Recently picked up a 95 miata and want to start by lowering it. I found both buddy club and variant 1 coilovers on raceinspired.com for a decent price. I just want some opinions on which would be more reliable for agressive street driving? Which have a smoother more comfortable ride?

 

you plan on tracking the car at all?

 

Not anytime soon. Ill mostly just be cruising with aggressive cornering around town from time to time.

 

How much is a decent price? Haven't heard of a single person on here using either of those

 

buddy club - 1377
kw - 1175

i haven't used either of these, so i can't give any kind of comparison...
but if you're not tracking the car, why not go with megans?
or something less expensive than either of the coils mentioned in the op?

 

Check out raceinspired.com. the buddy clubs are 1399 and the kw. Variant 1 is 1179.

 

The Buddy Clubs are monotube so they should have a performance advantage. I've read one review of them at clubroadster and it was postive regarding ride quality.

 

my take on kw's are that while the handling and ride are good, the collars are made out of plastic and metal. The metal is on the threads, but the plastic is on the outer part of the collar where the wrench would grab. I broke one of my collars when I was trying to raise my car up. Granted it was after a few winters, I'm sure it wont be as bad if you live in a warm climate.

*This was on my vw, it might be different for the miata but I've seen a few other applications that were like mine.

 

KW makes really good stuff. I've driven around on a V3 setup on a 90 and it was amazing. But they are also 3k. Can't say for the V1 though. Stance is also another cheaper option.

 

KW sells no junk. For a street car, I'd happily recommend the V1s to a customer. They won't get you 185s-on-13x9s-with-8-degrees-of-camber-mega-mad-crazy low, but they will be an extremely high quality shock that should ride very well and live forever.

Which you can't say about any of the JDM y0 monotubes.

 

As far as I know everything they sell uses the reinforced plastic collars, but I've NEVER heard of anyone stripping or breaking one. Were your threads really gummed up or something?

 

I went through 2 or 3 winters, so there was some corrosion. I hit it with pb blaster and still didnt break loose, but broke a piece of the collar off. Had to put it in a vice w/ pipe wrench to loosen it

 

KW makes nice stuff.

But if your just street driving, you could go a LOT cheaper and not know the difference.

 

****, I've heard tons of good things about those cheaper coils FM sells.

http://www.flyinmiata.com/index.php?...0%20%201990-97