I have a 1997 1.8 NA on very worn out OEM shocks and 205/50/R15 tires on 15x8 wheels. There isnt a bunch online about the Feal 441s, but they are advertised as punching above their weight class. I should also state that unlike a lot of you guys my car isnt a dedicated track car. It needs to work on real roads, I need to be able to turn my wheels all the way to the left/right, and I dont want to take driveways at some stupid angle.

When doing my research I found two threads on this forum from people who claimed the rear coilovers were too short even at max height. I waved it off thinking they were just doing something wrong. Nope.

The paperwork supplied with these coils say multiple times not to adjust preload and to only adjust height by spinning the lower body, and you must have at least 20mm of thread engagement. Got it. Without adjusting them at all, using the specs they came with, the rear of my car was so low the tires were jutting into the top of the wheel well.

I removed the lower shock bodies, measured 20mm of thread with calipers, and screwed the body back on up to that point. With height maxed out my tires were touching the fenders. Even an aggressive fender roll wouldnt have made this car able to be driven. This is all very funny considering without any adjustment at all the front of the car is almost fine, it would just need a fender roll. Weird how they dont match up at all from the factory. I guess they expect you to have 3 inches of rake to the rear of the car.

I added a 12.7mm (.5in) of preload to the rear, a huge increase from the factory 3mm. That got me here:


With a fender roll it would maybe be drivable as long as I avoided bumps. Keep in mind this is advertised for "street performance" and they tell you not to adjust the preload at all. I daily drive my car and care more about it being usable than anything else.

Finally I added another half inch of preload, nearly 10x their factory setting, and its now at an acceptable, but still too low, 4" pinch weld height in the rear. The front at factory settings, nothing adjusted, is 4" pinch weld. Just the fact I had to do all of this to the rear to make it match the front tells me a lot about how much thought went into producing these. I probably could have thrown racelands on the car and had a better result.

If you value your time or your money, avoid these. Should have just gone with Xidas. I'm done trying to get them to work. Putting my blown OEM ones back on and going to try to get a refund.

 

You should refer to the directions on their webpage. There is no such thing as preload. You have to adjust the compression & rebound/droop ratio first with the upper collar. Then use the lower collar to adjust the ride height. If you want a higher ride height you may have to sacrifice a bit of the rebound/droop travel.

 

I have read both of their PDFs. The original and the revised one. I'm calling it preload because thats what everybody calls it. I'm fully aware that you have to adjust for droop. Your confidence in these drops significantly when the paperwork says

"These are setup from the factory to work with your car out of the box", and then you find forums posts where they tell people who have adjusted the upper collar that it is "not optimal to do that".

They clearly send these out with the expectation that they should be usable out of the box. I could probably keep wasting my time trying to adjust them, but just having to do that erodes any confidence in the company behind them. If they havent even tested to make sure they are good out of the box, yet claim they should be, what else have they not bothered to put any time into? Its clear that they make one set of coilovers and simply adjust the mounts for each car they retail them for. I dont believe they've ever even had an NA miata in their shop to test them on or they wouldnt advertise them the way they do. I'd rather just return them and buy a set from a company who thought about the product a bit.

 

The initial setup requires some effort for every coilover because everyone's requirement is different. Adjust the bottom collar down so there is the min functional engagement. Then adjust the upper collar up to your ride height. Then check your droop travel vs comp.

http://fealsuspension.com/wp-content...de-REVISED.pdf

 

Wanted to see if there was any follow-up on this.

 

Basically just buy Xidas.

 

https://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=725893

 

Insightful, thanks.

 

Basically: OP has never seen coilovers before and doesn't know how they work.


Got it. Heard. Nobody saw that coming. What a twist.