AlwaysBroken

As I said in the last stupid thread, either stay stock or get Xidas. Everything else is wasted money.

You can jerry rig your way to a decent setup that costs a bit less than Xidas but it still won't be as good (especially on rough roads) and for only 500 more you could have Xidas. Which you are going to get eventually anyway when you get frustrated with the bargain setup.

Tampa has awful **** roads with moonscape potholes and speed bumps galore. I'm on Xida GS and it's noticeably better in every circumstance than my previous setup. It has great control and stability and it eats up huge bumps and rough roads without complaint. You just drive the ******* car. Unlike most suspension upgrades for the Miata this one isn't actually a tradeoff.

Junkwhale

There's your problem right there. You need NB bilsteins (HD, Hard S, or MSM) to properly cromulate the xidas on a budget.

pakmx5

iTrader: (2)

achervig

MFMike

If your budget is ~$1000 (or under), aside from rebuilding some standard Bilsteins, most of the coilover options available to you will be virtually the same. Generic length, generic spring rates, generic valving. No matter how hard the seller/manufacturing pushes their chinglish marketing to you about how their dampers are custom valved etc etc, it's all just a load of crock. For the two brands that you mentioned, they are just the same generic damper with different clothing. Don't let the marketing fool you.

Please note that I am NOT saying the Meister/BC's are bad, far from it, as they serve their purpose well i.e a cheap set of coilovers for the majority street car where most customers can't really tell the difference. Just don't expect anything "custom" or "special" in that price range.

If you can extend your budget by a couple hundred dollars, then there are 3 options that stand out (there are more, such as the Euro brands) that are available to you which are above and beyond the budget coilovers you mentioned above. These are the budget offerings from the mid-range coilover manufacturers, all with US facilities for servicing & support:

- Fortune Auto
- Feals
- YCW Suspension

All 3 offer custom spring rates from Swift Springs, offering rates from 4K-50K. ALL of the budget brands use cheap $5 Taiwanese coil springs from Yangmin/Triple-S suspension in Taiwan. This one company supplies 90% of the coilover market in Taiwan. Infact, if you actually stop and think about out, if you take off the $400 worth of Swift Springs from the price, these coilovers are actually cheaper than the budget stuff.

The important thing to note though about these companies (and what is actually the most important) is that they all have an in-house shock dyno. This is extremely important for 2 reasons:

1) It allows them to fully customise the valving in your dampers to your exact vehicle specification/requirements i.e Spring rates, Motion Ratios, Swaybars, Corner Weights, Tire Pressures etc
2) It allows them to match their dampers i.e Left & Right. This is extremely important as you do not want mismatched dampers. I can guarantee you that none of the mass-market Korean/Taiwanese dampers are matched as damper matching on a dyno is not part of their QC process (most don't even have dynos). I've had BC's on our dyno that can vary over 150lbs of force between the left/right damper (brand new set that was brought into us for a re-valve). Even the Euro brands are known for this, especially Koni.

I'm not sure to the exact extent that Fortune Auto and Feals extend their services to their budget offerings, but they do have the tools/facilities in place to do things correctly, so I would choose these over any budget brand all day long.

In the case of YCW Suspension, we take our customisation a little further and allow our customers to not only choose their spring rates (from 4K-50K), but also choose their spring length AND damper body length. This applies to our entire range, from budget to professional.

Now, being a sponsor on this forum and owner of YCW Suspension, I may come off as a little bias, but in all honesty, these are simple facts that everyone should know about when purchasing any brand of coilover. None of the budget brands can back up their chinglish marketing claims, and none of them can offer the same level of service/product as these 3 mid-range companies.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

by that logic, the ebay $180 chingchong special "yellows" are not bad either.

there is literally nothing bad then. at all. just different measures of good.

THERE IS NOTHING BAD IN THIS WORLD.

MFMike

Well, to be honest, I've never had personal experience with the really cheap stuff, but generally I would stay away from the "Made in China" coilovers (there are exceptions, such as the budget Teins and Cusco's).

If you are referring to Yellow Speed Coilovers, then those are made in Taiwan (branched off from D2 which, in itself, branched off from BC Racing):

18psi

iTrader: (76)

I'm just sayin,
the main reason this site is famous for no-nonsense info and knowledge is because we make a point to not blur the lines between junk and quality parts.
once blurred, high quality products from reputable vendors like you, averagemiata, 949, tse, sadfap, and others will no longer be considered the beez kneez and no longer be popular, but be referred to "slightly better" compared to junk

MFMike

oh, don't get me wrong. I'm sure most people can probably tell from the tone of my post that I'm an advocate against these budget coilover companies (note the difference between budget coilover company vs budget coilover from a mid-range company), however, there is no denying that they do serve their purpose for the majority of street cars where the consumer simply can't tell the difference between junk and not-junk (otherwise there wouldn't be such a large plague of the stuff available on the market. Someone must be buying and using it).

I guess the point I was trying to make is, by simply budgeting an extra couple hundred dollars, you can have a decent set of budget coilovers that have at least some form of proper QC and US servicing/support

matrussell122

iTrader: (1)

But the TDR crank dampener is still good right the ati is just a tiny bit better

MFMike

I mean, if you really want to get into the intricate details of source/supply/manufacturing, I could tell you "trade secrets" about most popular brands on the market, but there is a time and place for that which is not really on a public forum. Besides, what matters most is not where the parts come from (to an extent), but who does the R&D, assembly, tuning and servicing.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

That is absolutely correct. 99% of the stuff is made mostly in sweat shops, the difference being the age and intelligence of the children both here and there