no propeller beanie...lol.

Seriously though. Even when running 10-15 track days per year, I would probably have a hard time setting anything up to improve over my bilstein/GC. If I had the cash I'd probably buy ohlins or AD.

I've never run a session where I couldn't keep up with another 2100lb miata in the corners regardless of suspension (aside from hoosier equipped cars of course).

hefty brakes can mean as much as a turbo on the right track.

if you're overheating the friction bits.