8 year old Tein Flex decision
 

So, my 8 year anniversary is coming up for my Tein Flex coil-overs that I paid $1400 for (that's like 10K today). They seem fine but have never been earth shattering. And in my pattern of general ignorance, I never knew that I couldn't use the first sixteen clicks or I would damage the shocks, so of course I have had them on "zero", what I thought was the softest possible, for daily driving pretty much all this time (wifey drove it to). The set up has about 10 to 15K miles on it in all this time, which is a bummer, but oh well. My questions are, should I rock it out another 8 years and just try not to suck as a driver on track, have them rebuilt by Tein USA, or replace them with Fortune Auto 500's which I find impressive and just put on my civic? Thank you very much for your help.

el oh ell

if you find fortune auto impressive, then you can rock whatever trash you want and it will be impressive

The only "bargain" coilovers worth doing are letting FEAL custom build you a set.

As I understand it, fully clockwise is "1" and is the most firm, 15 more clicks out is 16 to full soft, and that's the most you should go. Soooo stay within the fist 16, not outside.

How about this rephrasing, keep tein's cause who cares, bother to have them built, or buy new coil overs?

keep teins, paypal me money you were going to spend on new coilovers.

But if you keep turning the adjuster past 16 clicks counter clockwise, it keeps going but your not supposed to. I did, foolishly.

Buy Xida GS, and splooge your pants. Be done with buying suspensions for the miata.

that's what they said 8 years ago with the Tein Flex.

You learned anything in the last 8 years?

We have.

Unfortunately I’ve forgotten what I’ve learned over the past 8 years.

Point is in another 8 years there will be nicer parts for us all to buy.

Continue developing the Miata platform Emilio.

I also have a beater 94 miata na with fm sways and the cheapest ebay shocks and springs available. My son is going to start track days in it next summer so I should be able to drive the cars back to back and look at my speed logs. Maybe I can even convince other miata people to use my solo so I can compare their speeds in corners too, although they are typically much better drivers than I am, even if they don't beat my best while they are driving my car. They're probably just being nice.

I want to say 8 years ago was right on the cusp of when all the Chinese parts dumped into the market. 8 years ago koni sports with shitty ebay collars and shitty qa1 springs were all the rage providing you with the most shitty sub-par suspension you could piece meal together -- when people still took gospel to yo-yo spinning fatsos.

Tiens were never the best, but a much better solution for a relatively decent price for a drop-in coilover set. Tiens never had a spring rate that made sense for the miata -- since they are just universal shock bodies and other parts to make work on a miata with zero research. So even when 949 was offering them, they were selling them with a replacement front spring. BUT they were a MUCH improved ride and performance over anything else that was on the market at the time.

I remember a lot of Chinese stuff came out that everyone was freaking out over, because it finally brought to market a coilover for less than $1000. Look how well the ricelands, FM's ricelands, and all those BC Racing and clones did. There was always a market for coilover, but nothing was affordable. But when everyone on m.net was buying these semi-decent parts developer in china for a Honda civic, the mt.net crew over here was trying to work with Bernie on bilstiens with good rates and curves for a turbo miata, and then 949 started actually developing and doing R&A on a setup for the miata specifically. And now look how far they've gone. they are pretty much the pinnacle of miata coilovers because they took the time to actually cater to the cool kids.

Well said, sir.